The past was not that cute

We need this for the Romephiles who definitely don't think they would have been slaves during the Roman Empire.

In the same vein, a racist meme shared around the internet is that supposedly some black people, while remembering their shattered ancestry, say "We were kings" [in Africa]. But a lot of white people will genuinely believe they were kings or at least related to kings.

And these erroneous class beliefs are very very common.

It even goes so far as to be used to widely support racism in the "my people" argument. Sir, sit down, statistically you were a illiterate or barely-literate peasant like the rest of us!

This is what happens when you use history as a political tool. This is how the powers that be erase class consciousness from peoples brains. They keep showing us a flawed history that almost always sides with the rulers and we adopt it. They make us forget what we are and where we come from so we side with the oppressors.

That's not how population genetics work.

Almost every European-descended person has ancestry from Kings and peasants alike. Even the very recent Oliver Cromwell has way more than 20k living descendants in the UK. If you have any substantial English ancestry, there is a Plantagenet somewhere in your family tree to a mathematical certainty.

On the continent, and in other aristocratic societies like Dynastic-era China, things are much the same. If Qin Shihuang's progeny weren't all put to the sword, just about every Han Chinese person is descended from Qin Shihuang.

Read about the "identical ancestors point". Past that point, every individual alive is either: (1) ancestor of everyone alive today, or (2) ancestor of no one alive today.

I'm definitely aware of this.

This is a very very far stretch from saying your family was royalty. Though i do guess you are technically correct. Forgive me, your highness. lol

Let me add that you've delineated a technicality with no real consequence to my argument. If anything supporting my argument by suggesting that makes anyone proper royalty.

> If anything supporting my argument by suggesting that makes anyone proper royalty.

This could potentially be a good argument for more democratic systems.

My grandmother was very proud of the fact that we were descendants of King James (one of them, I couldn't tell you which one, probably the one that abdicated!)

What she didn't understand is that something similar was true of almost everyone she knew.

Everyone is the star of their personal movie. They shine it up on their own.

A good friend of mine had an awakening when he realized that his civil war ancestor suffered and sacrificed so that rich men could own other humans, and use those people to suppress his wages.

Reality is people are people and those before us had the same struggles we have about different things. We’re no smarter, but have access to the worlds information.

What?!

Many people romanticize their past so much that they side with historical oppressors. Oppressors who most likely subjugated most of their ancestors.

This is not a coincidence, but is the result of consuming media from people who engage in this same act of romanticizing their history, or this media comes from people who were themselves actually related to these oppressors.

Right.

I'm gonna stick with "What?!"

Peoples idea of their own history are influenced by the media (print, film, tv, etc).

The owners of said media often prefer to fund historical content from the perspective of rulers, as this reflects their class character and aspirations. Meaning they have an infatuation with royalty because they do not think of themselves as lowly.

The people then adopt similar mechanisms of reflection to how they view their ancestors in the past.

I say this mechanism of reflection is a political tool designed to entice average people to think of themselves as above average in the past. And thus eliminate any consciousness of historical class continuation.

If you say "what?!" again, I'm just gonna have to assume you disagree but are too afraid to do so out loud.

Isn't it the other way around - people, especially when young, like to imagine themselves as someone special, so the media give them the perspective of the most special individuals they can find? Being a king, on its own, may not qualify - but the popular shows are rarely about "just" kings, it's mostly about ones who did something impressive (if evil; though I agree that last part tends to be edited out).

In fantasy literature, a hero is almost certainly either a prince or at least of royal blood; in sci-fi, he's at least a progeny of a war hero or great inventor. Even in romance slice-of-life, you'll get mysterious amnesiacs, rich CEOs children, shrewd nerds with underworld connections, etc. much more often than statistically possible - nobody wants to read about "normal people", not really (when we think we do, it's just the author writing so well that he convinced us his "normal people" are different!)

I can't rule out the possibility that this natural tendency is being exploited and manipulated in some cases, but the stories have always been about heroes, long before anyone thought of erasing anyone else's class consciousness.

I mean, It's the same as consciousness of ourselves in the present.

There are pieces of media that present the real struggles of the average worker. But not that many. Many films are instead invested in the ephemeral (and ever lasting) questions of reality, fiction(fantasy/action/drama), or inane or politically convenient biopics (if not totally altered).

You will occasionally see a nod to "struggling to pay bills" or some mundane romanticized struggle, stuff like that, but almost never a picture of what its actually like.

For the few popular films that do show it, and this is my critique of most media, they never compel the viewer to ANSWER the question of why this happens. This is because to present the real working class life is also to critique it and the conditions that create it.

The working class life reveals it's own critique. And that critique is not something that media owners like because it puts into question the whole status quo. It is INHERENTLY politically charged content.

So they avoid painting a real picture of average people. This lack of real exposure is a heavy influence on our ideas of reality. And essentially the viewers take this image and runs with it. The viewers ends up not learning HOW the world works, they start to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", and end up seeing society as a pool of ever-permanent social mobility, its just not their turn yet.

This is, essentially, the same thing they do with the past.

And I do not have anything against "special people" in media. This can be helpful, even, if done appropriately, by being sure to present kids with the REAL AND RELEVANT paths on how to attain this specialty (if it isn't real and relevant its just escapism). What I critique is the role that medias self-reflection plays in the world and in the past that is problematic.

To come back to the actual post: Who originally started to view cottage living or working class farm life as cute and WHY? Was it truly our grandmas and grandpas? Or was it people compelled and organized to sell historical-fantasy books?