Since I was a teenager back in the 80s I had already decided that I admired construction, rather than destruction.
I learned it was easier to lash out and destroy than it was to create.
I would admire some things that could seem destructive like Martial Arts movies but in reality it wasn't the violence I admired. It was the skill. It was the martial dance. It was the creation of new moves.
I could spend hours constructing a structure or mechanism with LEGOs, Linkin Logs, or Erector Sets. I could destroy the same things in a matter of seconds.
It is easier to destroy, than to create.
Think of the time it takes to create a town, a city, a museum. Yet a bomb or military strike can destroy that in a fraction of the time.
My actual interest in weapons of destruction is not in joy in seeing them deployed.
It is a study of my mind. Learning of dangers I must try to avoid, and ways to recover. It is seeking messages of hope in the aftermath of destruction.
It is the moments of wonder in seeing resilience and construction in places that were previously laid to waste.
The people I return to admiring are those who did something challenging. I admire those who introduced a new thing that was constructive. I admire those that united people in the face of great challenges.
Conversely I hold those that divided in disdain...
If your culture has raised you to point at villains of the past and project those crimes upon the descendants of those villains I consider that divisionary and ultimately only destructive.
It is destructive to your own people because rather than encouraging them to excel, build, construct, unite, and overcome you instead are encouraging them to dwell in a vision of victimhood. They dwell in an imaginary world of what might have been if those villains had been defeated or had chosen other actions. It is imaginary because it didn't happen. Many paths were possible.
I will give you an example:
I am of Chickasaw and Cherokee descent. Though I am white skinned due to a lot of ancestry in what some choose to label the "colonizers". That is how genes manifest when ethnicities intermingle. You can have rather diverse genetics and they can still visually express in ways that some might choose to decide makes you into a villain.
Leaning into my Native/Indigenous American heritage I could talk about Colonizers. I could talk about stolen land.
Yet then I might consider...
Some land was exchanged in trade. That is not stolen.
Some land may be lost due to gambling. That is not stolen.
If that land had not been stolen, or otherwise lost what might have come of it?
Would it be mine today?
How can I know?
I certainly can imagine. I can then decide my life sucks because I missed out on the opportunity my imagination is now informing me should be mine.
Yet it is still my imagination.
I don't know if perhaps my ancestor may have given the land to someone else in trade that is not of the ethnicities being called "Colonizer". If they did then it would not be mine.
They could have had a deal with "colonizers" that ended up offering opportunity and protection I am unaware of due to stereotypes and generalizations being pushed as the truth about all past circumstances. Perhaps without that my ancestor would have died. Perhaps I would not exist.
All of these things I am saying PERHAPS about are also imaginary. If I were to choose to push one as fact that would be a LIE. You cannot change the past. You can learn from it. You can't actually know what the outcome of different choices would have been because there are many possible paths, consequences, and outcomes.
Why identify as a victim? How is that constructive? It seems like that would be shackling your potential and reducing what you might be able to accomplish.
Do you seek to destroy people that were not alive when this occurred due to action of their ancestors? Do you demand they pay you for things they had nothing to do with?
What if your ancestor killed some of theirs? Do they have a claim against you for things you did not personally do?
To hold people in the here and now accountable for your imagination is a destructive thing to you, to them, and to society.
Seek to construct. Seek to build. Seek to leave something worthy of your life behind you.
Leaving complaints, division, and destruction behind is not a worthy thing.
Doing the right thing is often hard. You also might be punished for it. You might not survive.
Being brave is not doing the easy thing.
Being brave is doing the risky and challenging thing. A brave person does not do something because they know they will survive. A brave person does not do something because they know they will be rewarded.
They do something because they know it needs to be done and yet they may not be around for it.
There is nothing brave about forcing people who did nothing to you to pay for things that were done to people that are long dead. That is easy. It is also destructive.
We need to get back to being brave.
We need to stop looking for ways to identify as a victim.
We need to stop looking for handouts due to things that happened in the past.
We need to be accountable for our own choices, not those of our ancestors.
We need to identify as who we are, and what we do, not by who our ancestors were and what they did.
Who are you?
Do you create, or do you destroy?
Do you think the world owes you something or do you plan to offer something you create to the world?
I gave the example of "Colonizers". Yet this is also true of slavery. I didn't own any slaves. My parents didn't own any slaves. My grand parents didn't own any slaves. Such is true of my great grand parents. Yet my skin is white.
Do I then pay reparations to someone because their skin is black even though they were never a slave, neither were their parents, or their grand parents?
If they were a slave why should I pay? Shouldn't their owner pay? The person that commits the crime should be accountable for any repayment. Those who were not even alive are not responsible for those actions.
You should only be accountable for your own choices and actions. You also should only accept repayment for judgements in things done to YOU.
We cannot change the past. We can learn from it.
Demanding handouts for things that were not done to you is just turning your own life into that of a leech. It is not constructive. It is a drain.
Choose not to be a victim.
To those that dwell on whether or not something offends them. Being offended is a choice. You can also choose not to be offended.
One is constructive, the other is not.