I’m feeling embarrassed. This week, when some very dear friends were expressing gratitude for ancestors, I didn’t relate at all. My parents are an exception, and I keep a photo of them before me. At least twice a day I look at them, two young people, no children yet, and I am grateful for who they are.
I really don’t feel that way about the rest of my ancestors. Gratitude for them comes with great difficulty and is specific for only part of the inheritance they gave me. What they have left me is a social mess. I look around at a human-stained world replete with broken societies and humans like me forced to live in a sub-human condition.
I’m lucky. I have received an inheritance that allows me to eat, have shelter, be curious about the world from a position of safety. My ancestors have left me a world highly populated by starving people living in fear. This is not a natural inheritance but the legacy of greedy people who hoarded resources while people around them suffered. It is not just my contemporaries who hoard, but generations of humans who grabbed more than they needed and so others went without bare necessities.
My ancestors, for thousands of years, have selectively chosen their own survival at the expense of others. For me, human history for the past ten thousand years is a sad picture. It is a story of survival of the fittest at the expense of the suffering of many. I have adequate food and a home not just because my ancestors were frugal, but because many of them were cunning enough to suppress the needs of others. Humans are very smart that way.
I live in a marvelous city in a supportive neighborhood, unrivaled by few. Yet within this city are huddled thousands of impoverished people, all in “their” place. This is not something I caused, but the generations before me were clever in how they required their contemporaries to live in sub-human conditions and in fear. Less subtle were the generations before me who beat and tortured people to keep them in their separate, subservient place.
I have a nice house and garden in a nice neighborhood. It is nice because it has been socially fenced, protected from a whole group of people who are considered less suitable. Some neighborhoods are unashamed to actually build walls to keep others out and separate.
I know that I have inherited a lot from my ancestors for which I am grateful. Sadly, much of what they have made available to me was hoarded out of greed and self-indulgence. Even my intellectual inheritance has been kept for the few. As a consequence, many others have suffered. Now I am puzzled over what to do with this rich, privileged and stolen inheritance.
I am grateful that I can experience something of what it means to be truly human. I have been given safe refuge and opportunity. I have had teachers who have pointed me toward rich experiences.
But what of all those who live sub-human lives because of the advantage seized by generations of my ancestors? How do I sit beside people on the bus who are suffering while I am at peace, thanks to the efforts of our ancestors? Somehow, it seems wrong to be grateful.