Why ?

A question I hear quite often : why are you interested in your genealogy and your family history ?

Firstly, because I want to know where I come from, where my roots are, geographically, socially, familywise.

Secondly to better understand the sometimes terrible situations in which people had to live even 100 years ago.

Thirdly, to get a better feeling for local history and what it did to people.

Fourthly and sadly, to see confirmed that injustice, greed, hate and cruelty are of all times, and that there are always people who think that they are better than others and thus have more right, even to condemn others to the greatest misery, and to death.

And then you go back far enough in time to find that we all have the same ancestors - that is a matter of simple mathematics -, that there are vile people, normal and good people, and "noble" people in your ancestry.

To me this is the main insight which genealogy brings me : it is the great equaliser. Nobody is better than anybody else because of birth. Kings have servants and slaves in their ancestry. Ordinary people, like you and me, have kings in their ancestry. From rags to richess in a couple of generations, from richess to rags in a couple of generations. Nobody is excepted.

It is almost a religious discovery : we indeed all are brothers and sisters. Why don't we act like it ?