Learning to forgive our ancestors

The antidote to mass shaming and guilt by association.

Credit: Canva

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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According to the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit organization that studies population trends, the total members of our species to have ever been born amounts to an estimated 117 billion. This means that those of us currently alive represent roughly 7% of the total number of humans who have ever walked on Earth. Another way of looking at it is that, without those who came before us, we simply wouldn’t be here. It also means that we have a shared mandate to be good ancestors for those who follow in our footsteps. One of the great existential questions of our time is how to go about it.

The good news is that the topic is front and center in our global society, as we are eerily aware of the risks we face, whether it’s climate change, deadly pathogens, nuclear weapons, AI run amok, cyber attacks, work displacement, wealth inequality or something else. The Doomsday Clock is currently set at 100 seconds to midnight (it read 23:54 in 2010, and 23:50 in 1990). Ok, so much for the good news.

Now the bad news. It seems that we in the West - especially the U.S. - have been focusing more and more of our attention on who is to blame for our civilization’s shortcomings and misgivings to date, using up precious energy and resources to topple statues, rename streets, re-segregate schools, decolonize math, defund the police, deconstruct gender, cancel Shakespeare, and so on. For a little perspective, we should be asking ourselves a basic question: Do the Chinese, Japanese, Russians or Iranians seem preoccupied with exorcising their anthropological and literary demons?

I recently had the opportunity to watch an interview with North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, a young lady who miraculously survived years of extreme deprivation and horrendous abuse until finally escaping to freedom. During the interview, she explained the term “blood-tainted”, which relates to the practice of stigmatizing and shaming people whose parents, grandparents or great-grandparents have done something - such as owning land - that is antithetical to a regime ideology predicated on extreme collectivism and fanatic egalitarianism. In other words, a person is considered guilty by mere association, regardless of her actions as an individual.

In stark contrast to Yeonmi’s experience of growing up with the belief that she was guilty of her father’s alleged sins (one of which was trading goods), historical records have shown us that countless cultures and indigenous populations throughout the world and across millennia have actually done the exact opposite. African Bushmen, Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Tibetan Buddhists, just to name a few, have all relied on venerating and even worshiping their ancestors in some form or another, as an integral part of cultivating family tradition, social cohesion and spiritual wellbeing.

The types of customs and celebrations are quite diverse, and in some cases have been seamlessly incorporated into modern life. Mexico’s Day of the Dead, for instance, combines Aztec rituals with Catholic symbols, and is considered a sacred festivity in which millions of people remember and honor the deceased.

Scene from the movie “Coco” (Pixar, 2017), in which the main character, Miguel, helps his great-grandmother remember her dad, and redeem his good name and reputation among the other family members.

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The following is a passage from an ancient Nahuatl blessing that deals with forgiveness, affection, detachment and healing:

I release my grandparents and ancestors who found each other so that I, today, here, breathe life on their behalf; I release them from the guilt of the past and the wishes they did not fulfill.Aware that everything they did was the best they could do to solve each of the situations they faced, with the resources they had and from the level of consciousness they had at the time. I honor them with my life, making of it the best I can to make it happy, worthy and prosperous. I love and acknowledge each and every one of them.I contemplate myself before their eyes, and I express my gratitude and all my love so that they know that I do not hide nor owe anything more than to be faithful to myself and to my own existence. In this way I honor them.

So here is a radical idea: What if we could simply accept that our ancestors - not just our direct relatives - did the best they could with the resources and from the level of consciousness they had at their disposal? What if we could forgive them - all 110 billion of them - regardless of who is responsible for what atrocity, who committed what sin, or who offended who?

I’m not suggesting we condone the crimes and cruelties in which some of them engaged. Forgiving is not the same as exonerating. By all means, we should study our past, learn from the mistakes and the horrors, and correct for any lingering injustices in our world today. However, we must also be humble enough to acknowledge and, in many ways, be grateful for the fact that we didn’t have to walk in our ancestors’ shoes. None of them carried smartphones in their pockets, and many barely had enough to eat.

More importantly, we must resist judging someone on the assumption that their blood is ‘tainted’ as a result of someone else’s behavior, whether in the past or present. If we insist on doing so, we will end up destroying one of the core tenets of a free society, namely the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. And I wouldn’t wish this upon my worst enemy.

Eventually, all of us here will become ancestors to future generations. Perhaps a good thought experiment is to imagine how they will appraise our behavior, and whether or not we did a proper job in setting the stage for humanity to move forward, not backwards.

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NO COLLECTIVE GUILT

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Austria´s annexation by Nazi Germany, Viktor Frankl speaks passionately against the concept of "collective guilt", as he addresses the Viennese crowd in 1988. “To blame someone not personally but collectively, is something I strictly reject”, he says. It’s an incredibly compelling speech by someone who could have easily argued the exact opposite. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist and Holocaust survivor who founded the field of Logotherapy, based on the premise that the key underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning”, even in the most difficult of circumstances. His three-year experience in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp, combined with the tragic loss of his entire family during the war, affected his understanding of reality and the meaning of human life. His most popular book, Man’s Search for Meaning, chronicles his time in the camp as well as the development of Logotherapy. Without meaning, Frankl postulated, people tend to fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions.

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