My most nihilistic thoughts...

[HopefulButPrepared]

You have 2 grandparents / 4 great grand parents / 8 great great grandparents / 16 great great great / 32 g g g g / 64 / 128 / 256 / 512 / 1,024 / 2,048 / 4,096 / 8,192 / 16,348 / 32,768 / 65,536 / 131,072 / 262,144 / 524,288 / 1,048,576 - that's 20 generations to get to over a million ancestors.

Your ability to love these people is severely limited - you love you grandparents because there are only 4 and they both spend a lot of time with you when you're young, and they're generally not involved in the disciplinary process, and they just bring you sweets and little toys and take you out in the summer holidays when school is off, and they visit on Christmas day and birthdays and bring you presents. It would be much harder to maintain the relationships between 8 great grand parents, let alone 16 great great grandparents.

And it works the same way in the other direction - you love you kids, you love your grand children, but as genetic strangers are introduced to your family, and you end up 10 generations down the road, with hundreds or thousands of grandchildren, brought into the world by people who are basically strangers in the street, with insignificant genetic strangers, some man your great great great grand child met at the warehouse she works and started banging, accidentally got pregnant, then got married, to Steve, who you can't even remember his surname, it's all going to become just emotionally connected to you as strangers in the supermarket, because they ARE the same as strangers in the super market

In a small town like mine, if you chat with some stranger in the supermarket for long enough, you can find a relative connection somewhere, at least between marriage. My local cemetery is 300 years old, and the burials in my local main church are 800 years old, and I've traced some of my family back 500 years ago still living in this town, so I assume there are a lot of people in these burial sites who are related to me.

But do I feel love for them in the same way I feel love for my Mother or Brother? No, of course not. They're strangers to me.

The love you feel for your family weakens as you get to great great great grandparents, or great great great grand daughter / son.

And are these people more important that the people born in 2000 BC or 4000 AD? Of course not, unless you're an insane narcissist who believes shit like that.

The only reason you love your children and your grandchildren is because they're immediately related to you, and there are a smallish number of them - same with grandparents. Your great great great great anything, and their offspring other than you, are just strangers in the street and are too numerous to get to know, or give a fuck about. It might be fun reading their names on a dusty file from the council records, but you have no idea if you'd even like then, let alone love them. And there is too many of them to care about.

They're as related to you as the strangers who clog up the supermarket when you're in a hurry, or the annoying dickheads who tailgate you in traffic, or the rude healthcare admin staff who the make the whole being-ill experience a lot more stressful than it has to be - these are the great great great great grandchildren of your great great great great grandparents - your great great great great cousins - and you can't stand them!

Family is just an illusion. Loving your particular children over others is just an illusion. You just happen to have been born now, with these particular people. On the plus side it makes never seeing them again seem not so tragic.

 

[niki wonoto]

Always love reading deep post like this on SS.

 

[AshersGirl]

Pondering, I suppose. My immediate family members whom I did love, not because they were family members, but because we connected intellectually, emotionally and with significant things in common, have passed.

Those that remain of my family, with only one exception, I say I "love" because it's expected. I suppose I do in a way but not in a way that would cause me to grieve their passing in the way I do those who I had genuine strong connection to. We have nothing in common bar an accident of birth and honestly if they do occasionally contact me and end with the casual "love you" comment, I often think - you don't, you don't know me, how can you say you love someone when you don't have a clue who they really are?

So I struggle to say I love you back, because it feels hollow and false. I don't even like most of them.

Then again having suffered the losses of the few people I truly did love, I find myself not wanting to connect or love, because their passing was so traumatic a loss. I think it's my brains way of self preservation, though with isolation and lack of human connection comes other issues.

Thanks for the thought provoking post.

 

[Ligottian]

A few years ago I discovered an acquaintance of mine is a distant cousin. Our last common blood relative was the wife of my great, great grandfather, who fought in the American Civil War. We also had common relatives in the same military company in that war, from a county across the state from the county we both live in now.

 

[FuneralCry]

I think that this just shows how insignificant and meaningless our lives are. Eventually we will all die and be forgotten about. Things that seem important to us now, will eventually not be. The idea that life has any meaning or purpose is a delusion. This post is interesting, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Once, this random guy contacted my Grandma because he had really gotten in to researching family history and it turned out, we were related. It was so bizarre meeting him though because none of us had met him before (despite not actually living that far apart).

Obviously, there is a genetic connection and the instinct to want our own genes to survive, so there is a certain sense to feeling closer to inner circle family members. However, I think 'love' and closeness to people equally happens to the people who are around us basically and who seem to be reliable- whether they are family or not.

Trouble is, I think we more often move away these days and end up living very solitary lives (or maybe that's just me). I lost many family members early on in life and lost touch with others due to us both moving miles away from one another. The pain of all that loss was so horrible that I sometimes wonder if I'm better off staying as a hermit.