The Middle Ages were better than today
Lester T. Linpord
knights and untouched nature instead of this ugly world today.
I really enjoy swordfights and jousting.
John Wilkins
And fleas... and lice... and bubonic plague... and infant mortality,
sepsis, malnutrition, class-bound society (too bad if you were a
peasant), education for a limited few, lack of religious freedom (or
rather, freedom to burn - see the Cathar rebellion). Forests were slowly
hacked away (so much for "nature"). Crops were at best chancy. No trade
for items not available locally unless you were very rich. Lack of
bathing by some classes (mainly upper, I believe). And worst of all, no
printed books...
On the other hand, some mighty philosophical debates.
--
John Wilkins
wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss"
- Francis Bacon
Sir Frederick Martin McNeill
>
> Lester T. Linpord <Lester_t...@yahoo.co.in> wrote:
>
> > I wish we could return to the Middle Ages with all its good-looking
> > knights and untouched nature instead of this ugly world today.
> >
> > I really enjoy swordfights and jousting.
>
> And fleas... and lice... and bubonic plague... and infant mortality,
> sepsis, malnutrition, class-bound society (too bad if you were a
> peasant), education for a limited few, lack of religious freedom (or
> rather, freedom to burn - see the Cathar rebellion). Forests were slowly
> hacked away (so much for "nature"). Crops were at best chancy. No trade
> for items not available locally unless you were very rich. Lack of
> bathing by some classes (mainly upper, I believe). And worst of all, no
> printed books...
>
from the demeaning magic folk lore theories on what it is to be a human
being. We still need our hubris boosting human centric stories
(like better times tales).
We still breed like rabbits, and die like them also.
We are still in the Middle Ages.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill/
*************************
Phrase of the week :
Proverbs :
1. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his(biased) opinion.
2. When wickedness comes, contempt comes also.
3. You must abide, what is built inside.
:-))))Snort!)
*************************
Tony Thomas
drawing and quartering, back-breaking toil and compulsory church going.
Tony Thomas
"Lester T. Linpord" <Lester_t...@yahoo.co.in> wrote in message
news:bb97ab58.04020...@posting.google.com...
Immortalist
"Lester T. Linpord" <Lester_t...@yahoo.co.in> wrote in message
news:bb97ab58.04020...@posting.google.com...
> knights and untouched nature instead of this ugly world today.
>
> I really enjoy swordfights and jousting.
...Pinker turns his attention to the arts. Unlike many public intellectuals,
he does not see them as going through a period of unusual trouble. Rather,
he sees them flourishing more than ever. "Art is in our nature-in the blood
and in the bone, as people used to say; in the brain and in the genes, as we
might say today."
But as he reviews conflicting theories about what art is for, he does find
problems. Although one of these stems from the desire for status, in the
artist as a striving for novelty, and in the audience as an instance of
conspicuous consumption, his main culprits are modernism and postmodernism.
He corrects Virginia Woolf's jocular remark that human nature (actually, she
wrote "human character") changed in 1910 by explaining that "Modernism
certainly proceeded as if human nature had changed.
All the tricks that artists had used for millennia to please the human
palate were cast aside." Taking cues from Frederick Turner regarding
preferences built into our natures over millions of years, Pinker accuses
modernism and postmodernism of being "based on a false theory of human
psychology, the Blank Slate."
They "cling to a theory of perception that was rejected long ago: that the
sense organs present the brain with a tableau of raw colors and sounds and
that everything else in perceptual experience is a learned social
construction," which, needless to say, modernism and postmodernism have
tried to shake up and disorient.
But the visual system of the brain is hardly so passive: it irresistibly
organizes sense data "into surfaces, colors, motions, and three-dimensional
objects. We can no more turn the system off and get immediate access to pure
sensory experience than we can override our stomachs and tell them when to
release their digestive enzymes."
Beyond this, the visual system "colors our visual experience with universal
emotions and aesthetic pleasures," so that people prefer savannah
landscapes, beautiful faces, consonant sounds, narrative fiction, and so on.
The attempts by modernist writers and artists to "make it new," to cut the
connections between biologically sanctioned forms and aesthetic response,
have been only a partial success, as the failure of serial music has
demonstrated.
Piss Christ and Tilted Arc, to name two against-the-grain visual artifacts
that come to mind, did not enchant their viewers, however self-satisfied
their creators seem to have been. Although Pinker enthusiastically commends
a wide range of modernism's products, he is not happy with its disdain of
"beauty" and its desire to frustrate our in-built nostalgia for the mud from
which we spring.
Moreover, the need to succeed in a market-driven society has encouraged
artists to push things very far for their shock, media, and commercial
values. Pinker has a warm spot for the primal directness of "middlebrow
realistic fiction" because, as he believes, there is no necessary connection
between the pretensions of elite high art and moral enlightenment.
Quoting George Steiner to the effect that the Nazis could listen to Schubert
in the morning and gas Jews in the afternoon, he is less impressed with the
ethical claims of radical artists than with the unconscious psychobiological
nourishment provided by more or less archetypical art forms.
"The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the twentieth century
grew out of a militant denial of human nature. One legacy is ugly, baffling,
and insulting art. The other is pretentious and unintelligible scholarship."
The New Darwinism in the Humanities
Part I: From Plato to Pinker
http://www.hudsonreview.com/frommSpSu03.html
Natural Man
Steven Pinker aims to make the world safe for genetic scientists. But in
debunking the idea of the blank slate, is he fighting the last war?
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/n_7725/
But couldn't find anyone talking about the Soviet Housing based on
postmodern plasticity and human moldability. This drabbness makes the
aesthetics of the Middle Ages much more beautiful and molded to human
character. Got to check that book out again from the library and see the
influence these "box houses" had on western architecture and the urban
squarehood.
C.V. Compton Shaw
stated that the nobility and royalty of the middle and other
ages had more of a sense of responsibility and duty towards
their "subjects" than do bourgeois capitalistic politicians
to the citizenry.The bourgoise,according to Marx, see the
nobility as their enemies and attempt to destroy the same
and see individuals only as commodities to be bought and
sold.The nobility and royalty,because of
the,religious,cultural, and ethical norms which they had,
valued the individual worth of all of their subjects no
matter how humble. If you read the Magna Charta and other
medieval documents, you will see that the nobility thought
that it was highly unethical to deprive any person, no
matter how humble, of his means to earn a living. However,
in the bourgeois USA, our politicians pass NAFTA and other
trade agreements and pass other legislation which deprives
individuals and groups of individuals of their employment
for unjust and selfish reasons. Thus, the term "noblesse
oblige" (noble behavior is reguired of the noble), held it's
sway in the Middle Ages and selfish and unjust materialism
of today's bourgeois is destroying the same.
Chzwmn
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>Message-ID: <404123CD...@swbell.net>
>From: "C.V. Compton Shaw" mis...@swbell.net
>Organization: C.V. Compton Shaw
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>Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 23:31:10 GMT
This viewpoint is supported by Terry Jones, ex Python and Medievel scholar in a
series of TV programmes for BBC
Paul Bramscher
> Even Karl Marx, in his book, "The Communist Manifesto",
> stated that the nobility and royalty of the middle and other
> ages had more of a sense of responsibility and duty towards
> their "subjects" than do bourgeois capitalistic politicians
> to the citizenry.The bourgoise,according to Marx, see the
> nobility as their enemies and attempt to destroy the same
> and see individuals only as commodities to be bought and
> sold.The nobility and royalty,because of
This was the clash between "old money" and "new money". The noble class
was the prexisting vestigal power structure of the 18th and 19th centuries.
> the,religious,cultural, and ethical norms which they had,
> valued the individual worth of all of their subjects no
> matter how humble. If you read the Magna Charta and other
> medieval documents, you will see that the nobility thought
> that it was highly unethical to deprive any person, no
> matter how humble, of his means to earn a living. However,
> in the bourgeois USA, our politicians pass NAFTA and other
> trade agreements and pass other legislation which deprives
> individuals and groups of individuals of their employment
> for unjust and selfish reasons. Thus, the term "noblesse
> oblige" (noble behavior is reguired of the noble), held it's
> sway in the Middle Ages and selfish and unjust materialism
> of today's bourgeois is destroying the same.
Probably because the pre-modern nobles knew what it was like to have
their castle laid siege, to have their peasants flee (they'd be not much
better or worse off anywhere else), etc. Under modern capitalism, the
power is enforced through technological, monopolistic, and
government-by-cabal methods. Better to be treated as a beast of burden,
property like cattle under a medieval lord, than to be treated as
equivalent to a thousand widgets under modern capitalism. Cattle are
alive and have needs of their own, widgets don't.
The medieval attitude you point out lasted until the early 20th century
with philanthropism. While Bill Gates has given enormously (curse his
dark heart), the great majority ot today's elite seems to be moving
their company headquarters to the Caymans and living like pirates, with
absolutely no interest in contributing anything back to the
infrastructure they looted.
tg
I wonder how much of a difference there is between USA and Europe (old
Europe, of course.) Does some vestige of NO make worker-friendly
social policies easier to get across?
USA replaced the tradition of hereditary nobility with the mythology
of individual accomplishment. So people don't think their status is a
gift from God, but the result of their own god-like ability. Why be
grateful?
-tg