Obsessing over your ancestry is an unproductive pursuit because it means that you’re inherently living in the past. Worse yet, you are living in someone else’s past and not your own. Personally, I’m much more oriented towards the future. There’s a common joke in baseball circles; How many Yankees fans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None, they just sit in the dark and talk about how good the old lightbulb used to be! People who obsess over their ancestry are the epitome of that punchline. In this article, I’ll reference DNA testing, though I’m only referring to DNA testing for ethnic curiosity reasons and not for any medical screening purposes; one is a hobby and the over could quite literally save your life. So, let’s give the genealogists a chance to sharpen their pitchforks as I go over why obsessing over ancestry is not a good use of your time.
I discussed this in the nostalgia article that DNA testing companies aren’t exactly safeguarding your genetic data, and I’m being charitable by assuming no external breach by a malicious hacker. These companies have been selling genetic data to the highest bidder. While there are laws preventing genetic discrimination by insurance companies and employers, violations of this law could be difficult to prove and enforce. We need to ask ourselves if this is a price we’re willing to pay as a society for finding out that you’re 11% Lithuanian?
Unless you descended from royalty, odds are your ancestors lived a really difficult life, one with only a sliver of the technology, economic opportunities, and life expectancies that we enjoy today. Case-in-point, our grandparent’s generation routinely died of polio, a disease that’s basically unheard of today. There’s a pretty good chance that your ancestors came to the United States in order to make a better life for themselves and their families-and indirectly, their bloodlines. This was clearly a courageous act, and undoubtedly many sacrifices were made along the way in hopes of securing a better future. By living in the past and not continually striving to make a better future for the coming generations (just as they did for you), you are inherently flying in the face of their hardships and sacrifices. So, stop focusing on the past already, and start focusing on the goddamn future!
A lot of people use ancestry-research products to find out more about their long-gone relatives and to find out what they accomplished. However, the result of this is usually being pulled down a deep rabbit hole that rarely leaves the hobbyist any better off than when they started. These countless hours could have been spent entering military service, finishing a graduate degree, starting a company, writing a book, volunteering in the community, running for office, organizing a non-profit organization for a worthy cause, or inventing something useful and filing a patent for it. These are all activities that hobbyists generally revere their ancestors for, yet they squander away their opportunity to do so today in favor of gawking at the past. Sure, we can pay homage to the past, but living there is unhealthy.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you find out every fun fact there is to learn about your entire deceased family tree; how does that materially improve your life? With the exception of medical files, the information would be of limited use in your day-to-day life. How often does the fact that you’re 43% Irish and 4% Korean come up in daily conversation, unless you are shoe-horning the topic at every opportunity (if that’s the case, stop being so insufferable already). Would you act differently or change your worldview based off of these findings? Odds are you won’t, because humans are pretty stubborn and don’t like changing their views or behaviors.
Now time for some hard truth; your ancestors more than likely held views that would be repugnant today. After all, humans are a product of their surroundings, and America is a radically different place today than what we were in the 1960’s, and the 60’s were a radically different time than the turn of the century. This is a point that many of these ancestral hobbyists miss, as they tend to look at the past with rose-colored glasses. It’s always the times that were bad and never suspiciously those we have a vested interested in viewing favorably. Our ancestors were flawed human beings, just as we are now. We need to accept the fact that future generations will look back at us being socially backwards and stunted.
You are certainly free to live in the past, but don’t expect me to come visit you anytime soon…
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