We need this for the Romephiles who definitely don't think they would have been slaves during the Roman Empire.

In the same vein, a racist meme shared around the internet is that supposedly some black people, while remembering their shattered ancestry, say "We were kings" [in Africa]. But a lot of white people will genuinely believe they were kings or at least related to kings.

And these erroneous class beliefs are very very common.

It even goes so far as to be used to widely support racism in the "my people" argument. Sir, sit down, statistically you were a illiterate or barely-literate peasant like the rest of us!

This is what happens when you use history as a political tool. This is how the powers that be erase class consciousness from peoples brains. They keep showing us a flawed history that almost always sides with the rulers and we adopt it. They make us forget what we are and where we come from so we side with the oppressors.

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A_D_E_P_T 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's not how population genetics work.

Almost every European-descended person has ancestry from Kings and peasants alike. Even the very recent Oliver Cromwell has way more than 20k living descendants in the UK. If you have any substantial English ancestry, there is a Plantagenet somewhere in your family tree to a mathematical certainty.

On the continent, and in other aristocratic societies like Dynastic-era China, things are much the same. If Qin Shihuang's progeny weren't all put to the sword, just about every Han Chinese person is descended from Qin Shihuang.

Read about the "identical ancestors point". Past that point, every individual alive is either: (1) ancestor of everyone alive today, or (2) ancestor of no one alive today.

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Atlas667 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm definitely aware of this.

This is a very very far stretch from saying your family was royalty. Though i do guess you are technically correct. Forgive me, your highness. lol

Let me add that you've delineated a technicality with no real consequence to my argument. If anything supporting my argument by suggesting that makes anyone proper royalty.

	▲	antonvs 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If anything supporting my argument by suggesting that makes anyone proper royalty. This could potentially be a good argument for more democratic systems. My grandmother was very proud of the fact that we were descendants of King James (one of them, I couldn't tell you which one, probably the one that abdicated!) What she didn't understand is that something similar was true of almost everyone she knew.

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Spooky23 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everyone is the star of their personal movie. They shine it up on their own.

A good friend of mine had an awakening when he realized that his civil war ancestor suffered and sacrificed so that rich men could own other humans, and use those people to suppress his wages.

Reality is people are people and those before us had the same struggles we have about different things. We’re no smarter, but have access to the worlds information.

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PeterHolzwarth 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What?!

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Atlas667 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Many people romanticize their past so much that they side with historical oppressors. Oppressors who most likely subjugated most of their ancestors.

This is not a coincidence, but is the result of consuming media from people who engage in this same act of romanticizing their history, or this media comes from people who were themselves actually related to these oppressors.

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PeterHolzwarth 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Right.

I'm gonna stick with "What?!"

	▲	Atlas667 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Peoples idea of their own history are influenced by the media (print, film, tv, etc). The owners of said media often prefer to fund historical content from the perspective of rulers, as this reflects their class character and aspirations. Meaning they have an infatuation with royalty because they do not think of themselves as lowly. The people then adopt similar mechanisms of reflection to how they view their ancestors in the past. I say this mechanism of reflection is a political tool designed to entice average people to think of themselves as above average in the past. And thus eliminate any consciousness of historical class continuation. If you say "what?!" again, I'm just gonna have to assume you disagree but are too afraid to do so out loud.