Do you have a sense of your own history?

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I read this as, "Do you have a sense of your own history?" Not ancestors, but self.

Where do I fit in the longer story, and with events that have happened during my time.

How can my actions change future history? I work at it.

I find the point of view that Native Americans were spending all their time killing each other to be a bit self serving, for it says we just did them a favor by killing them and taking their land.

Of course many history books have backed up that point, and the truth is hard to find, for once they saw one, the Cherokee developed an alphabet and published news papers. Cherokee lawyers were arguing their land rights under treaty in the Supreme Court when they were taken by force and deported down the Trail of Tears.

They were part of a group called, The Five Cilivlized Tribes. They had lived in peace with the English, Spanish, and the Americans up to 1845. Then they were murdered.

Who did it, and what happened next, is covered in Anerican History, 1845 to 1865, the ending being the all time largest bloodbath that ever graced this planet. It was White Only.

The Mandan not only had blue eyes, some of them, they spoke Welsh, and told of coming in 1300 to get away from the Normand Conquest.

The Five Cililized Tribes count their beginning from White Woman, who landed by boat at Mobile, M'Baal, Sons of the Sun God, and taught the civilized arts.

In 1865 the Great Plains had 90,000,000 buffalo, and the Souix, who along with the Ojibway, share genes with the Norwiegans. There was another center of blue eyes on the Ohio Valley, where it meets the mountains.

It was 70 years after the American government was formed that the genocide started. It did not stop with Chiief Joseph's War, 1895, but continued untill 1974 when Native Americans were finally considered legal humans. After those pesky Cherokee lawyers almost won, no Native, now called Hostiles, was allowed any rights in any court.

Some people did walk here, some over the Bering land Bridge, and some via Greenland, where crossing by land or ice was open. Many others came by boat.

So you murdered everyone you could find, barred them from court, claimed that they were not human, but the Algonquin just won back most of upstate New york, and there are now lots of demands that legal title be shown, where the land was sold, by people who had an ownership interest.

There are Reservations all over the east that were created by a formal treaty between nations with the United States, or the English, French, Dutch, Spanish, that the United States said it would uphold.

Just murdering the people that lived there does not transfer title.

Now that whites are a minority, and a shrinking one, they should not think they can ignore their history.

Like China, India, Africa, it is time to end the Colonial Era.

Funnily enough I've recently been digging up my own life history, and found it more interesting than that of my ancestors. I don't think that's particularly an Aspie thing though - lots of people start preparing to write their memoirs and stuff when they're getting older. The past often begins to feel more important to older people.

I think the main things that decide whether or not a group of humans wage war on another group are:
1. Does the target group have resources that the other group wants more of? (e.g. land, labour power, oil)
2. Can the warlike group get away with an invasion?

There's also the "first strike" philosophy - i.e. if we don't invade them while we can, they'll invade us as soon as they can, so we'd best annexe them just in case. And then there's capitalism, which is not sustainable in a finite volume and so must expand into non-capitalist nations to keep opening up new markets, though not necessarily via military invasion......I presume that's why the US gov (and others) paints itself as the great spreader of "democracy" and can't leave the rest of the world alone.

I have a strong sense of my family history. I was looking through my family tree and family album, 20 years ago, and studying where everybody came from. There were the Scottish Munros and the English Cousins. A lot of the English people were born in London, but they moved to other parts of the world. It's given me a strong sense of identity.

Yes, my granny was real into geneology.

Too many ancestors that go way back into early America. I was very close to my mom's side of the family. That's all I'll say.

I love researching my family history. I have had this passion since I was in middle school---years ago. The biggest problem I have had is that so much of what you read on the internet about family history research is false. There has always been this idea that my grandmother's family goes back to George Washington (the Ball family). True, my ancestors were of the Ball family---but recent DNA evidence has proven that our Ball family is not the one that George Washington's mother was a part of---although the two Ball familys knew each other well. And on my Dad's side, there is supposedly a British royalty link. So far, I cannot find proof of it.

Here is what fascinates me about my family research today---I think I have found the genetic link to autism in my family. I have so far found at least 8 members who I suspect had some autistic traits. I had one cousin who was committed to the infamous Athens Psychiatric Hospital in Athens, Ohio when he was a teenager (several years before autism was truly known about). As an old man, he was released and lived with his brother. His name was Bill, and I got to meet him once---before he died. He was "Rain Man" like in many respects. He had this thing for dates. He could tell you the birthdate of every member of the family complete with that day's weather conditions. He walked with his head nearly straight down, and he never moved his arms when he walked. His father (my great uncle) loved machinery. He used to whittle figures out of wood and fabricate intricate motors to make them move. Some looked like they were sawing down a tree, playing on a teeter totter, etc. There were scores of them in a shed he had built for them. This uncle moved an existing log cabin and placed it over a creek so that the water flowed underneath the cabin. That was his private space. His wife lived in the main cabin beside it. I have cousins who collect things to extreme and have few social contacts.

Sorry---I am rambling. But those of us diagnosed on the autistic spectrum should look into family research and look for autistic signs. But be careful---I contacted a living cousin who I am sure has AS, and though he acted interested in the idea of my research---he didn't seem to thrilled about finding out whether he had AS or not. For me---I love having AS.

Why, what do you disagree with?

I've long found your historical knowledge lacking, as well as your willingness to be corrected. But to name just one error you've made in this thread, Ireland was/still is to some extent a colonized land, and there's been serious conflict between Ireland and the British Empire for about six hundred years now. Your comments on the situation are astonishingly ignorant. And it wasn't so long ago that Irish people were not considered "white" by a lot of people. Determining who falls into which racial category changes over time and can be rather arbitrary. (Heck, from previous comments you've made on this subject, I get the feeling I don't "count" as white in your book, and I look plenty "white.")

Besides, so what if people of the same "races" have often engaged in warfare? I don't see your point.

As to the original topic, I am VERY interested in history--want to get a PhD in it--and am also interested in my own family's history. But I don't know much beyond three or four generations, and even a lot of that stuff is a bit confusing because family stories generally lack historical rigor. I know that several of my great-grandparents were orphaned at a young age, which partially explains the lack of older information. And I know very little about one side of my family because my grandfather died when I was young and no one ever told me much about his family. I have tried to incorporate family history interests into my historical research projects, and that's been pretty interesting for me. (For instance, I researched Sephardic Jewish immigrants to the U.S. in the early 1900s because that's part of my family history.)

I have very little knowledge of my ancestors. There are so few people in my extended family, and none of them seem to have any connection to each other. My dad traced his paternal line back to some Pennsylvania Dutch (German settlers in PA) people, and I know, through documents that he found, that some of his ancestors were indentured servants (which basically means doing grunt work for no pay until you've paid for your passage across the Atlantic.) I know that my maternal grandfather was born in Italy, and came to the U.S. as a baby, bringing no Italian culture with him. I suspect a bunch of my ancestors were aspies, given the AS characteristics of so many of us, and the fact that none of us seems to have a clue how to connect with other human beings.

As for the statement that if you have no history, you have no identity and can't assert yourself, well...I'm not in a position to prove that false.

Well, I started the thread and I'm quite happy with this kind of rambling. It's fascinating stuff, and tells me that you have a strong sense of your history and that you get a lot out of that, which answers my question pretty well. And I guess I've set the tone for rambling, with my contribution on how wars start......

Hmm......the isolated living cabin sounds ideal......nice constant noise of the water to drown out sudden distracting sounds. And probably a lot of other uses.

I have a living cousin who seems autistic to me, though he's done quite well for himself and seems very strong and stable. Though it'll be a while before I have any great faith in my ability to know who's Aspie and who isn't (nobody's ever been officially diagnosed in my family, or even suspected they may be autistic, apart from me a few months ago).

I'm not terribly interested in my family history beyond that of family members who have been alive during my lifetime.

I'm very interested in history, but that of my family is not particularly more interesting than other history. I don't feel any particular connection to "my past" (really my family's past, not mine), a place doesn't feel special just because my ancestors came from there or anything like that.

I have a pretty good knowledge of my ancestors, being from Quebec, i could even precisely tell you who my mom's ancestor was (it is one of the rare places on earth where both civil and cleric registers are intact, it allows for geneticians to retrace most diseases transmitted geneticly back to the original person). My ancestors from my dad's side are french, from France, Paris (some of them still live there) and apparently my grandmother was from a family of nobles :p, my grandfather was a military officer at some point (commander of marine infantry i reckon) and had a part in some conflicts in Africa and Indochina (or that part of the world). He even told me that he once killed a crocodile who was attacking a black woman, heard he got a street named after him for that . He also worked with general De Gaulle i think. After all this, i reckon he went to Montreal with his family (including my dad, obviously) and was one of the first teachers in the urbanism department of the University of Montreal . Anyone wanna know more? ^^;

Nope, I just wish most of my family would go back to where they came from. I never was close to any of my family, so I never really cared to get into it. I have a narcissistic co-worker who thinks his family is the greatest family who ever lived, and all he ever talks about, it seems, it his family. I don't care to know about my own family history, so I certainly don't give a crap about his!

Yes, family pride can get very elitist and nauseating when it's overdone. Though I'm told that in some traditional cultures, it's the expected procedure to crank out a whole set of recognised "praise names" about the subject's ancestors, and that if you don't do that, you'll likely put their backs up. I can't understand how anybody could be taken in by such an obvious ploy to butter them up

Anyway, the other thing is, you have no historical pride, yet you seem to be in one piece. No nagging doubts about "rootlessness" making you feel less than whole? I must say I find little evidence of any such thing in myself - I don't see myself as the world's most confident guy, but I know I'm as strong as nails on many levels. I know I was built to survive, and it often takes me a bit of effort to stay in touch with the notion that I'm not objectively superior to anybody else - there's a boldness in me, an arrogance, that seems irrepressible, in spite of my having almost no knowledge of my ancestors before my grandparents, who seem to have been badly exploited and screwed up - I'm not saying they were weak or useless people, just that life seems to have ripped them off and in some cases psychologically damaged them. The steel industry killed one grandfather, poverty drove two grandparents to crime and jail (leaving my mother as eldest child to look after the other kids and keep the house together), and the other grandmother never really did anything but talk and look after Grandad. It's a history of being crapped on (in my view), though none of them seemed to see it like that.

he wasnt being ignorant, just not up to date on every detail, like some of the other fanatics on this site :]

he was just being a little bit too general, maybe. "stating the obvious" which may be obvious to you, but not to everyone.

people need to relax. just cus someone SAYS something about a topic, without being 110% backed up, doesnt mean hes being some sort of traitor to the subject at hand.
everyone learns, and everyone learns over time. nobody can know everything at the beginning.

I agree. I'm happy with people going a little off topic as long as it's friendly, and I'm happy for the debate to get a bit heated if it's on topic (thorny issues are like that), but doing both at the same time is spoiling it for genuine contributors and readers. It would be better manners to start a new thread about the subject of any dispute, and post a link to it here. Unfortunately some of the off-topic comments have begun to look like personal attacks, which hardly ever get resolved, and don't really have a place on WP.

Perhaps we should have an "abuse" thread where contributors have the permission to really vent their anger - that way, everybody knows what they're getting into and it's easier to avoid if you find such behaviour upsetting. It can feel very frustrating to have to bottle strong negative feelings, but venting them indiscriminately hardly ever has the desired effect, unless you're an absolute monarch. It's too easy to "touch a nerve" and then people just counter-attack and nobody wins.

I understand that it's not easy for everybody to stay on topic, because it requires the ability to keep flipping from the fine details to the "big picture" and back, which is a thing Aspies often have difficulty with. The other thing is that it's hard for many of us to recognise our emotions, so we can easily fire off a judgemental insult in anger before realising that the emotion has got the better of us.