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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this infatuation with ones genetic material. Given that I am blond and blue-eyed and live in Scandinavia, I'm probably just as much Vikingish as you are Jewish. Should I be proud of being a Viking?

If your objection is that the Vikings were horrible people that just pillaged stuff. Then I agree, but the ancient Israelites weren't that kind to women and slaves either. If your objection is that the culture didn't survive. Well, the good parts, Christmas, Midsummer (the traditions are pre-Christian) and binge-drinking did...

Even if ancient Israelite culture is objectively superior to Viking culture, you didn't create it, so why be proud of it? It's like being proud of being the heir of a billionaire. :p

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Hi, I'd like to chime in. I'm Avishay, I'm a secular Jew from Israel. I'd like to say it's not an infatuation with our genetic material. Far from it. (enter an obligatory nose joke here)

It's being impressed our ancestors have been holding on to a religious and cultural identity for two thousand years. Years in which they were were a minority in different countries, spoke in foreign tongues, were forced to denounce their Judaism, and sometimes were haunted without even that choice.

It's that as a modern Hebrew speaker, I can pretty easily read a piece of text as the Bible - written thousands of years ago. And that even though my ancestors were from Syria, Iraq, and Morroco - they shared the same ethos as the jews from Hungary, Germany, and Russia.

Although, being a Viking is also very cool.

It's not just genetic material. It's a combination of genetic material and culture. I don't know if you're Swedish or what, but I can tell you most Swedes I've met love their Swedish culture. Their King (though he's purely symbolic). The lagom of it all.

And you know well of the political movement in Sweden to restrict the definition of "Swedish" to those who have obvious Swedish ancestry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjand84BBKM

But when you write "it's a combination of ..." do you mean we must compare? Must I prove that a large enough percentage of Viking culture did survive to be able to call myself Vikingish? That seem arbitrary.

Yes, I know of the political movements you talk about. Yes, I think you can be grateful of being born in one of the best places on earth. Yes, you can enjoy have physical appearance that most women of the world consider very attractive. But being proud of it? Nah...

It's an adaptive behavior that increases evolutionary fitness.

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