tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1573015459789360915.post7838058993250708880..comments2024-01-02T23:22:21.430-05:00Comments on The Guild Review: Can You Choose Heritage?Aaron Lindermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15992073027586818751noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1573015459789360915.post-82962529517818360002009-06-16T19:53:38.473-04:002009-06-16T19:53:38.473-04:00Ah, one other thought that comes to mind: in a cer...Ah, one other thought that comes to mind: in a certain sense, naming children is a means of claiming a heritage. You can name your boy Thomas Aquinas or George Washington or John Doe, Jr. Only the last one signifies biological heritage, but all the aforementioned make certain claims about values, rooted in historical persons.Aaron Lindermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15992073027586818751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1573015459789360915.post-36893342629808484462009-06-16T19:52:11.184-04:002009-06-16T19:52:11.184-04:00An excellent point, Steve. I think as long as we&...An excellent point, Steve. I think as long as we're careful to make distinctions, we're ok; the problem comes when we get too taken in by our own stories. Let us say that I value intellectual learning, and that there is some possibility Thomas Aquinas was a distant cousin of mine. I would tell my children that they may be related to this great doctor of the Church, as a way of encouraging their own intellectual pursuits. What is most important here - the pursuit of knowledge - is the signified, whereas the sign - the possible relationship to Thomas - is secondary. So even if the sign, in itself, turns out to be bogus, the signified could remain. I think the problem comes when the things signified are incapable of standing on their own, and depend on dubious signs. A most painful example of this would be the racial mythology of the Nazis. Their stories of a master race, with a quasi-divine mandate to conquer lesser peoples, were not only false in a literal sense - in the same way that one's relation to Thomas might be - but also in a metaphorical sense; irrespective of where their ancestors came from or who they might have been, they had no just mandate for genocide.<br /><br />Some stories are true on many levels - I think here, for example, of Sacred Scripture - whereas others are true on only one. We should not throw out the lesser stories simply because they only work in a certain regard. But we should be careful not to ascribe to them an importance they cannot support.<br /><br />(For the record, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that I am related to St. Thomas, just in case anyone was wondering.)Aaron Lindermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15992073027586818751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1573015459789360915.post-78925245264227275782009-06-16T19:33:44.914-04:002009-06-16T19:33:44.914-04:00Aaron, could you clarify a point for me? In the la...Aaron, could you clarify a point for me? In the last paragraph, you say that in the "misty depths of the past," you can choose your heritage precisely because the past is so "misty," or "malleable." My question is: Do you think that's a good thing we should encourage?<br /><br />My concern is that if we encourage this type of choosing one's heritage, we could end up with more 19th-century nationalism, much of which was an attempt to choose one's heritage, and much of which devolved into silly conjectures, though it did ultimately spur some serious historical research.Stephenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10825489013036249581noreply@blogger.com