All cultural heritage is optional, IMHO; as an indivvidual you are no more bund by your grandfather's nationality than you are obligated to be a criminal because your great-great-grandfather was shipped to Botany Bay for picking pockets, or to accept a scarred and useless briar pipe to keep in a drawer somewhere because it belonged to a deceased forefather. It's a choice you make as to what beliefs and images to use in constructing your own worldview.

There are thousands of people who are the heirs to a culture of feud and revenge over dozens of generations--"fighting the British" or the damn Yankees, defending some pocket-version of Muslimism, Palestinian pathos, or some tribal battle whose roots are lost in the mists of past conflict--who walk away and choose not to forward such hatreds.

To my mind the obligation one has to one's cultural heritage is to choose from it those ideas, feelings, and passions which reflect the best and highest accomplishments of the culture. If I were born Irish, which I was not, I would embrace language, song, poetry, and a love of freedom as cultural values; I would spin tales of magic and love and celebration. But I would not become a poteen addict, a highwayman, or a promulgator of hatred against the British; those are cultural fragments I would drop by the wayside no matter how emotionally compelling they were to my parents.

DNA, now, is another matter, and it is likely there are cultural bents that are carried in the genes, but I think they are secondary when talking about cultural heritage. My genes include the strongpossibility of alcoholism, but I am not an alcoholic (Getaways notwithstanding).

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