THE FAMILY NETWORK

Mr. FM 2030 had another reason for changing his birth name “to break free of the widespread practice of name conventions that he was as rooted in a collectivist mentality (whatever the heck that means), and existing only as a relic of humankind’s tribalistic past. He viewed traditional names as almost always stamping a label of collective identity-varying from gender to nationality-on the individual thereby existing as prima facie elements in the thought processes in the human cultural fabric that tended to degenerate into stereotyping, factionalism, and discrimination…. The name 2030 reflects my conviction that the years around 2030 will be a magical time. In 2030 we will be ageless and everyone will have an excellent chance of living forever.” from Wickipedia.


I’m not quite sure what to make of these ideas. My family tree on Family Tree Maker has more than 6500 entries. And no, I haven’t gone through and figured out how many are duplicates. But, Charlemagne is in there ate least forty times and he’d be there more if I’d cared to follow that branch. You get to a certain point and it’s “I know where this is going, I’ll come back later. Maybe.” And where you have Charles the moderately Great you’ll have Clovis I, one of the original “convert of else” kind of rulers. Which proves that one, you can’t choose your relatives. And two, half the people in Western Europe are my shirt tail relations. And that if you go back far enough we’re all related. Maybe that’s why we humans have such a hard time getting along with each other. We really do realize that we are one big family. And family disputes can be most destructive. Which we seem determined to keep proving for some reason known only to our ancestors.

Of all the others, you have to wonder why they chose to do what they did. Especially what drove them to come the other side of the world. I know a little about Robert Heaton. He was a Quaker and a small entry suggests that he was a small time merchant who had goods seized for some reason. Not paying tithes? Not going to church? Refusing to take off his hat? Doesn’t say. But, He haled from Yorkshire in northern England and although I got tired of making entries Heaton’s under one version of the name or the other have been in Yorkshire since the Norman Conquest. That’s a long time to be in one place. And the reasons for leaving would have to be almost overwhelming.

My family is part of a world wide web of generations going back to the first one celled critters. We’re interconnected in a way that is almost impossible to comprehend. I don’t look like I did twenty years ago. In many ways I’m not quite the same person but I’m still me. Changing my name wouldn’t change that.

Honestly, I get the impression that a lot of the folks who spend a lot of time focusing on the future not only don’t much care for the present, they don’t much care for other human beings either. Most of their projections are full of wonderful technology but not very many persons.

And that is that. This has been knocking around for a couple of weeks and now it’s out of my system. And needless to say has no resemblance to the dozen versions I wrote in my head. Sometimes the words go where they want to go, and take me along for the ride.