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The Medieval Mindset (2017)

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Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#61

Post by jtolmar »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #30
megaman22 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jousting has to be at least as violent as two NFL players running full-bore at each other on a kick-off, and we know that's dangerous for CTE. Also once you got to close-quarters on medieval battlefields, your center torso would be covered up pretty well with armor or a shield, so most of the injuries are coming underneath stabbing into the groin and legs. Or from above, bashing down on the head and shoulders with ax…

Ok, I'll grant that jousting seems like an almost guaranteed concussion. But I always assumed that the percentage of people with access to jousting practice would be so small, that there wouldn't be enough of them to really define the mindset of the age.

The classes with access to jousting were the same as the ones making decisions, though.

Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#62

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

sunseb wrote: post #13

I think it may be biased to think that medieval life was a nightmare. It's kind of a modern propaganda (that started in the Renaissance - a more bloody period with a lot more wars by the way) to dismiss this old world and impose a new one.

I agree. The original article reads very much like a Whig history of the medieval peroid.

Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#63

Post by benbreen »

froasty wrote: post #60
benbreen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the surviving primary sources weren't written by Angolans. But because Portuguese Angola was centered around slave trading, the sources produced by the colony certainly involved Angolans: reports of slaver's raids, counter-attacks by African military leaders, surgeons remarking on slaves' diseases, etc. Vincent Brown The Reaper's Garden is a great guide to diasporic African folkways surrounding d…

Okay, so there aren't primary sources. That's totally fine, though at this point, it's moot to speak about the relative ability for a traditional culture to cope with elevated mortality since we've moved into dealing with conjecture purely in slave economies created by conquerors and entirely subaltern peoples. Just curious, earlier you stated that you spent "a lot of [your] mental life in the 17th century", where do…

All history is conjecture. The primary sources relating to 17th century Angola exist, they're just sparse. I just told you that Queen Nzinga sent letters to the King of Portugal, for instance. If you're genuinely interested in this, John Thornton and Linda Heywood both give good surveys of what sources are available and what they can tell us.

I work on early modern Britain, Portugal, and their colonies.

Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#64

Post by ItsMe000001 »

kaybe wrote: post #51
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It occurred to me some time ago that the big question is the opposite: What do we not do that humans thousands of years ago did with their brains? My thoughts went like this: Since the brain is quite expensive evolution would not have grown it so much if it had not been needed. But this means humans really used all that brain. That means if we now use it for so many very different things in a very - very! - recent te…

Emotions and relationships with other humans are still hard though.

But relationships have become a lot more complex with the huge increase in population density, plus a lot more flexibility and movement. We now have to deal with a lot more people than any of our ancient ancestors, and a lot of change. Our networks of work and cooperation are unprecedented by anything in history too.

Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#65

Post by Jesus_Jones »

gumby wrote: post #41

This is quite good, though I disagree on one point: > "FORGET...Progress" I mean I completely agree, it's just for the modern reader infected with the victorian idea of "progress" (which has also polluted most people's understanding of how evolution works) this difference is even more profound. There was a common belief in a largely static social order; why try for profound change? You can try to usurp the king, but…

i don't get what you are talking about. please explain what the problem is with the victorian idea of progress (with or without scare quotes. And what do you mean by that, including evolution. besides christianity taking over religious thought in roman society, what does original sin have to do with that, just the philosophical impact?

Re: The Medieval Mindset (2017)

#66

Post by jkingsbery »

Skerples wrote: post #52
jkingsbery wrote: post #23

As a defense of medieval society, I see where this is going, but a lot of the details of the defense are just wrong. Just a couple examples: "Foreigners. I can read about far-away places in a book or look up a street-view picture of a city on the other side of the world. I live in a multicultural city. I'm not so much tolerant as apathetic, but that's good enough (and might even be better; tolerance implies tension).…

> With that, came a sharing of culture, artistic style, literature, and so on. Elements of this shared culture can be seen from the Black Sea all the way to Ireland. Absolutely! But remember that the process was generally slow, non-uniform, and perilous. People did travel the world, but with nothing close to the ease of modern life. I really wanted to drive the contrast home. On average , the medieval world was local…

I could have kept going - these are meant to be examples, not exhaustive. My point is that rather than rebutting simple stereotypes with other simple stereotypes, everyone is better served by acknowledging that history and people are complicated.
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