Mystery in History
We Are All Peasants
And we should start acting like it
Like angry hobbits when the shire has been violated.
It is in our DNA.
What makes me who I am?
How many of my thoughts and decisions are my own and how many are based on my background?
How far back should I go when considering my familial influences?
Does it make sense to go back to when all of my ancestors were medieval peasants?
Maybe. If it helps me understand our current situation and how to fix it.
I’d like to say that I am my own person and every decision I made to get me here was entirely my own. But I also know that the person I am today was greatly influenced by my early experiences in my family. So, to a great extent, who I am today was determined by factors beyond my control. An accident of birth: the country, state, time period, religion, race, assigned gender, and family I was born into.
This is a big part of why I am so interested in genealogy. I want to find out what made me into me. Don’t you?
If we think about what a great influence parents have on children, we can say with certainty that they were big factors in shaping me. But not so fast. They were…
