Let me tell you a true story of intergenerational trauma about a boy whose parents fled Germany after WW2. A thread below: https://twitter.com/Philosophi_Cat/status/1278506085133938688

This a true story about someone who is very close to me. His parents grew up in Nazi Germany. They were coming of age during the golden years of the Reich when most Germans probably felt like the future held nothing but promise for them, planning happy lives.

Then the war came. His father signed up to work on submarines as a diesel mechanic, after having lost his entire family in the Allied fire-bombings. He was only 18 and had already lost his father in WW1.

He traumatised his whole life by one event in particular. A ship he was on was attacked and his best friend washed overboard. He pulled his friend back on deck only to find that he only had the top half. His friend died in his arms.

His mother grew up the daughter of a mayor and her father was nearly executed by Allied soldiers, saved only for the intervention of a French POW who had been working on their farm and vouched for his life.

After the war, the Allies emptied all the jails and criminals were roaming all over. Everyone was starving. Her family's home was robbed multiple times. They took everything. Destroyed even family photos.

In one such incident, she and her sisters tried to flee the house and ran through the fields where she was caught by one of these scum and raped.

Her brother was believed killed on the Russian front. Years later, he showed up, nothing but skin and bones, near death, having walked home to Bavaria from Siberia. She said she thought he was another criminal come to rob them because she didn't even recognise him.

My friend's parents married and emigrated to another country with a newborn baby (his older brother) and had to sleep on park benches when they arrived, as they had nowhere else to go.

They eventually built their house, found work, and raised three children, my friend being the youngest. It could have been a happy life for the children, untroubled by the horrors of the war and its aftermath.

But the parents filled their children's heads with stories about their victimisation, reinforced in them that they were German, first and foremost, and never allowed them to integrate into their new country.

Although my friend was born over 20 years after the war in another country, his entire identity is wrapped up in his parents' trauma. I'm sure reading just that abridged version of the story, you can see that the trauma is legitimate. But it was not HIS trauma.

He was raised to take on his parents' trauma and speaks of it as if it actually happened to him. He is genuinely pained and distressed by it. It became his entire identity, filled with bitterness and rage over what was done to the Germans.

He suffers greatly from the trauma that he inherited from his parents. It is real suffering. But it is also suffering that is caused solely by his own mind. HE was not personally victimised (except perhaps by his parents). But he feels as though he was.

This is the problem with the whole concept of intergenerational trauma. It creates victims out of thin air. It creates suffering where there is no real need for it. The psychological damage comes from the choice people make up identify with trauma that isn't actually theirs.

I have watched my friend torture himself for years over this and I don't think he will ever overcome it, as he's been told since birth that this is his inheritance. I think he feels that he must honour his parents by keeping their suffering and their story alive.

He has far more of a claim to his trauma than blacks do about slavery. But the basics are the same. A person raised from birth on a steady diet of victimisation narratives and stories that are actually traumatic to hear, especially for children.

In my view, it's child abuse to raise a child to believe the world is out to get them. In order to develop into healthy adults, children very much need to believe the world is a safe place when they are young.

Telling black children that they are hated, oppressed, discriminated against, etc creates a self fulfilling prophecy for them. It's so cruel and sets them up for a lifetime of psychological pain and an inability to see reality objectively.

My friend honestly believes that he is discriminated against for being German. He truly believes he is hated for his heritage, in a country where he doesn't even look or sound different to anyone else. All because he was told his whole life that he was a victim.

It's so sad to see. People with that mindset never find happiness. And it really is just a mindset. But when you build your identity about your victimisation, you can't let that narrative go without feeling like you'll lose who you are in the process.

That's why I say it makes one unable to objectively assess reality. You have to warp reality to fit with your conception of yourself as a victim, to support the ego identity you've created. This is also a huge hindrance to any real spiritual growth.

While not the primary purpose of convincing blacks they are victims, it is a secondary effect that it prevents blacks from ever attaining a higher spirituality that might elevate them individually and as a race.

This also applies to anything else that attempts to trap people in unhealthy ego attachments to trauma, but that's another topic for another time.