We are the wounded

Okay, I'm pulling out the soapbox, yet again, for another discussion. this is not a new one for me, it is something I have spoken about time and time again. If you had been in lit. classes with me, you would be sick of this by now, but I think it is important for all of us to hear. I am my rant at Americans, because it is the culture I am in and the culture I know, but we are not alone in this. There are two forces at work here:
what I call "un"original sin, or the "sins of our fathers"
and
guilt.
If I were to write a Milton-esque mythical journey, Guilt would be my tragic hero. That is, I think guilt is underestimated in its scope and importance. But before I jump into guilt I must first explain my first force.

"Un"original sin.
I am not talking about the religious idea of Original Sin and the Fall, although it is important to note that we live in a postlapsarian world (that is, we are not in the Garden of Eden; we exist after the fall) and things are in no way innocent and perfect. In our current time, many years after the Fall, people made mistakes, if you will, and those mistakes have left a scar that does not diminish with the decay of flesh. This scar continues on through many generations of people and is passed, like a genetic disorder, from father to son, mother to daughter.
The "un"original sin I speak of is the sin that has commenced since the Fall of Man. It is the sin of fathers and mothers which is transcribed to sons and daughters of the flesh. Within this idea is the notion of inevitability. We know, as part and parcel of this new world, that humans will err, and to accept this is to accept humankind. However, what I don't think Adam and Eve considered as they left that garden, was that on top of their own physical pain and embarrassment, each passing generation would amplify and increase human suffering in a never-ending spiral until salvation. This is why: If Eve supposed (as she must have as an intelligent being) that after her generation her children would adapt to pain and become stronger for it, adopt the idea of foraging for food and shelter and assume it as natural, and suppose she believed that eventually the pain of their mistakes would disappear. There was one small factor that she did not consider. Entire generations do not start and end simultaneously. Children are taught and guided by their parents and society. The ideas that begin with one carry on to the next. Each passing mistake, ill deed or word, murder or betrayal becomes a part of a human, just as is his skin or bones, and just as parents pass along astigmatism or ashtma, so is pain transmuted from one generation to the next. not just pain, but predjudice, hatred, bitterness, hostility, and bias. We are never going to experience a new group of people who will wipe clean the slate of humanity's mistakes and start again, and even if we did, who is to say that the same things would not occur?
To sum that up, we all have baggage.
I have baggage as a woman in our society, knowing what has gone before and what is yet to be conquered. I have some new baggage, only as old as my parents' generation, due to my knowledge of the things they fought for. On top of this I have baggage only as old as my body, for as long as I have possessed this frame things have been done to me and by me that have left me forever changed.
Can we fix it?
This is where guilt begins. As if we weren't all damaged enough, we also have the guilt of those who came before us. We borrow and eventually take over the pain of our forbears as well as the guilt. We are all broken.
Now I didn't tell you how you could fix it. I should.
Acknowledge it. It is the only thing you can do. Take credit for it. Stop convincing yourself that because you "weren't there" it is not "your problem." I wish you all could know how hard it was for me to reach deep, deep, deep (thanks, Krysta) down into myself and acknowledge my guilt about racism in the United States. My protests were varied and sounded pretty solid: I wasn't there, my ancestors weren't involved in the slave trade, hell my ancestors were some of the persecuted. But it was a healing moment when i could acknowledge that I am still guilty. As blood runs through my veins of ancient origins, I am complicit in their crimes because I benefit from them. Can I dispute that fact? I do. I am white, therefore I benefit from the racist policies of older generations. It will not disappear with a Proclamation, laws, inclusion in public policy, or discussions of the pain that minorities felt. It is not fair to say that because you weren't there, you weren't hurt by it. Remember that humanity is old and we are all one, across years and generations. it will not be erased with a few kind words. We still benefit from the systems that were in place then, the ideas in place now, and the decisions that will be made in the future.
We are all complicit.
If you think that not being white excuses you from this, think again. We all have something in our pasts that we need to seek forgiveness for. Men, this is where you should pay attention. Women were not created in an inferior manner. Because Eve was symbolically created from the rib of a man does not make her a lesser being, she was an improvement on the first design. Just because you feel that you are kind to women and that you do not subjugate us does not mean that you are or do. You are guilty, as was your father and grandfather. You are guilty now because you benefit from the system and continue to do so. You are guilty because your sons will benefit as well. Do not make light of this situation. You need to acknowledge that you are guilty. Apologize to a woman and feel the weight lift from your chest.


You think that with new life comes new possibility, and that is a beautiful and optomistic thought that we all should have. Truly we can form new life, we still have time to push our children toward change. However, we cannot change them. With something as old as humanity you must not assume that simply by way of birth one gets to re-design all of human history. The act of being born does not clean the terrible history of the United States from our faces, let alone our older ancestors. We are an ancient race, and our ancient ideas come with us. Perhaps this is where the idea of reincarnation comes from. It is not that we are born again, it is that our souls are never new. Even from birth we are tainted and old.