How Important Is Knowing Your Origins?

B_NineInchCock_160IQ

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I think it depends on how far back you go.

Just knowing that you're a Hutu or a Tutsi, English or Irish, Sunni or Shiite or Kurd, Red-stater or Blue-stater, etc... that's all more or less completely useless.

Being able to trace your roots back to mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam (http://www.genographic.org), and realizing that we all come from exactly the same place, I think that's more useful.
 

whatireallywant

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Oh I agree with that! My first taste of it happened when going through a will from my father's side of the family. It enumerated things like pots and utensils, beds, farming tools, and..... slaves. As he was from Massachusetts, that was the last thing I expected to see but there it was. "Sally, 8, negro." There were three slaves altogether, a family I don't know. It shocked me because I wondered if I lived then would I have done the same thing? How could I relate to someone who would do such a thing I find completely abhorrent? Digging-up the skeletons has since become one of the most satisfying things I do. It helps paint a more complete picture and throws some spice into things.

Yep... my mom dug up some of that in my family history too. (slave owners, that is...) Then there is abandoned babies, alcoholism, criminals, victims of crime (murdered and left a wife with 4 children, and the children were taken away because she was unable to support them - this was the early 1900s after all), child abuse, etc. etc... Even my generation is not immune to this. One of my cousins is in and out of jail all the time. And I think another cousin is suspected of murder! :eek: We have this sort of thing, and then we have the extreme Bible-thumpers. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground - except for me.

Actually, I don't think my family history is really all that unusual. Most families are dysfunctional when it comes down to it!
 

EagleCowboy

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Let's see, I'm related to some king of England, can't remember which one although I remember he was really stupid. Kind of embarrassing to admit to. Also am 4th in line to be an Irish prince. Not that I'll ever see it. :biggrin1: Found out recently that I'm related to Abe Lincoln. :cool: There was also a member of my family that was a great inventor, a very clever and high-tech thief. (1800's had high tech?!? :tongue: ) He was also a murderer who managed to disappear into a new life and left no trace. :eek:

I think what really bothered me in not knowing all of where I came from is until I was in my mid 20's, no one in my entire family told me that I was Cherokee. It seems one side was embarrassed to be Cherokee, and the other side condemned it. When I found out, and found out to what degree, (1/4 Cherokee/ 1/16 Choctaw) and who our Cherokee relatives are, and also got my card, BOTH sides of my family blew a gasket and had all kinds of conniption fits!! :mad: And to this day, I continue to rub it in and flaunt it. It just really pisses them off!! Hehe. :lmao: Even though we are a dying race, I am really glad to find out that I am a part of it.
 

Calboner

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"I am, in fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
 

chico8

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I think the greatness of being American is the possibilty of reinventing yourself and not being tied to your past. Immigrants came to reinvent themselves to leave suffering and poverty and achieve a better life. That act alone has a way of putting less emphasis on your past. They were not encumbered by the rules of the Old World where your past and lineage often was the sole determinant of your social and economic status in life and that of your progeny.

You've just repeated one of the largest American fallacies. People can't reinvent themselves anymore than they can leave the past behind.

Immigrants to America may well have escaped some problems but most learned that new and larger problems awaited them. A few did become obscenely wealthy but many were mired in an even greater poverty than they experienced in the old world. In many ways these new Americans became more oppressive, more racist, more class conscious than the societies they left behind.

In my extended family tree, it's mostly those who did stay behind that ended up going the furthest. Running away is never a means of solving problems.

This escapist legacy has led to the disposable society that is America.
 

jason_els

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My sister, bless her heart, has done some geneology on our family and has found through her research that we are descendents of French aristocracy. It's my opinion that her research is dubious at best and I never take her interpretation seriously.

Oh the irony Earl! :wink:

That said, I think genealogy can be a source of great pride - however erroneous it may be in my sister's case, and it's great that you have learned a good deal about yourself and history in the process. I don't share your interest and feeling of importance of knowing your family history, however. I don't agree with your statement that not wanting to know the past is ignoring who you ultimately are. And I don't agree with your belief that we are inextricably tied to our genetic lineage. I am myself and I live today. My history that directly affects me ends with my mother and father and maybe my dead grandparents whom I never knew. Knowing I am a descendant of aristocracy does not affect me one way or another. That is probably a lie anyways. Knowing what mistakes my ancestors made does not change my present in any way whatsoever or my understanding of myself. Who I am as a person TODAY is not defined by them. If it does I'd be eating possum and living in a trailer park. Unlike you, knowing what and who they were has no bearing on how I have come to define myself. You might say that past has been severed by my family in some way, perhaps intentionally.

Just be glad they left France when they did (chop chop).:biggrin1:

I get the impression you think little of them because they were poor and uneducated. No one is saying you'd be eating possum in a trailer park any more than I'd be owning slaves or whatireallywant would be an axe murderess. Not all my ancestors were so glorious. My grandfather's family was dirt poor and a rich local family thought he was so bright they sponsored him not only through college but law school too. One of my middle names, Cadwell, was given to me in their honor. His wife's family were Czech, fresh off the boat at Ellis Island. I know little about them precisely because they were poor. They disowned my grandmother after she and her sister were in a car accident, my great aunt was killed, and they blamed my grandmother for it. That was cruel and petty and caused her a life of sadness. Still, they interest me.

We are who we make ourselves but we are made of who came before us as well. All our DNA, your face, hands, eyes, everything all came from those people. Physically and perhaps mentally, you carry on their traits because you are made of all of those who came before you. What you do with it is up to you but you cannot say that they are not part of you.

I think the greatness of being American is the possibility of reinventing yourself and not being tied to your past. Immigrants came to reinvent themselves to leave suffering and poverty and achieve a better life. That act alone has a way of putting less emphasis on your past. They were not encumbered by the rules of the Old World where your past and lineage often was the sole determinant of your social and economic status in life and that of your progeny.

Which is precisely what you did at one point in your life. You're no more a possum eater than you are the yuppie that came to work in New York. You took what someone gave you, brain and body, and made it into someone new. That's your accomplishment yet it doesn't diminish the contribution of your ancestors, just as your change of life doesn't diminish the actions of your past. It's neither good nor bad. It's just what is. Hating our histories is like hating a phantom and all it serves is to sew the seeds of regret. We can't change our ancestors as we can't change our past. And though the past contributes to the present, the key is what we do with ourselves in the here and now.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if I had been adopted. I'm sure my parents love us but the always showed so little interest. Their own lives were more important than ours.

:hug:

My father also adopted my mothers 3 kids (from previous relationship) and treated them like his own. To him we were all part of one family and that no one is better than any of the other siblings.

That's quite wonderful! He sounds like a great man.

Actually, I don't think my family history is really all that unusual. Most families are dysfunctional when it comes down to it!

Very true! So many of our histories are a hodgepodge.

Let's see, I'm related to some king of England, can't remember which one although I remember he was really stupid. Kind of embarrassing to admit to. Also am 4th in line to be an Irish prince. Not that I'll ever see it. :biggrin1: Found out recently that I'm related to Abe Lincoln. :cool: There was also a member of my family that was a great inventor, a very clever and high-tech thief. (1800's had high tech?!? :tongue: ) He was also a murderer who managed to disappear into a new life and left no trace. :eek:

Over half of Europe has some royal or noble blood in them. The reason these lines stand out is because they are so well researched. Doing genealogical work is like trailblazing through a rain forest. You earn every step with a lot of hacking. The going is difficult, slow, frequently expensive and full of dead ends. The internet has made it vastly easier than it used to be but getting everything documented can be next to impossible. One church fire in Catskill, NY has likely ruined any chance of finding where my father's side of the family came from. We're going to have to rely on genetic testing to find the link.

When you run into a noble or royal or someone famous or very rich, suddenly it's like the jungle parts and there's an autobahn with an idling Ferrari. You can cruise down huge swaths of data because not only have the names and dates all been so thoroughly researched already, but you can even learn something about their daily lives, even find portraits! People you never would have thought of before suddenly become open to you. You're reading about the life of your umpteenth great grandfather, maybe you've even been to one of his castles! It's fascinating because the history is so alive and at hand.

So when people talk about their noble and royal relatives it isn't necessarily to show off, but the simple fascination of being physically connected to someone from 500 years ago whose name you can read, face you can see, home you can visit, and biography you can read. It's amazing.

In the back of my mind I thank all the people who managed to live long enough to reproduce a child who survived long enough to do that same thing just to result in me being here at all.

I think what really bothered me in not knowing all of where I came from is until I was in my mid 20's, no one in my entire family told me that I was Cherokee... Even though we are a dying race, I am really glad to find out that I am a part of it.

Genealogy at work in a positive way right there!

You've just repeated one of the largest American fallacies. People can't reinvent themselves anymore than they can leave the past behind.

Immigrants to America may well have escaped some problems but most learned that new and larger problems awaited them. A few did become obscenely wealthy but many were mired in an even greater poverty than they experienced in the old world. In many ways these new Americans became more oppressive, more racist, more class conscious than the societies they left behind.

In my extended family tree, it's mostly those who did stay behind that ended up going the furthest. Running away is never a means of solving problems.

This escapist legacy has led to the disposable society that is America.

Well stated and very true.
 

D_Adoniah Sheervolume

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as a child i was told my grandfather was run over by a train. as a young adult, i visited my grandmother in germany for only the second time (the second afternoon, actually) in my life, and it came out that she had, in fact, been a single mother. she passed away three weeks later.

when i confronted my mother (an intensely private person) about it, she said she planned to tell us at some point, but the time had never come.

the revelation was rather shattering. i know little about either side of my family, and everyone's dead except for my mom. they were from germany, so i imagine many of the records were destroyed in the wars.

it would be nice to know my origins, not to whack anyone over the head with, but to, as jason-els so eloquently put it, to feel the continuation of life, and to acknowledge the lives, triumphs and yes, the shames of those who came before.
 

canuck_pa

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I have my origins back to the 11th century. And I didn't inherit any of the money. Damn it! LOL!

It is interesting reading and its nice to know the family has been involved with helping others for the past 200 years or so. But it doesn't change who I am and what I believe in.
 

canuck_pa

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In the case of my family I am very proud of my ancestors not because they were extremely wealthy but because of the good work they did. I'm even more proud of my father and his brothers for what they did. My father was the most intelligent person I've known. Unfortunately he had to quit school to support his family when his father who suffered from shell shock during the first world war, had to be institutionalized, and later was one of the first patients the doctors used shock treatments on. My father never spoke of it. My aunt told me when I was in my 20's.

All of us are so interconnected that if you looked long enough you'd probably find we're all related. One of my uncles traced our ancestory and chose to followed the path that led to all the wealth. If he followed the male line further the story would probably be very different. As it is our connection to the wealth is a bastard son, or as they used to say in polite society, a son born on the wrong side of the blanket, and I think that's a lot more interesting.
 

B_Nick8

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I'm only typing in because I want to come back to this and I'm too tired too contribute the way I want to now and I want lpsg to remind me. I'm so whitebread its disgusting, but I totaly get into my ancestors and I want to talk about them and will...later. Take a pass for the mo, ok?
 

SpoiledPrincess

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We should, of course, all know our parents and grandparents but I fail to see that someone who happened to be one of my ancestors 500 years ago has much bearing on my life, we can't alter the past, we should concentrate on what we are now not waste time on the past that could be spent more valuably on the present and future.
 

jason_els

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We should, of course, all know our parents and grandparents but I fail to see that someone who happened to be one of my ancestors 500 years ago has much bearing on my life, we can't alter the past, we should concentrate on what we are now not waste time on the past that could be spent more valuably on the present and future.

Now I don't wonder if this isn't a more common attitude in the old world. You have ethnicities (even English:biggrin1:), tribes, cultural connections that are just there.

We don't.

Genealogy is a peculiar American occupation. We even have a native religion that spends millions researching ancestors so they can be saved in the afterlife. Rites and histories, myths and customs, certainly religions, all bind us together. They're what make a people a culture. America really doesn't have any one overriding culture that's inclusive to everyone. We have New Year's and the July 4. Short of these there isn't anything else. We are united as a people by our choice to be Americans and make of the experience what we wish.

A constitution and a flag doesn't make for tribal bonding. With so many disparate cultural traditions with none that answers to our spiritual need to bond with each other, people look back to their own families to find some kind of identity they don't necessarily find as Americans. We can look to religion, race, or other cultural institutions but known answers so personally as history. We're generally not surrounded by it either. America is made of new things, our largest structures are commercial, not religious. There is no comfort of continuity to be found among our environs as there is in Europe. There is no sense that we have always been here and always will be. We withstand cultural changes, one after the other, because there is no monolithic culture to topple. We absorb. Europeans don't do this so well. The recent influx of easterners into Europe isn't working so terribly well and may threaten the integrity of the EU. Europeans usually never moved much. Germans stayed in Germany, Finns stayed in Finland, usually even in the same town their families had lived in forever.

For us, genealogy is a way to connect to a cultural and ethnic anchor. When you go down the line and find where someone got on a boat there's a moment of, "Aha! I'm part Chinese! I'm part Greek!" because we imagine that once we've found the old world connection we've found where we are truly from. Naturally history doesn't always work that way. I had relatives from Bohemia who weren't Bohemians at all but Norwegian mercenaries! Still though, it's comforting to us to find an ethnicity that can help identify us in a nation full of different cultures. So if I find I'm French of Scottish or Dutch I'll learn about those places, maybe visit a restaurant that serves their food (haggis is awful), read their histories; something to connect me with an ethnicity to fulfill a need I feel to experience that. It doesn't mean I'm less of an American, I never hyphenate myself, it just means I'm not only American in heritage if I choose to accept that.

America would be infinitely more dull if we didn't honor our ethnic and cultural heritages. We'd have no St. Patrick's day, no Halloween, no Feast of San Gennero, no Cinqo de Mayo, no Little Italys, no Chinatowns. What would New Orleans be like without its French flavor? All these people came with their culture and kept it alive over the generations to contribute something unique and special to the American character.
 

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I think there's something in what you say Jason, in America everything architectural is fairly new, most of the people there are aware that at some point they must have come from somewhere else.
 

Principessa

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"I am, in fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
ROTFLMAO:biggrin1: You are so bad. :tongue:


You didn't grow up not knowing your origins, you grew up being lied to and that produces many more issues than simply not knowing.
Exactly!


It honestly wouldn't suprise me if I had been adopted. Aren't you a twin? Not many people would adopt twins. I'm sure my parents love us but the always showed so little interest. Their own lives were more important than ours.
Hmm, quit a common occurrence over here in aggressive Type A people of both sexes. Are you sure it's not just that stiff British upper lip thing?:redface:


That's a bit different to my experience. Is there a name for this? I thought it was identity crisis but it seemed too broad a term on wikipedia. If you really want to know you will have to go to a psychologist or therapist for diagnosis.
I've heard it called 'narrative wreckage' before but I think that was one person's opinion and I think it related to being adopted again. Wow, never heard of that one before, sounds painful. I was brought up being told my father was dead, that he hanged himself. This was the 'truth' until I was 15 when I was told (not by my mother) who my real (supposedly) father is. Then I suppose my 'identity' if I ever had one was rewritten. And now I'm kind of in a limbo in many ways. Have you met your biological father? Is he alive? You need to contact him.
Are there aunts or uncles who were around back then that would tell you what they recall of the truth? Some episodes of 'crisis' are when I was told to go hang myself like my dad, that I was ugly as sin and should go do that. lovely . . . NOT! People should be shot for the things they say to children. And when I see my (supposed; living) dad and/or his brothers I feel very awkward and nervous. That's no surprise Funnily enough, I feel small around them... So you have met your real dad and his family . . . Does he know you are his son? Or does he think your just some nice kid from around the way.

Anyway I really "dislike" my mother and quite a lot of my family, although that's only recently because they are on my case all the time. I don't think they know how this or this and a combination of things affect me...Nor would they understand most likely. Have you been able to pin your mom down on why she lied? :confused: With regards to relationships, I actually trust too much and involve myself too much too quickly (with girls) which may be from a need to be mothered? Sounds like an overall yearning to be loved; but I'm an art historian not a therapist. :redface: I just wanted to know if anyone had been through anything similar, if there is a specific name for this that I could research and what any assistance might involve. Thanks.[/quote] Check the ICD-9 or ICD-10 under personality disorders I don't think you have one but if you did that would tell you.

Personality disorders are often caused by external or environmental things and are often treatable.
 

earllogjam

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You've just repeated one of the largest American fallacies. People can't reinvent themselves anymore than they can leave the past behind.

Immigrants to America may well have escaped some problems but most learned that new and larger problems awaited them. A few did become obscenely wealthy but many were mired in an even greater poverty than they experienced in the old world. In many ways these new Americans became more oppressive, more racist, more class conscious than the societies they left behind.

In my extended family tree, it's mostly those who did stay behind that ended up going the furthest. Running away is never a means of solving problems.

This escapist legacy has led to the disposable society that is America.

Your reality is different from mine. I don't think that the ability to reinvent yourself is an American fallacy. Here is what I know of immigrants reinventing themselves and coming to a better place from where they left, here and now.

My first hand experience with people and families I personally know who have come to this country counters your belief that people can't start anew and purposely leave their past behind. Some people don't have the luxury of keeping a hold of their past. They may hold on to parts of their heritage like foods and celebrations but they have reinvented themselves and have become staunchly American leaving their familar world behind because they had no choice.

1. My neighbors growing up were Italian immigrants from Sicily. They forced their children to speak English and be as American as possible in order to fit into society. After just one generation their children no longer speak Italian nor have they ever returned to Italy. They are part of a larger Italian American community here with little or no ties to the old world. If they had stayed in WWII ravaged Sicily they would have starved to death. In fact their village no longer exists.

2. One of my best friends is Cuban. His family escaped Castro's revolution where all their land and businesses were confiscated and his father imprisoned. His father had a choice of leaving the country or being executed for treason. The entire family was able to escape to Miami and later to California where his father trained fixing jet airplanes and eventually became a proud American. They have absolutely no desire to go back to Cuba nor do they have any ties with that country anymore.

3. One of my college roommates was from North Dakota and his grandparents were ethnic Germans in the Ukraine. They had emigrated before Stalin's terror in the Soviet Union. If they had stayed in the Ukraine under their resistance to communalize farms they would have either starved to death or put to death by Stalin. Most all of their relatives who stayed in the Ukraine perished.

4. I went to high school with two Vietnamese friends who left in the final days of Saigon. They are both quite successful engineers in Silicon Valley now. Within one generation they went from abject poverty in Vietnam to becoming productive upper middle class citizens. They both married white ladies and have multiethnic children. They are for the most part completely Americanized and no longer speak Vietnamese.

5. A carpenter I've worked with is Bosnian. He has come here as a refugee, learned carpentry at a community college and started doing odd jobs here and there while on welfare. He and his wife after being in this country for 6 years have bought a house, owns a contracting business employing other Bosinans and Romanians and doing quite well in the building boom these last few years. They have a child now who is bilingual and seems like any other American kid. Their village in the former Yugoslavia was destroyed. Do you think they ever look back?

These immigrant experiences are not rare, in fact they are the norm from my experience, people reinventing themselves as Americans. Perhaps where I live here where multiculturalism is the norm and people can easily see through bigots their experience may have been easier. They do not see themselves as foreigners or refugees but rather as Americans first and foremost. They are eternally grateful to be living here and grateful of having the chance to "reinvent" themselves.

I don't find any of them particularly racist, oppresive or class conscious. They are only class conscious in the fact that they strove to become self sufficent and don't want to remain in the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Most immigrants I know in America are doing better than if they had stayed in their repective countries, from Finland to Mexico. They are in no way mired in greater poverty than where they came from.

My Irish ancestors probably would be dead if they had stayed in Ireland during the Potato Famine. No amount of discrimination they met in America and racist Irish American society they became a part of can compare to starving to death. They didn't run away from their problems as much as being forced out and forced to leave their past behind.

Regarding racism... you are terribly naive to think racism in America is worse than any other place in the world. Multicultural America, although not perfect is trying to become less racist and doing something to integrate people into our society. Try being a Muslim in France, Korean in Japan or a White guy in Botswana, where there is little hope of you fitting into the larger society. No, I would say there is definitely less racism in America than a place like France, Japan or Botswana, countries where homogeneity enforces institutionalized racism and culture.

Your generalizations regarding the immigrant experience ring empty for me.
 

earllogjam

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Oh the irony Earl! :wink:
Just be glad they left France when they did (chop chop).:biggrin1:

I've never mentioned that bit of pseudo research of my sister's outside this board. If it is true it's ironic that a dyslexic "white trash" misfit can have such haughty roots. It certainly would explain my "dandy" tendencies. LOL.
 

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I've never mentioned that bit of pseudo research of my sister's outside this board. If it is true it's ironic that a dyslexic "white trash" misfit can have such haughty roots. It certainly would explain my "dandy" tendencies. LOL.

That was not a dig at your ancestors' poverty in this country. I wouldn't think, much less say that as I don't believe in eugenics. Aristocrats are no less capable of giving birth to mediocrity than are white trash. You're only white trash if you make yourself white trash and misfits, should they make it through adolescence, almost always get the last laugh. So far that only makes you dyslexic.

Actually I was pointing out the irony of your name given your distaste for your possible aristocratic heritage.

Your last remark made me think of something. The aristocracy, and particularly the French aristocracy, got away with everything because they had no boundaries. If there is a gay gene then perhaps it was able to survive because aristocrats were free to practice homosexuality while also being required to marry. Like many aristocracies, nobody cared who you had sex with so long as you were able to inseminate your wife and produce legitimate heirs from time to time.
 

jason_els

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Yet plenty of immigrants retain their heritage. Miami is filled with Cubanos who actively work to destabilize the Castro regime and plan to return to Cuba at its fall. Every Italian I know can tell you when his or her family came over and where they are from in Italy. There are social clubs and even self-created ghettos for just about every major recent immigrant population in New York and New Jersey. We have Thai dance schools, capoeira dojos, Russian Orthodox churches, oriental markets, gamelan concerts: the list is endless. They bring their religion, their festivals, their food (thank you GOD!!), their music, and their language with them.

If every immigrant population homogenized then we'd all be living in Levittowns and eating Wonder Bread. How dull we'd be!