Why We Are Morally Obliged To Our Ancestors
Here’s a story that I have heard a few times in my family. My great grandmother once travelled in a bullock cart. Her 14 children were with her. It was raining heavily. They were moving to another village.
The roads weren’t pucca and then due to rains, most of their route was water-logged. And then they had to pass a small stream. As you can guess the stream over-flowed with good pace. Before they could decide whether to cross the stream, the land beneath shook and the cart broke down.
After a short struggle, the stream carried away the cart and the bullocks pulling along with it. My great grandmother saw some of her children being consumed by the cart. Somehow she managed to save herself and her two children. She saw rest of the 12 being taken away. Never to see them again.
In a matter of hours, out of 14, she had only 2 children alive. One of them was my grandmother. My father’s mother unlike her 12 siblings survived. My great grandmother went on to live until the age of 93.
Phew. Thanks to my great grandmother’s survival instincts, she saved herself and ensured the survival of my grandmother who later had 9 children.
Let’s see this from an evolutionary point of view. I would have never existed had my grandmother been one among the 12 siblings. Had she not survived her genes would have died and an entire line of 18–20 members wiped out of a lineage.
That’s just the story I know. Imagine the decisions taken by my ancestors- be it by deceit, jealously, anger, happiness or pure laziness- that involved them going somewhere, or running away from something. They survived to pass on their genes.
In 2014, I read a book that shook what I knew- Sapiens. That book did make set me on the path of atheism. I began acting like the guy-who-knows-all-that’s-bullshit. Any rituals or beliefs my mum or anybody in the family kept telling me about, I dismissed them. Onto their faces. They branded me as a rude dude. That’s true. I was.
I began hating religions, hating caste, class, status. Madly believed in John Lenon’s ‘Imagine’ and a boundaryless world. I wanted to be more scientific in thinking, wanting to point to people there’s no GOD. Thus your foundation itself is imaginary and hence the rituals, beliefs are false and fake.
Though I managed not to make any enemies. I definitely branded myself as a knowledgeable rebel. And then something happened. I became fascinated with ideas- creative solutions & how humans behave. The rabbit hole brought me to evolutionary psychology. My interests change like seasons. But the interest in evolution stayed on. I read Rory Sutherland’s writing, Nassim Taleb’s, Gad Saad, Robert T Kendrick and Devdutt Patnaik’s.
Not just reading but also observing. Consider this. Many of us know there’s a celebration when someone crosses 60. These celebrations are with all Vedic rituals. And my aunt once told me that usually our great-great granddads or mums died before they hit 60. Hence crossing 60 was a significant achievement. So a deserved celebration.
Today it’s common to live past 60. But from a survival point of view, imagine one who reached 60 has to be extremely lucky in avoiding infections, cancer, or major health misgivings or falling off a cliff or surviving in spite of losing a war or being pulled by a stream while travelling on a bullock cart.
So many rituals celebrate life, milestones & relationships. These are important from an evolution pov. How?
- Signalling Beings: We signal everything that encourages survival, fitness & pro-social behaviour. Immediate family as a carrier of genes, extended family who still carry your genes via your siblings; contributing for the survival of the tribe so that you are taken care of when can no longer hunt. Rituals signal both pro-social behaviour & survival.
- Generational Knowledge Asset: When the rituals are passed on from one generation to another, they come with a culture code that has helped them & their kids survive. Take food for example. The best diet is not the one suggested by your dietician, it’s the one that your grandmother & her grandmother made. She knows what’s your body better at digesting & might be able to explain the existence of some Chesterton's Fence you have been scratching your head of.
- Moral yet Practical Obligation: How should I thank my great grandmother & my grandmother for being lucky to escape being flown? They both are dead. But hey, we do have rituals. The Shraadha offered every year as suggested by our ancestors is one way to offer. Another way is to simply carry on the rituals she did when she was alive. Because it was her mother & mother-in-law who transferred the working knowledge of rituals. A chain of rituals & beliefs that may have directly possible for our existence. So the sanest thing I can do is continue the rituals specific to my family. Only way I can convey my gratitude. In the movie inception, Matthew McConaughey says Love transcends time and space. To be more objective, it’s our ancestors rituals that transcends time and space.
- Rituals are constraints that enforce a break in our lives. Remember fasting, going out, visiting a family temple, temporary celibacy? Things look different post those rituals.
Anyway, the short story is- from a transactional & emotional aspect, just do, as much as you can of what your ancestors used to do.
