Finishing up this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens

And I read today a dialogue I think is apropos for former Mormons. In the dialogue one character asks another character the question that is the title of this thread.

The one being asked is a descendent of a prophetess who accurately predicts future events. By way of analogy we all having been Mormons are decedents of the first Mormons. I think this question applied to us and we answered with a resounding "NO!"

We don't want to be the descendants of dead prophets using their books of words to influence our lives. Them and their words aren't a good or even useful (actual accurate prescience) thoughts and prayers for our collective futures. We don't want to be their descendants anymore. We refuse their guidance from the grave or the Capitol of Utah. We refuse to be the living vessels of their vociferous rantings. We deny their lineage of lies and we doubt every revelation ever made in the long line of prophet procession to the present day.

I don't want to be their descendent for the rest of my life. I may carry their genes but I won't carry their memes!

Unfortunately, we don't get to choose our ancestors.

Mentally we can I believe and besides how many times do Mormons talk about first generation Mormons being "pioneers?" We can refuse to push along.

But we can choose what kind of ancestor we will be for our descendants.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> Unfortunately, we don't get
> to choose our ancestors.


Is it okay to make some up?

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Is it okay to make some up?

Mormonism already did that for you.

You will not only be a descendant for the rest of your earthly life. You will continue to be a descendant for all eternity. That's what the temples are there for.

The sealing ordinances permanently and eternally lock you into the MLM "downline" of all of your ancestors in your patriarchal line.

Your great, great granddaddy has seniority over you forever.

(This of course is somewhat in conflict with the romantic "Saturday's Warrior" notions about the highest ranking spirits being reserved to be born in the latter days. But most Mormon ideas and concepts are in conflict with other Mormon ideas and concepts. That's why it's usually best to only focus on one at a time.))

Right?

That is why Mormons have to go to "The Other Side" to escape their dead ancestors...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5IriNnEuVo

We don't get to choose our ancestors, but we don't have to be defined by them.

I am very proud of my ancestors.

They were able to endure hardships unbelieveably difficult. They were able to endure near starvation conditions. They were

They were able to get along with native tribes, who would have scared me silly, and send me running for civilization.

If they did it in the name of a religion that turned out to be one big con, then that is one of the mysteries of life. If their faith in something that had absolutely no basis in reality got them through hardships that were unrelentingly real, that is another mystery.

If they had had access to information that I have had access to, they would have abandoned that religion eventually.

But they didn't, and they carried on, and they pressured their children to keep believing the same as they did. And eventually, those descendants figured out that they couldn't keep believing, and it would be wrong to pretend that they could.

I can honor my ancestors, without believing the crazy things they believed, and acknowledging that Mormonism isn't the only con out there, or even the only con I have ever fallen for.

I could NEVER have survived in my ancestors world, but quite frankly, I don't think they could survive in mine -- too much noise, too much intrusive technology, too many con artists making use of the telephone, the internet and any other device they can get their hands on. Five calls a day from India telling me my Windows need fixing? Everyone and his brother trying to sell Social Security Supplemental Insurance when my ancestors lived into their 80s with no insurance at all.

Yes, I am proud to be a descendant of such people, and I don't hold their faith in their religion against them. They were doing the best they could with what they had, and I will try to do likewise.

loislane Wrote:
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> I am very proud of my ancestors.

I'm not.

Brigham Young was a totalitarian theocrat. Zina his umpteenth wife was a Mormon opportunist. She at least wasn't an instigator of it. I often wonder if she had been more like Emma Smith. I wouldn't exist.

In my opinion we tend to focus on our own line when other people's lineage may have had more to do with our existence than our own. I'm thinking of feudal times and feudal lords. We can attribute the deaths of billions of lines of people who never were to war and past historical insane abuses. We can't assign our own lines some sort of special significance regardless of our ancestral luminaries. After so many generations the genetic connection we have to great great great great peoples is tenuous. It becomes more a historical "nurture" lineage which may or may not have genetic significance than a "nature" one.

Good to know who else to honor for Manifest (White) Destiny!

Because I am dark Brown, Manifest (White) Destiny is the gift that keeps on giving! ...Wish I had a bigger vocabulary...

My family has a history of making changes (even drastic changes) when circumstances warrant. So far it's worked well for us. "We've always done it this way" is not a recipe for success.

I don't put my ancestors on a pedestal. The only people who completely identify with a group of ancestors either have done nothing with their lives or sacks of shit who use it to justify delusions of superiority (looking at you and your racist bunk, macaRomney).

All my ancestors did was convert to a cult and fuck for multiple generations. What about that make me special and why should I oblige their mistake in following Smith and Young?

I'm not a descendant by choice. But I left their cult by choice.

You have a chance, like many of us, to build a new family and to become someone whom your progeny remembers kindly and with respect. You have a chance to be a hero, a symbol, of a person doing what he thinks is right and letting his children and grandchildren reap the rewards.

I respect that greatly.

I don't think anyone has to take any responsibility for who their ancestors were.


I find it interesting to find out about my own ancestors, but it's never crossed my mind to feel that I am defined or affected in any way by their character or actions in the past, before I was born.

A related issue - having one's children take the father's surname, and use that as a means of carrying on the 'family name' through the generations. We gave our sons my wife's surname, because we thought it sounded better (who would want their kids to be called Oldpobot anyway?) and because it made a bit of a statement about equality - despite the fact that my wife is a bit embarrassed about one of her grandfathers, who had a job in a field now looked down upon by 'woke' society.


Anyway - I can understand why some people here would resent the choices made by their ancestors, but that is a slightly different issue.

oldpobot Wrote:
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> Anyway - I can understand why some people here
> would resent the choices made by their ancestors,
> but that is a slightly different issue.

It isn't. It is totally on topic on this thread.

I like my ancestors. Because they weren’t mormon. Unfortunately I will go down in history for introducing this “religion” to my family. My brothers descendants may well all be mormon. And of course all those ancestors have probably all been baptised now. And my non-mormon family doing all the hard work in gathering family history don’t know it.

Baptizing a line of people. No thought process would be so stupid. IT is like the movie Mulan where the dragon is talking to the ancestors. Funny in a cartoon, stupid in real life. Talk about having a haunted life.

It is impossible to be anything else from your body's perspective. Fortunately, DNA and evolution mix and mix some more so we aren't as mentally tied to our ancestors.

This is going to be slightly off-topic, but a few years ago I watched a video of my TBM convert brother (who was SP or something) giving a speech in, IIRC, Iowa City, where many "pioneers" set off for Utah, and I remember thinking "Who is he talking about? Our ancestors weren't mormon pioneers!"

Now, my family has been in America before it was the USA, and done some very interesting things, none related to Mo'ism, and I was dumbfounded that he was *adopting himself* into the "pioneers."

Mormons are adoptees into The House of Israel.

I'm descended from Adam & Eve on my mother’s side! Could be on my father's side, too, but he never had a birth certificate so ...

Seed of Cain?

Which offers more hope, Sugar Cain or Cain Mutiny?

Sugar Cain Mutiny - Keep Sweet for the elders and not when they aren't around.

What comes out of this thread and others on here is that some people are not comfortable in their own skins and have a degree of self-hate. You are who you are, regardless, but to hate yourself for your ancestors is not healthy either. Be responsible for yourself.

I believe you completely missed my point. I hate to spoil "Good Omens" but the part I'm referencing is the family of Agnes Nutter. She guides their lives through her actual prescience writing in a book. At the end of "Good Omens" her descendent receives new prophecies and the love interest of this descendent asks her the question that is the topic of this post.

No self-hate involved.

I've read (and watched) Good Omens. She destroys the book bequeathed to her and that's it. It's a cute story but there is a lot of wishful thinking in it. But yes, I do see self-hate on here. If you have Pioneer or white ancestors that doesn't mean you should continually complain about them. The Pioneers did some amazing things in among all the religious stuff. They were tough people. Likewise most white people
have never owned slaves or been directly involved in the slave trade... yet people are trying to distance themselves from their ancestry. Just accept it and move on.

Skynet Wrote:
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> If you
> have Pioneer or white ancestors that doesn't mean
> you should continually complain about them.


You missed the point of my thread. It isn't complaining but disavowing your descendance in relation to religion, prophesies, reiglious traditions and the like.

"yet people are trying to distance themselves from their ancestry. Just accept it and move on."

And it is a good thing to distance oneself from. No hate needed just disavowal.

Zina my great great great grandmother was a victim and a perpetrator of Mormonism. She did some great things and some not great things. I disavow my ancestry from the "prophetic" traditions she held dear.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2019 11:05AM by Elder Berry.

title misread as "decadent" . . .

Sugar Cane Mutiny -> disavowing Mormonism's unconditional love for sugar.