The Great War of 1914-18 delivered the single most catastrophic event to human history. So many people died, mainly young men, that it took a generation for nations, and communities to recover their equilibrium, only to be greeted with a repeat event that started the WWII in 1939. Many who had fought and survived the first conflagration found themselves fighting for survival in the second.

It is the nature of inherited trauma that, not only these repeat soldiers discovered a reprise of their suffering, but the new generation also carried the burden of the first wars trauma, through a mechanism called epigenetics.

Epigenetics doesn’t change the genetic code, it changes how that’s read. Perfectly normal genes can result in cancer or death. Vice-versa, in the right environment, mutant genes won’t be expressed. Genes are equivalent to blueprints; epigenetics is the contractor. They change the assembly, the structure. Bruce Lipton

So, many in the current generation carry the echo of that faraway war in the genes activated, disabled, neutralised.

And inherited trauma is not merely the product of war, or at least not declared war.

I will expand on this theme in subsequent discussion, explain how it relates to my forthcoming book “The Veiled Thread” and how Australian society in particular, has been shaped by the impact of epigenetics.