My thoughts on Heritage

While I'm not one of the extremists that Lowenthal warns about in The Heritage Crusade, I've always had an anti-Heritage stance as a student of History. My definition of a tradition is "Using previous actions as an excuse to continue doing something in a way that would otherwise not be the best." It's a little harsh, but what I'm trying to say is that I don't value highly the Heritage we have received if it only leads to the continuation of injustice.
My cultural heritage is rather irrelevant to me. What have I gotten from my Norwegian forbears? Blonde hair, a reddish beard, and perhaps a taste for fish and sturdy sea-legs. Am I more inclined to mine coal or complain about British rule because of my Welsh blood? Is my German heritage any use to me except for off-color jokes from my Jewish friends? This sort of cultural heritage is irrelevant to me. I'm an American, raised in the upper-middle class of a town in Michigan, and THAT is the cultural heritage which made me who I am. I agree with Lowenthal that much of who I am is in imitation of or contradiction to my parents, and my grandparents only in the ways that they influenced my parents. While I'm not one of the extremists that Lowenthal warns about in The Heritage Crusade, I've always had an anti-Heritage stance as a student of History. My definition of a tradition is "Using previous actions as an excuse to continue doing something in a way that would otherwise not be the best." It's a little harsh, but what I'm trying to say is that I don't value highly the Heritage we have received if it only leads to the continuation of injustice.
My cultural heritage is rather irrelevant to me. What have I gotten from my Norwegian forbears? Blonde hair, a reddish beard, and perhaps a taste for fish and sturdy sea-legs. Am I more inclined to mine coal or complain about British rule because of my Welsh blood? Is my German heritage any use to me except for off-color jokes from my Jewish friends? This sort of cultural heritage is irrelevant to me. I'm an American, raised in the upper-middle class of a town in Michigan, and THAT is the cultural heritage which made me who I am. I agree with Lowenthal that much of who I am is in imitation of or contradiction to my parents, and my grandparents only in the ways that they influenced my parents.
Reading about inheritance reminded me of running jokes in my family concerning estates and wills. One is that I will inherit my Maternal Grandmother's huge collection of Hippopotamus items. There are thousands of them, and it seems that the reason they are going to me is that I was the last one to express my interest in NOT inheriting them. I don't have a passion for large marine animals of Africa, what use is this heritage to me? Another running joke is that I won't receive my share of my paternal grandparent's considerable wealth if I don't produce a son named Edward. (I'm the third Edward in my family, but I'm not Edward III because we have different middle names. Thank goodness.) These two examples illustrate how much I identified with the negative impacts of personal heritage as discussed by Lowenthal.
Heritage in general has always made me uncomfortable. Be it the heritage of slavery and inequality in this country, the heritage of American meddlings in the affairs of other states, the creation myths of a common man's revolution against the British - these things all result in aspects of our society which I don't like. I'm no slave to heritage: I think the best solution to many of the political problems of today isn't an amendment or two, but a Constitutional Convention. We should not be so eager to allow the continuation of ineffective, inefficient or outdated systems simply because we're proud of our Heritage of self-government. (Maybe I am an extremist.)
I might be rambling a bit here, but my point is that maybe people shouldn't spend so much time reveling in their glorious past, but to use these events to logically inform their actions today while not feeling obliged to follow in the footsteps of their forebears.