
Inheriting the Trauma of Genocide - niyikiza
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inheriting-the-trauma-of-genocide-11550761430
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johnnycake12
In the former Yugoslavia we have a concept of "inat", which (among other
things, it's a complicated and multifaceted term) is kind of a genetic hatred,
passed down from generation to generation. The attempts at genocide in the
region are sure to have strengthened those hatreds in future generations, as
did all of the other regional conflicts in the past.

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baumgarn
I can trace my personal issues as a result of my parents experience to their
parents experience in WW2 (Germany). My grandfather for example as a teenager
had to clear landmines as a prisoner of war. The damage from these experiences
lasts for generations, like a ripple effect.

~~~
hutzlibu
Are you sure about that?

Family history sure does have influence, but tracing (and blaming) personal
issues to postgenerational trauma sounds like a cheap excuse. Unless you just
use it to understand where you came from and move on from there. But I doubt
focussing on historic traumas are helpful to overcome "issues".

~~~
andrei_says_
Do you speak from personal experience or are you trying to correct the
experience of others based on your mental image of how it should be?

~~~
hutzlibu
Both. I experienced too many people clinging to past unbill and using it as a
excuse to not go forward. As I said, finding out about it, can be helpful, but
not if it is focused too much. The OP reminded me of it, so I saw a pattern
and replied to it.

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fmajid
Even something less traumatic like being drafted for the Vietnam War has a
measurable impact on descendants:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/01/be...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/01/being-
drafted-during-the-vietnam-war-also-hurt-your-descendents.html)

~~~
danielvf
A previous paper by the same author said that those drafted in Vietnam earned
less throughout the rest of their careers, and proposed that the difference
was due to a loss of work experience.

[http://economics.mit.edu/files/14352](http://economics.mit.edu/files/14352)

"This paper also proposes a simple explanation for the loss of earnings to
white veterans: they earn less because their military experience is only a
partial substitute for the civilian labor market experience lost while in the
armed forces. Goodness-of-fit tests suggest that for whites, the time-series
of veteran status coefficients is consistent with this hypothesis. Experience-
earnings profiles estimated using Social Security data imply that white
veterans suffered an earnings reduction equivalent to the loss of two years
civilian labor market experience."

The more recent paper you linked to an article about, proposes that the
decline in sons earnings are due to an increase in their likelihood of joining
the military, less parental time during their formative years, and reduced
starting economic positions. The paper's author seems to see it as essentially
being the opposite of genetic.

~~~
thaumasiotes
There's another obvious theory that will explain that difference. It was easy
to dodge the draft. You could say that those who didn't ended up earning less
because failing to get out of going was a signal of incompetence.

Or, if you were aware that the problems they had in supplying raw manpower to
Vietnam led the army to emphasize drafting people who should legally have been
unable to serve based on their very low IQs, you could observe that it would
be pretty shocking if veterans as a class showed equal earning power to
society in general.

> They were, to put it bluntly, mentally deficient. Illiterate. Mostly black
> and redneck whites, hailing from the mean big city ghettos and the remote
> Appalachian valleys.

> By drafting them the Pentagon would not have to draft an equal number of
> middle class and elite college boys whose mothers could and would raise Hell
> with their representatives in Washington.

> The young men of Project 100,000 couldn't read, so training manual comic
> books were created for them. They had to be taught to tie their boots. They
> often failed in boot camp, and were recycled over and over until they
> finally reached some low standard and were declared trained and ready.

[https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article24544984.html](https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article24544984.html)

[https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Hamilton-
Gregory/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Hamilton-
Gregory/dp/1495805484/)

~~~
iguy
I believe these papers made some attempts to avoid seeing the effects of
draft-dodging. For example one of them goes only by draft numbers, without
looking at who actually fought, and finds worse outcomes among the children of
the group with bad numbers (fighters and dodgers) compared to good numbers.
But I don't know enough details to say whether some biases remain.

Indeed "McNamara's Morons" is a pretty crazy story. Turns out the army had
rules for who to recruit for a good reason.

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iguy
Un-paywalled: [https://outline.com/ZPBe47](https://outline.com/ZPBe47)

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didibus
As I can't read the full article. Do they indicate any kind of leads into an
hypothesis that the trauma is transferred through the genes themselves? Or is
this more an effect of culture and education?

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jshevek
Un-paywalled: [https://outline.com/ZPBe47](https://outline.com/ZPBe47)

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chx
What can I say? One of my grandmothers came back from Auschwitz, the other
from Lichtenwörth. Most of their generation didn't survive. And then I went to
Yad Vashem when I was 16. That was a grave mistake. Don't go to Yad Vashem at
16 especially not when you have relatives affected by the Holocaust. I haven't
seen a World War II movie since, I can't.

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jakobov
I have seen this first hand amongst my friends who are grandchildren of
holocaust survivors.

For many of them their grandparents anxiety is very visible and part of their
lives. One grandparent would always steal the free bread from restaurants,
another could not be left at home alone, another bought an Uzi and gold and
kept it hidden in the house in case the Nazi's come back... the list keeps on
going.

I grew up in Skokie which has(or had) the largest concentration of holocaust
survivors in the world. Even more than cities in Israel.

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rainworld
One must put in contrast the eagerness to push epigenetics, inheritable trauma
with the unwillingness to accept the heritability of IQ and its consequences.

~~~
tomhoward
It seems to me that each are eagerly embraced by opposing quarters.

Maybe if each side could drop their defenses and consider the other position,
we could come up with a more integrated theory and actually get somewhere.

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UI_at_80x24
And this is a fantastic argument why 'The West' owes reparations to the
descendants of the West African Slave trade. The genocide in Rwanda, the WW2
Jewish Holocaust (to name but two recent atrocities); these were over within a
handful of years. Every single second of it was worse-then-horrible and
equally shows the worst of humanity. They nonetheless ended.

The West African Slave trade lasted for HUNDREDS of years. "Chattle Slavery"
only ended in name and one needs only look at the Prison system in the United
States to see the still evident policies and procedures that continue to this
very day to continually harm the descendants of slavery. This is an ongoing
crisis, that must be resolved.

What tortured damage lingers in the DNA of these descendants? We have proof
that Rwandans, and Jews have suffered damage and harm; is it too hard to
imagine that we owe a debt and an obligation to healing these injuries?

And for healing to begin, the damage must stop.

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btilly
That slavery was horrible, nobody debates. That reparations are the best way
to address it is a different story.

Pinker's book _Better Angels of Our Nature_ documents, among other things, how
ethnic conflicts have been successfully dismantled around the world. A key
part of the successful recipe is a final round of partial justice whereupon
only the most egregious crimes get addressed, the aggressors accept the truth
of what they did, issue full apologies, and all claims are extinguished. There
is no attempt at real justice, but it does end conflict and leaves everyone
better off.

By contrast cries for justice have historically resulted in a new round of
conflict, which creates a round of retribution, and a continuation of conflict
that leaves everyone worse off.

The USA went through this effort after the Civil War. All claims to
reparations for slavery should be considered long extinguished. And as much as
you don't like it, the US descendants of slavery are massively better off than
their ancestors were, and are likewise both better off and happier than most
of their relatives in Africa.

It is clear that injustice is not done. I fully support an end to the Drug
War, a reduction of prison sentences and a similar round to end the ongoing
and current conflict over the same. Not based on long past claims to
victimhood based on the slave trade, but based on current injustice.

However we have a lot more examples today of how to successfully end ethnic
problems in countries as diverse as Northern Ireland, Timor and Liberia. There
is clearly a right way to do it, and that is what I would want us to do now.

Very notably it requires a focus on closing the books on past history, a final
round of forgiveness/redemption, followed by a better path forward. Which is
the exact opposite of the kind of justice that the reparations crowd is asking
for.

~~~
zepto
Ok, so pay reparations for the drug war?

~~~
btilly
For the damage caused to communities by the implementation of racist policies
ostensibly in support of the drug war? Absolutely!

