What have you inherited that you didn't choose?

Author

Ray Doraisamy
February 25, 2026

From my mother's father, I got an obsession for reading, though I never met him. From my father's mother, I got my sweetnesses. I didn't want what I got from my my father's father.

I'm learning to appreciate them now.

There are things we get from ancestors that we don't always want. A lower status is an example that is more easily measured.

In Korea, there were once nobi. Slaves or indentured servants, depending on who you ask.

The odds of attaining high status were substantially lower for adult males whose great-grandfathers were nobis than for those whose great-grandfathers held high- or middle-status positions, even after controlling for the social statuses of fathers and grandfathers. Despite the abolition of the nobi system and the rapid expansion of high-status positions throughout the nineteenth century, the upward mobility of descendants of nobi great-grandfathers was considerably restricted, revealing the continuity of disadvantages over multiple generations.

The Legacy of Disadvantaged Origins: Blocked Social Mobility of Descendants of Nobi Great-Grandfathers in Korea (1765–1894)

What about Sweden, a place with decent historical data?

In a sample of around 75,000 traceable descendants, they analyze (a) up to fifth cousin correlations and (b) dynastic correlations over seven generations based on aggregations of ancestors’social class/status. With both approaches, the authors find that past generations structure life chances many generations later, even though the results align with traditional stratification research in that mobility across multiple generations is high. The results imply that today’s inequality regime may have been formed many generations back.

The Shadow of Peasant Past: Seven Generations of Inequality Persistence in Northern Sweden

This effect is small but present.

So perhaps this is why I have trouble accepting some of my inheritance.

Both grandfathers gave me an appreciationship for craftmanship. An illiterate blacksmith and a hyper-literate carpenter.

Yet my father's father conducted animal sacrifice and trucked with spirits. My mother's father fought for a side that never came to be, under the Japanese.

These were harder to accept, though not as hard as accepting brutality & harshness.

My father's father understood sacrifice. Not just for spirits, but for money and position.

And he appreciated what he took, by cunning and force.

This is hardest for me to accept, inculcated as I am with the expectation to be loved and desired.

Already, we worry about the inheritances I will give my children, that they may not want.

I think about young Hannibal, inheriting his father’s enmity for Rome. Alexander, with all the responsibilities of rule.

How to pass on my weights, without passing on the burdens?

The hard lessons, without the otherness.