My 130 Ancestors

6 thoughts on “My 130 Ancestors”

1. Loving your work, doing my best to take it all in.

   But you say ‘I wonder how much my personal biases show’… I notice that of the 52 playing cards, only one ancestor is female. And of the 80 (?) tarot ancestors, only 10 are female. I understand how easy this is to do and not notice, given the over-representation of men (specifically white men) in history and in modern times. Even in music and books, I’ve looked at past lists of my own personal favourites and noticed an overwhelming bias of white men (I was a rock and fantasy fan). I notice this bias in Memory Craft too, the over-representation of men both in the historical context and in the modern examples e.g. memory champions, people consulted… I only noticed male bias recently (after watching TED talks on the matter, and studying an introductory science module that is alienatingly white-male biased). But since I’ve seen this bias, I can’t unsee it and I’m doing my best to fight it.

   And, as with so much of your work, I’m seeing an opportunity here to change my own mindset – in this case to correct my past bias. So I’m going to work really hard to set up my 52 playing cards to fairly represent female, male and non-binary and all cultures. The hope is my… I think I’m going to call mine my ‘players’ (in a players on a stage kind of way) but not certain yet… characters will represent the world as it is, rather than as white-male history wrote and continues to write it. I think this could be really healing.

   So once again, thank you. I’m so glad I watched your TED talk one evening last autumn and read your books – your work is changing my life 🙂

   Sarah

   Reply

   1. Hi Sarah,

      I agree with everything you say. I really like the idea of calling them ‘players’. Given my bias in Ancestors is also physics, that makes the female issue worse, although Marie Curie gets in. But it also shows that as a woman, I can love physics! I was well aware of the problem, and I tried as hard as I could to add more females. I put in a few females by kicking out males who would probably have a higher claim to influencing history and thinking, such as Cleopatra. It says more about who writes history than it does about women! I asked my online cohort via facebook and other means to increase the number of women, but we all had trouble doing so. It has to be women who offer me some kind of written material to learn from, not just learn about. That eliminated a few who I would have liked to have included.

      As one of the first women to graduate in engineering in Australia, I have been aware of this issue for many decades. The memory champion I quote most is Anastasia Woolmer who is female, and the leaders I mention in many competition events are the Mongolian sisters and Yaana who are also female. Andy Fong is not a ‘white male’. The musicians were also lots of females, and the two major influences in the Medieval ideas were both women. There are also plenty of LBGTI people, but I don’t mention their sexuality because it isn’t relevant.

      But I can’t rewrite history, and women just aren’t there before the last few hundred years, in a way that I can learn from them. I wanted my ‘ancestors’ spread over as much of time as I could manage to be able to link other people and events to them, so started with the earliest documented in Homer. Had I allowed all to be much more recent people, I could have added lots of women.

      I am really looking forward to seeing the list you come up with. Please post it here when you have it done.

      Thank you so much for raising such an important topic.

      Lynne

      Reply

2. Thanks fire the reply.

   I hope there weren’t other mistakes because I memorized your list and I only noticed the one.

   July is so far away! But good to know when. I had been checking your site frequently to see if was available yet.

   I’m happy that I’m not the only one who has fun with all this stuff. Good luck at the competition!

   Reply

   1. I am so pleased that you are enjoying these techniques. There are lots more in “Memory Craft”. I also wish it would be published sooner, but that is the slow path of traditional publishing.

      Lynne

      Reply

3. Nice list! BTW, Averroës and William the Conqueror seem to be transposed

   Reply

   1. Thank you, Christopher. So sorry about the delay. I didn’t notice the comment and my site has stopped notifying me. I have been training for the Australian Memory competitions and have lost track of reality – including this site.

      You are absolutely right about Averroës and William the Conqueror. This is going to look weird in the comments when I update the list because I have changed some of the Ancestors as a result of comments and feedback, Averroës survived the cut, William the Conqueror did not. He’s still in the History Journey, so not lost completely!

      I have checked all the dates now – some of these are wrong – the new list is in my next book, Memory Craft, due out in June. After I do the competitions this weekend. I shall be reviewing everything here, including correcting this error.

      Thank you!

      Lynne

      Reply