The argument for the family (and small community) is that it is not peaceful and not pleasant.

Families and small groups are peaceful. We should be very careful in noting what is meant by peaceful. There seem to be two different forms of morality in people's heads: outgroup morality and ingroup morality. Basically my family is peaceful as are most families. There's very little fighting and the little fights there are never come to blows and are quickly resolved. Outgroup morality is typically the intergroup relationships. My family will kill your family and we'd be feuding. A recent study published in nature found strong support for Parochial altruism. http://www.nature.com... It turns out that small groups function better when they are frankly bigoted and murderous towards other groups. When it's us vs. them. We get the benefit of being us. The aid of infragroup relations is widely known, sharing of resources, helping out, child care, group protection. However, in a less civilized culture this is hard to achieve without the added punishment/pressure of intergroup religions. So in reality, the small groups are in fact peaceful, within themselves. If somebody tries to join the group and fails to meet the social requirements they are quickly ejected. A strong part of preserving this peace is being hugely xenophobic. Later on the barriers start to drop and the general altruism state is more beneficial, however this simply means more peace. In short, the goal is to be peaceful regardless the size of the group. ------ 1) The family is not a human institution. You need not be a zoologist to see family structures in nature. These groups also have highly close and altruistic infragroup relations. 2) When we choose companions in a larger group setting, we are in fact, constructing a smaller group. We like small groups of a couple dozen people. We form little gangs and squads and groups around each other. In a small community it's everybody in a large community it's a biker group or a scrabble club, or just your extended family, or your coworkers. 3) God doesn't make our next-door neighbors. God doesn't exist. Though, reading the OT will give you a great example of ingroup and outgroup morality. You are to take slaves of those strangers around you, and if you happen to get a believing slave you are to treat him better and eventually free him. You are told to not bear false witness against your neighbor and love your neighbor... but of those other strangers you don't know they are often invaded and killed. 4) You certainly do compose smaller groups out of larger groups, several in fact. People in modern society tend to have spheres of friends and families. 5) Life doesn't need to be a story. It's life. ----- I have been around a lot, and nonsensical crap when I see it. There's a reason why your arguments seem largely incoherent and it isn't the verbosity, it's the fact that you're not really saying anything. Small families and small communities are peaceful. Take a look at your own family. Do you trust each other with money? Do you care for each other? Small communities are very peaceful and larger communities tend to be broken down into smaller communities (because that's the way we think). You have cited nothing to suggest that small groups are not peaceful. Not one bit of evidence. It looks a lot like you aren't even arguing for anything. You seem to like a book and cut and pasted a few bits and pieces and failed to understand that that isn't an argument and certainly doesn't address the topic at hand. Yeah, families are peaceful and by and large pleasant. You may notice when they annoy you more often than you do total strangers because you don't interact all the time with strangers. Done.