On a Monday afternoon, apropos of nothing, and on a self-imposed news hiatus, making no effort to engage with the current tribulations of this declining world. I am instead experimenting with the latest iteration of ChatGPT, version 5, to which I submitted my current Facebook profile photograph, asking it to deduce my ethnicity. It correctly surmised that I am of predominantly Germanic and Celtic heritage, and, once I had confirmed its conclusion and enumerated the nations from which my ancestry derives, it produced for me the accompanying map.
In truth, I have little justification for including the blue-shaded regions—France, Belgium, and the Netherlands—since my known lineage from those lands is extremely minimal and dates back to just a scant few select ancestors from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who assimilated into German families. But I included them anyway. Could have also included Canada and the United States itself, as I have ancestors who were among the original Puritan founders of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, and whose descendents were Loyalists who fled to the Maritimes after the American Revolution. ‘Canadian’ and ‘American’, however, are not really ethnicities unless one is of native blood (I am not). There is also the possibility that, through my maternal line, I may possess some measure of Eastern European ancestry. My mother was adopted as a young girl and never knew the identity of her father, though her birth mother claimed he was of Polish origin. My mother, however, has ever doubted the truth of this assertion, regarding herself as of purely English and Irish descent. A DNA test I once undertook disclosed no trace of Eastern European heritage (putting aside that Saxons, Celts, et al. all originated in areas in and around the Kievan Rus’ thousands of years ago); yet I harbour some doubt as to the accuracy of those things, despite the results aligning precisely with the findings of my own research and what I feel in my being.
The yellow-marked nations denote the principal sources of my bloodline, England above all and Germany not too far behind; yet Denmark—and, indeed, Ireland—*perhaps* ought likewise to be shaded yellow. One of my grandmothers, the aforementioned neglectful mother of my own, was born in Galway, Ireland in 1910 (raised in County Mayo), while a great-grandmother—my paternal grandmother’s mother—was born near Copenhagen in the 1890s. The Irish-born grandmother was at least half English and may have possessed Scottish ancestry as well. My paternal great-grandmother was indisputably Danish (her brother, my great-uncle Julius, visited us for a spell when I was but a very young boy, circa 1982; he was, of course, quite advanced in years and by then entirely blind.); yet, as the Danes are a Germanic people, I tend to regard my Danish heritage as an extension of my considerable German lineage, much as I see my Irish and Scottish heritage as twin branches of the same Celtic tree. Rightly or wrongly, I suppose. To be honest, I really do not feel very Irish in my soul, though maybe a tad Scottish; another story for another day.
Anyhow, whether I ought to be impressed by ChatGPT’s aptitude in this regard or faintly disquieted, I cannot say. AI shall prove both a blessing and a curse, ushering in remarkable progress yet also certain horrors—much like the Industrial Revolution itself, I suppose. Still, with such tools now at our disposal, few can claim legitimate cause for boredom, and ignorance has ever fewer excuses in an age where so much knowledge lies at our very fingertips. —Arthur Newhook, 11 August 2025.
Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.
No comments:
Post a Comment