Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Someone Considered Me Psychotic, Because I Know Cultural History of Early XX C. Better than He

1) Creation vs. Evolution : How Smart Was Ancient Man? · 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Someone Considered Me Psychotic, Because I Know Cultural History of Early XX C. Better than He

And content of Tarzan novels too, by the way.

tredzwater
[quoting two of his four paragraphs, all were relevant to previous parts of debate, but the two to what came after]



Forget Mary's abusive adolescence and womanhood. Forget that she was almost never queen and had to fight for her throne. Mary's attitude toward Protestants, the EXACT SAME attitude that Protestant rulers had toward Catholics, was a direct result of the religious brainwashing of her childhood.

Had she, and all the other rulers engaged in religious war, not been warped by their childhood religious indoctrination; had they not lived in a society where religion was in the very air that people breathed, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation would never have happened. …

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Indeed, she did not think it was a mortal sin to burn heretics.

Nor did her husband King Philip of Spain - but he thought it was stupid to do it in England. However, she felt she had to obey the law of 1401 ... a legislation which had been very popular when patriots and artists were outraged at early Lollardry along with the Catholic motive for opposing it firmly, but which was no longer so.

Had she, and all the other rulers engaged in religious war, not been warped by their childhood religious indoctrination; had they not lived in a society where religion was in the very air that people breathed, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation would never have happened.

Indeed. To many of the early XXth C. Darwin was in the very air they breathed. And the XXth C was worse than the XVIth. Much worse.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - I disagree.

  • 1. Darwin wasn't "in the very air that people breathed". It is only since the 1980s that Darwinian evolution was taught in public schools. In the Deep South, where I live, it has only been taught in the last 20 years. Some school boards, like Austin TX, much of SC, NC, Mississippi, Alabama and rural Georgia, science teachers are STILL struggling to have evolution a viable part of the curriculum...against school boards that want to teach thinly-disguised creationism.

  • 2. The XX century wasn't worse than the XVI. The twentieth saw two world wars which, because of human military technology, NOT anything to do with Darwin, killed millions of people. But, outside of those wars, western civilization is far, far better for the average citizen.

    There was universal education in the twentieth, affordable health care, employment for anyone who cared to work (particularly in the post-war eras), good housing and a nearly doubled lifespan. No one had to worry that some lord of the manor would decide to put housing land to pasture and kick whole villages out of their homes. If conscripted for the military, twentieth century soldiers were well-paid, well-housed and well-fed. After service, they got paid to go to school. No one had to worry that some drunken knights would ride by and steal their belongings and rape their women. It became a tragedy when a child died before adulthood, instead of something expected for 50% of all children born. The twentieth century saw the rise of antibiotics, safe surgery, cancer treatments that worked, the triumph over polio, vaccines to fight measles (which blinded thousands of children yearly) and the total defeat of smallpox.

    People think that we have much more to worry about with drugs and crime but it is nowhere nearly as bad as it was in the 16th century. No drugs, but lots of alcohol and 94% of women below the poverty line had to prostitute themselves in order to survive. They have found the skeletons of 14-16-year old girls completely ridden with tertiary syphilis. They'd have had to contract it at age 8 or 9 for that to happen.

    The average working man's diet was bread and corn with meat or fish a few times a year. Orphans were sold to whoever was willing to pay to take them...and work them to death (a practice that continued well into the 19th century). Gangs of children, often as young as 5 and 6, roamed urban streets and stole whatever wasn't nailed down. The penalty was death in felony theft cases. In fact, in the sixteenth century, you could be hung, boiled in oil or have a hand cut off for stealing less than 3 ounces of meat. If you came to a town and had no money and no one to vouch for you, you would be beaten across the town line...even if you had done nothing wrong.

    In the 19th and early 20th century Native American children were stolen from their families, by government order, warehoused in "good Christian schools" where their language and their culture were beaten and starved out of them. This didn't end until 1936. It's since WWII that secular education has so improved lives that ghetto kids can become astrophysicists, if they work at it.

    If you volunteer to go back to the sixteenth century, make sure your contract says you'll be royal or noble.

    Otherwise, you're toast.


Hans-Georg Lundahl
  • 1) "Darwin wasn't "in the very air that people breathed". It is only since the 1980s that Darwinian evolution was taught in public schools. In the Deep South, where I live, it has only been taught in the last 20 years."

    The men who made XXth C. nighmarish were generally not from the Deep South.

    A proof that Darwinism was - over in Europe - in the air that men breathed is the success of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

    Or Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard.

    In fact, a theory can be in the air that men breathe without being taught in public schools - as in schools everyone has to attend to.

    Back in the day of Mary Tudor, there were no such things.

  • 2) "The twentieth saw two world wars which, because of human military technology, NOT anything to do with Darwin, killed millions of people."

    Camps for enslavement and at least occasionally killing were not technically impossible in the XVIth C., only morally so.

    Sterilisation of people due to their race (and yes some from South have contributed before Hitler, but they were into Darwin and Galton) went on in certain countries for decades.

  • "But, outside of those wars, western civilization is far, far better for the average citizen."

    Er, no. Killing of 100 or 300 heretics affected the average Englishman far less than the average European was affected 40 - 45 by deportations of 100.000's or even millions of Jews.

    Still 40 - 45 is a relatively short period. Soviet Union has had Gulags from soon after 1917 up to 1990. China still has Lao Gai. US has very many private prisons with very many prisoners - and judges are investing stock in private prisons. That is still or was till recently affecting far more people than the burning of 200 or 400 heretics. I don't know the exact number for Mary Tudor, but it is not greater than that.

  • "There was universal education in the twentieth"

    One of the Hell holes, yes I know, I have been through it. It has produced Columbine massacre and people have then tried to blame it on gun access.

  • "affordable health care"

    Before Reformation, monasteries provided poor sick people with shelter and nursing while they also paid doctros to see them - or in some cases doctors came for free, because it was good practise and an honour.

  • "employment for anyone who cared to work (particularly in the post-war eras)"

    There was obviously far less unemployment before industrialism. And the 60's are gone. The employment rate which XXth C. saw in 60's is probably lower than what Middle Ages and Renaissance saw throughout the period. And the unemployment rate obviously higher.

  • "good housing"

    When 10s or 100s of thousands in France have to repaint to get rid of mould and still have to throw away clothes (I just saw a news article about it) or if not that have other housing related problems, I think XVIth C. was superior in housing.

  • "and a nearly doubled lifespan."

    What exactly do you consider the lifespan was in XVIth C. and what do you base it on?

    Lots of people are deluded about this.

    If you didn't die as a baby or in teens, you lived perhaps ten years shorter in medium than you do now. 64 years instead of 74.

  • "No one had to worry that some lord of the manor would decide to put housing land to pasture and kick whole villages out of their homes."

    In England that may indeed have happened under the time we are talking about. Enclosures were a vile thing. In Palestine it is in the XXth C. it happened. You paid a customary rent to a landlord in Beiroot or Cairo, then he sold it to Zionist Jews to get a bit more tobacco in his water pipe and you found out the new landlord wanted not the rent but rather to provide land for immigrants. In both centuries these situations are marginal compared to the rest of the world.

    [In quantity, not in moral quality, I might be wise to add.]

  • "If conscripted for the military, twentieth century soldiers were well-paid, well-housed and well-fed."

    Even in trench wars? Tell that to the guys who fought at the Somme and at the Marne! If you don't know the story, read chapter "through the dead marshes" in Lord of the Rings - it is based in trench war trauma, and Tolkien was even not the worst suffering, since he was cavalry. And tell it to the guys who fought at Stalingrad too, both sides!

  • "After service, they got paid to go to school."

    Ah, that is where the school fanaticism comes from. First fanatics against Germans (not saying there was no criminality on German side, but US soldiers were fanatic about it), then returned home and came from school as fanatical about schooling - and starting it at the age they were after war, they were obviously not in a position to get real education from the education facilities.

  • "No one had to worry that some drunken knights would ride by and steal their belongings and rape their women."

    That is not the German experience with occupants after WW-II. They did have to worry.

  • "It became a tragedy when a child died before adulthood, instead of something expected for 50% of all children born."

    I think rather less than 50%, but I admit dying in childhood is rarer. However, dying before natural birth moment is very much more frequent since Roe vs Wade. Back in XVIth C abortion drugs were an offense for those taking them and for those providing them - in both cases punishable with death. As it should be.

  • "The twentieth century saw the rise of antibiotics,"

    And of antibiotics resistent bacteria.

  • "safe surgery,"

    And surgery for evil purposes, like lobotomy, sterilisation, and some of the abortions are also by surgery.

  • "cancer treatments that worked,"

    And a cancer inducing environment.

    [More than previously.]

  • "the triumph over polio, vaccines to fight measles (which blinded thousands of children yearly) and the total defeat of smallpox."

    I think these diseases had come to the foreground some time between XVIth and XXth C - and were, excepting smallpox, not very common in XVIth C. But I could be wrong, some blind and lame back then could be cases of measles or polio without its being identified.

  • "People think that we have much more to worry about with drugs and crime but it is nowhere nearly as bad as it was in the 16th century. No drugs, but lots of alcohol and 94% of women below the poverty line had to prostitute themselves in order to survive."

    94% of women below poverty line? Did you say XVIth of XIXth? And what is exactly poverty line? Sth concerning back then the rather few who were sent to poor houses?

    I would rather believe it of the XIXth than of the XVIth C. Honour was stronger before the Reformation, and even afterwards it took time to sap it that much.

    Lots of alcohol? No doubt lots of beer and cider, and in certain countries wine. But that is not sth which compares to living like an outcast and becoming agressive over taking illegal drugs, nor is alcohol comparable to cokaine or heroine, whatever might be the case with hashish.

  • "They have found the skeletons of 14-16-year old girls completely ridden with tertiary syphilis. They'd have had to contract it at age 8 or 9 for that to happen."

    Link to article appreciated.

    I very much doubt it was XVIth C. and if so I'd put it down to Elisabethan rather than Mary's reign. Or to Henry VIII - who seems to have had syphilis himself.

    [I was relying on Belloc, who may have been relying on a doctor making a post-mortem diagnosis, rather than as he should on contemporary evidence. I think I saw an article, and it was probably not acquired at age 8 or 9, but at birth by a syphilitic mother.]

  • "The average working man's diet was bread and corn with meat or fish a few times a year."

    That is a joke. For XVIth C. at least - whatever be the case for Manchester of XIXth C.

    If people were required to fast from meat but allowed to eat fish on Fridays, it would seem such a diet would have made complying with this Catholic rule so easy that Reformers would not have had an argument ad populum (in the worst sense) by allowing meat on Fridays and in Lent.

  • "Orphans were sold to whoever was willing to pay to take them...and work them to death (a practice that continued well into the 19th century). Gangs of children, often as young as 5 and 6, roamed urban streets and stole whatever wasn't nailed down."

    It is very possible this CONTINUED into the XIXth C. from the XVIIIth C. It is also very certain that in the XVIth C. it hadn't started yet. You are talking about conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution.

  • "In fact, in the sixteenth century, you could be hung, boiled in oil or have a hand cut off for stealing less than 3 ounces of meat."

    Don't overdo it.

    Tell me one case where anyone was boiled in oil in the XVIth C.

    I know one in the first, on personal orders of Domitian - St John. But that was not a customary penalty, it was inventiveness and creativity on part of persecutors of Christians.

    [I was wrong. In England - not everywhere in Europe, but in England - boiling (not sure if it was in oil or in water) was accepted as an execution method in 1531 - same year that Henry VIII broke with Rome. See below.**]

  • "If you came to a town and had no money and no one to vouch for you, you would be beaten across the town line...even if you had done nothing wrong."

    That would be one product of the Reformation or otherwise the Reformation of it. Catholicism usually goes with generous almsgiving. And the degree you describe, I think it took a century after the Reformation before it would be common - perhaps even the Poor Laws (1570's, under Elisabeth!) contributed, since they meant poor were vouched for by poor houses.

  • "In the 19th and early 20th century Native American children were stolen from their families, by government order, warehoused in "good Christian schools" where their language and their culture were beaten and starved out of them."

    Yes, in a culture that was imbued with not just budding Darwinism but also a few centuries of Protestantism. Mary Tudor would not have done such a thing. And seeing that Reformers or early Protestants soon after her started the "parens patriae" principle, you might start to get an idea that she was trying to protect England from sth which was really bad.

  • "This didn't end until 1936."

    That early? I thought such things went on till 1970's? Or do you mean by private initiative as opposed to government regulated ones?

    My sister was stolen from ma in 1988. Because a shrink from a Communist country considered my Christian mother "mentally ill".

    That kind of thing did NOT happen in the XVIth C.

  • "It's since WWII that secular education has so improved lives that ghetto kids can become astrophysicists, if they work at it."

    In the Catholic world previous to Reformation, poor men could become professors in Theology. By non-secular, by clerical edication. Rich men wnet out of their way to make themselves poor, to merit the honour - St Thomas Aquinas was born as a nobleman in Roccasecca and insisted, and insisted very much, to become a beggar, living in Sorbonne of what he could beg, while preaching, while teaching and earlier while studying.

    Sorbonne was founded by Robert de Sorbon. Now, "de Sorbon" does not mean he was a noble. He was a rich man, but "de Sorbon" means he came "FROM Sorbon" which is a few hundred miles or so away from Paris.

    Wiki : Sorbon
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbon


    "It was the birthplace of Robert de Sorbon, (1201–1274), who was a chaplain and Confessor to King Louis IX of France, as well as the founder of the Sorbonne, the University of Paris."

    Recap : he is born in the Middle of Nowhere. He becomes a priest and a holy King confesses his sins to him. He becomes rich enough to found the Collège de Sorbonne.

    Note, these days "Sorbonne" is often used as synonymous with "University of Paris" but back then in was one of several colleges at the University - same function at studies, but very different social background from Merton College, Magdalen College, etc at Oxford now. The latter are clearly with a privileged access for the rich. When Robert de Sorbon started the college, it was to spare students the hardship of begging.

    So, yes, XVIth C was in some ways inferior to XIIIth and XXth. To XIIIth C. before it and to XXth C. after it. And Protestantism was a byproduct of the Rich-Man-Ism, a k a Humanism.

    But in certain ways XXth C was still worse than XVIth even - since the full evil of Protestantism came with some delay


tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - You are using the popularity of a novel as evidence of widespread early knowledge of Darwinian evolution?

"Tarzan" was based on earlier writings, as Rudyard Kipling's "Mowgli" and even earlier folktales about feral children. The meme goes back before Romulus and Remus of Roman times.

You are insane.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
"You are using the popularity of a novel as evidence of widespread early knowledge of Darwinian evolution?"

By 1900 UK was more Darwinian than Bible believing. That is a fact independently of that. I generally do not consider belief in the theory as synonymous with detailed knowledge of it. I have more detailed knowledge of it than many believers. But here we are talking not knowledge but popularity.

Popularity of Tarzan is not JUST Tarzan as raised by beasts, but :

  • fact that he identifies himself as Tar Man Gani (white tall ape) and negroes as Go Man Gani (black tall ape) and apes/gorillas (very tall chimps?) as Man Gani (tall apes);
  • fact that Opar and other countries with dinosaurs in Tarzan's time are portrayed as "a land that time forgot" (exact quote) or "at an earlier stage of evolution" (half remembered)
  • fact that Survival of the Fittest is as much or more preached in Tarzan as in Sherlock Holmes.


As said, the air was heavily polluted with Darwinism. And a Darwin believer back then would hardly have qualified himself as Dawkins once did as "morally an Antidarwinist" though that is too much of a self compliment [on Dawkins’ part].

If you are not aware that this was dominant in 1900 and the following decades, you are no good as a historian.

My maternal grandfather became an agnostic though his older brother was Salvation Army. His wife had turned atheist before meeting him, and was encouraged by her father, a blacksmith. Their birthyears are 1900 and 1911. Thus, both were born before the WW-I and before the Russian Revolution. And both wanted, despite their daughter (only child!) to raise me as a Darwinist and they succeeded my very early years. Age 6 to 10 I was a Darwinist, last of these years only trying to reconcile it with the Bible.

[Note, this is Sweden, Europe, not Deep South, US]

I will not give them blame for having been extremely precocious in apostasy. They floated with their times, simple as that.

I will in fact use popularity of other novels as evidence for other awarenesses.

Edith Nesbit could not have gotten popularity for Harding's Luck, unless there had been some nostalgia for Cavaliers - so England was not a Puritan country in 1908 and 1909.

Precisely as One flew over the Cuckoo's nest would not have been successful without a wide awareness by 1962 (novel) and even more by 1975 (film) that psychiatry was abusing its inmates. And Lord of the Rings presupposes an awareness that power corrupts (could not have been popular in old Babylon!) and its later success (after the first decade or two) is linked to environmental awareness also. It is therefore written later than people writing optimistic nonsense of what an Industrial world would bring.

Now, Tarzan had a popularity based not on a real awareness, but on a false one : Darwinism was popular.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - But, you are IGNORING the fact that the feral child meme existed long, long, long before the advent of Tarzan and has been found in many civilizations. Therefore, you cannot claim that "Darwinism" is the foundation for the book.

Tarzan is simply Mowgli set in Africa and rebranded for xx century readers.

You are not only insane, you cannot reason logically. I first learned formal debate when I entered high school, at age 11. I joined the NFL club at my school and had an awesome (and terrifying) Debate coach. By age 12, I could reason circles around you.

You fail...EPICALLY.

[This is what made me think he was somewhat boyish ... last two sentences here.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
You are ignoring the fact that feral child meme is not the Tarzan book.

In earlier manifestations of feral child meme, for instance Romulus and Remus, it is not the she wolf that teaches them speach or communication skills.

Therefore Darwinism is very clearly a huge part of foundation, of the book.

Just because two books or stories include same meme does not mean they are same story.

Try again.

tredzwater
+Hans-Georg Lundahl - Bullshit.

In Tarzan, apes didn't teach him to speak. He learned English from humans...as Mowgli learned Hindi from humans. Burroughs presented Tarzan as the quintessential English gentleman who despises civilization while retaining all of the virtues we equate with civilization. There isn't a speck of Darwinism in the book. All Tarzan learns from the apes is what any juvenile ape would learn.

The same is true for Mowgli. He may have been raised by wolves but he learned to be human from humans.

"Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān", written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century, presents the exact, same meme but with a heavy emphasis on self-discovery. What Hayy learned about being human he got from humans...and this was many centuries before Darwinian evolution became public.

Even earlier, Atalanta was suckled and cared for by a bear sow and learned to hunt like a wild bear. It was only after being found by hunters that she learned the ways of humans.

Tarzan is just an Edwardian epic of the "noble savage" and feral child memes morphed into one hell of a good read. Borroughs stated, many times, that he started writing fiction for the money. He had no other agenda than to become rich...which he did...and more power to him. If Borroughs could see you presenting it as evidence for the universality of evolution, he'd fall out of his coffin...laughing hysterically.

Again, you fail. Time to take your meds.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Your debate team coach didn't teach you to check what you are talking about, did he?

Or did you check the Tarzan story via the Disney film?

"In Tarzan, apes didn't teach him to speak. He learned English from humans...as Mowgli learned Hindi from humans."

Sure, Tarzan learnt ENGLISH from humans. He also learned "language of the great apes" (a language Edgar Rice Burroughs spent some time on, in fact, though perhaps less than Tolkien spent on Quenya) from - the apes.

Wiki : Mangani
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangani


"Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani (meaning "great-ape") is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied (with modifications) to humans. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan."

The last sentence sets Tarzan very clearly apart from more traditional (and to my adult non-Darwinist mind more realistic) treatments of feral child meme. The she wolf nursed Romulus and Remus while they were very small babies, she did not raise them to live like wolves.

When feral children have really been raised to a certain age by wolves, they are when found incapable of living among men. It is absolutely a Darwinist dream to imagine that great apes could have sufficent mental capacities (because having evolved along with humans on same lineage of primates for so long) to not just nurse a human baby but actually raise a human to a somewhat functional adulthood, like very functional for djungle and just needing to reset the codes for speaking with Englishmen too.

"There isn't a speck of Darwinism in the book."

Oh dear God, how come you created such a simple mind without reserving it for you?

Listen, boy, your Darwinism detection kit is severely damaged. And I mean severely.

Also your debate team coach didn't teach you to check what you are arguing against.

"If Borroughs could see you presenting it as evidence for the universality of evolution"

I was not saying evolution was universally believed - I am saying it was universally felt to be the progressive and scientific option. That back when he wrote a man resisting evolution in the place where he lived would have been considered old show.

"It was in the air" does not mean "it was universally believed". Not necessarily. Sth which is universally believed can therefore also be universally in the air - or it can be universally neglected. But sth which is in the air need not be universally believed, it suffices if it is universally challenging.

tredzwater
Haldol. Definitely Haldol.

[Probably didn’t even bother to check the reference to Mangani … once I disagreed with him, I was in his eyes a nut case, whatever my arguments, and the more so the better I argued …]

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Plus you evolutionists seem to be in league with shrinks .... I know one case at least when a creationist has been persecuted as precisely schizophrenic and as "needing haldol".

NOT a nice way to treat people. NOT an honest way to treat debating or what other people in society believe.

Can you get back to civil, if not civilised? Pretty please?

To give you a good example +tredzwater , I will ask you to forgive you for calling you "boy", I had simply forgotten you were 71.

[He did neither forgive, as in say he had done so, nor ask for forgiveness for his uncivil words. Btw, whereever he had put the info, it is there no longer. Perhaps a try at gaslighting* me? Or perhaps it's still there, but simply I didn't find it.]

ozzymandi
+Hans-Georg Lundahl Oh my goodness the creationist and I.D's get everywhere!!!??? They are just a disease cured by logic, if that does not work ignore them,They do not even Deserve a response

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Was that too me or about me?

I am a creationists and I think Tarzan and Mowgli were Evolutionist works. Not totally apparent to every US reader at the time, perhaps, but very clearly in Darwin precocious England, Scottland, Germany, Sweden ...

Btw, if we "get everywhere" we can hardly be considered a disease, can we? We represent the older consensus of the Western World. That is not a fringe position, whatever it may look like now.


* TvTropes : Gaslighting
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gaslighting


** A few clips on capital punishment, featuring post-Reformation England:

"Under the reign of Henry VIII, the numbers of those put to death are estimated as high as 72,000."

Probably in part because he considered loyalty to Catholicism and armed resistance on behalf of it, and in some cases even non-compliance with himself, as high treason.

"Boiling to death was another penalty approved in 1531, and there are records to show some people boiled for up to two hours before death took them."

1531 was the year in which Henry VIII broke with Rome. I knew it was going to the worse from then, but not that it was becoming THAT much worse and THAT quickly.

I skip here a sentence concerning burnings, which concerned people outside England an pre-Reformation too, and get on:

"In Britain, the number of capital offenses continually increased until the 1700's when two hundred and twenty-two crimes were punishable by death. These included stealing from a house in the amount of forty shillings, stealing from a shop the value of five shillings, robbing a rabbit warren, cutting down a tree, and counterfeiting tax stamps."

This would be the kind of anti-poor-men-legislation that Humanism and Reformation tended to.

"However, juries tended not to convict when the penalty was great and the crime was not."

That would be a bit before and up to abolishing of these penalties. Probably this was not the case when the legislations were being made and the jury was not lenient if it was made of Round Head Puritans under Cromwell.

Source : History of the Death Penalty
by michael h. reggio
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html


Having a debate where this came up, will post article with comments on the Medieval parts of it.

No comments: