How can any of us judge or qualify the damage passed down over generations who perpetuate trauma on successive generations? It's impossible. Just no way to evaluate that, so it's folly to think that we can. A subjective experience happens regardless of cultural knowledge or a historical context. If my mother beats me, and 8 generations of her people beat their kids, I don't need a history lesson to frame it as destructive or traumatic. Cultural references aside, it still hurts. Research into epigenetics is also demonstrating how trauma affects us on the cellular level, carried into the next generation. Why would that only carry forward a few decades? Nah, we can't possibly evaluate how far forward trauma and PTSD will ripple.
This article reminds me of the heavily used principal guiding Canadian policy makers "Substantive Equality". At it's core it is the idea that any discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ... can be justified so long as it is seen as righting some real or imaginary wrong from in the past. This concept is in the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms where one paragraph says you can't and the next describes the exceptions where you can discriminate.
We can never discount the cascading effects of generational trauma on future descendants. Why would we think the negative effects would end at some arbitrary point? Imagine how anger, shame, grief, sadness, physical and psychic pain of all kinds, etc. in a parent would effect immediate offspring, who would then visit the effects of mistreatment, stress, etc. to their own children? Why wouldn't they, without extensive therapeutic interventions? Think about the children of survivors of residential schools, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, internment camps, physical and emotional abuses, and on and on for centuries back. Epigenetic connection or not, the ongoing effects are legion and can't be underestimated.
As soon as I saw your headline, I was hoping you’d mention Coleman Hughes, and you did not disappoint! I was pleasantly surprised to hear him interviewed extensively on NPR about his new book yesterday.
How can any of us judge or qualify the damage passed down over generations who perpetuate trauma on successive generations? It's impossible. Just no way to evaluate that, so it's folly to think that we can. A subjective experience happens regardless of cultural knowledge or a historical context. If my mother beats me, and 8 generations of her people beat their kids, I don't need a history lesson to frame it as destructive or traumatic. Cultural references aside, it still hurts. Research into epigenetics is also demonstrating how trauma affects us on the cellular level, carried into the next generation. Why would that only carry forward a few decades? Nah, we can't possibly evaluate how far forward trauma and PTSD will ripple.
This article reminds me of the heavily used principal guiding Canadian policy makers "Substantive Equality". At it's core it is the idea that any discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ... can be justified so long as it is seen as righting some real or imaginary wrong from in the past. This concept is in the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms where one paragraph says you can't and the next describes the exceptions where you can discriminate.
https://sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1583698429175/1583698455266
Essentially this is equality of outcome over opportunity and social justice over merit.
We can never discount the cascading effects of generational trauma on future descendants. Why would we think the negative effects would end at some arbitrary point? Imagine how anger, shame, grief, sadness, physical and psychic pain of all kinds, etc. in a parent would effect immediate offspring, who would then visit the effects of mistreatment, stress, etc. to their own children? Why wouldn't they, without extensive therapeutic interventions? Think about the children of survivors of residential schools, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, internment camps, physical and emotional abuses, and on and on for centuries back. Epigenetic connection or not, the ongoing effects are legion and can't be underestimated.
As soon as I saw your headline, I was hoping you’d mention Coleman Hughes, and you did not disappoint! I was pleasantly surprised to hear him interviewed extensively on NPR about his new book yesterday.