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A Darker View of the Renaissance

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Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#41

Post by InitialLastName »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #34
natmaka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't world wars and modern oppression from various regimes kill many?

They did, but wars and oppression aren't an invention of the Industrial Revolution. Premodern leaders were very capable of killing and oppressing people at scale when they put their minds to it.

To put that further, the wars and automated atrocities of the industrial age wouldn't break the noise floor of human suffering in pre-industrial history.

By some estimates, Genghis Khan was responsible for the deaths of 40 million people, and all he had were horses.

Europeans coming to North America led to the deaths of ~50 million people in the 16th century, mostly by accident.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#43

Post by modo_mario »

chrisco255 wrote: post #17
grugagag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the catch is not well put, it’s not going to be just 1C hotter which in my oppinion is off, but the erosion of the coastlines, the near total melting of polar glaciers round, massive rise in sea levels, mass extinctions of many species, chaos and war amongst the remaining people for the diminishing resources, etcetera. All these for technology and comfort at the hands of humans with enormous costs for everything…

I don't know if you've seen the latest, but Greenland just had record ice gain during the middle of the ordinary melt season, after an already substantially strong year (and 3 out of the last 4 years have seen substantial gains): http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ we are thousands of years away from polar melting, if ever. We have less war than they did prior to the industrial revolution. Prior to…

And yet it's glaciers have receded over the past 40 years (and the distance covered is a very deceptive view of total amount of ice lost and you'll find the same everywhere else.

1°C can mean a ton for coral reefs or algae bloom. 1°C can mean a lot for methane retention in permafrost. 1°C has a lot of knock on effects.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#44

Post by barry-cotter »

dbtc wrote: post #12
chrisco255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the 1C increase in global average temps, should we go back to subsistence farming and 1/10th of the population? I wonder if you went back in time and asked your ancestors that question. I believe, after you explained to them how you spend most of your day browsing with a magic rectangle, sit in cush air conditioned environments, have access to full motion and interactive media and entertainment, can order nearl…

They might ask: Where are all of the happy people? Why does everyone still have to work so much and why do they all want more than they have?

I personally am happy to be alive, which I would not be without antibiotics, and I am happy that infant mortality is negligible rather than approaching 50%. A glancing knowledge of history would have any theist on their knees thanking God they were born now and not earlier. Calvin Coolidge was one of the most powerful men on Earth and his son died of an infected booster acquired playing tennis.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#45

Post by barry-cotter »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I've been kind of wondering if we will start to see an increase in anti-enlightenment arguments given the issues we face with no clear way out. Given climate change for example, was the industrial revolution a mistake? If it was an inevitable consequence of the enlightenment era, then was that a mistake? Too early to tell, but if we end up destroying ourselves I guess the answer would have to be "yes", but it's a har…

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death. There's no way climate change is bad enough to make a world where shirts are luxury items preferable.

> Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death.

On a historical level what’s unusual about the Irish Great Famine of 1845-48 isn’t that a quarter of the population died, it’s that that was the last time that happened.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#46

Post by CalRobert »

dbtc wrote: post #12
chrisco255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the 1C increase in global average temps, should we go back to subsistence farming and 1/10th of the population? I wonder if you went back in time and asked your ancestors that question. I believe, after you explained to them how you spend most of your day browsing with a magic rectangle, sit in cush air conditioned environments, have access to full motion and interactive media and entertainment, can order nearl…

They might ask: Where are all of the happy people? Why does everyone still have to work so much and why do they all want more than they have?

They might ask why we don't live in human-scale communities where our friends and family are a short walk, for one. Where and when are our festivals, and why do we separate grandparents from grandchildren, to live lonely lives of isolation with the meager substitute of electronic communication for human contact?

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#47

Post by CalRobert »

barry-cotter wrote: post #45
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death. There's no way climate change is bad enough to make a world where shirts are luxury items preferable.

> Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people lived in what we'd today call "soul-crushing poverty", and it wasn't uncommon to have bad harvest years where a couple percent of a nation's population starved to death. On a historical level what’s unusual about the Irish Great Famine of 1845-48 isn’t that a quarter of the population died, it’s that that was the last time that happened.

Also that the same famine struck other places but the administration handled it in Ireland catastrophically poorly.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#48

Post by danbolt »

goto11 wrote: post #29
throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

The line is not supposed to be taken at face value, and certainly not as a history lesson. In the movie Harry Lime was a criminal selling fake penicillin on the black market thereby killing many people including children (he acknowledges as much, as far as I can remember). The quote is just him trying to justify this to his old friend who is horrified to discover his scheme. This is like when people take "you cant ha…

Can you do one for the "Hard times create strong men..." quote next? I feel like that one gets tossed around a lot.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#49

Post by Razengan »

throw0101a wrote: post #9

There's a line I ran across from the movie The Third Man where the character Harry Lime says: > In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

I would have chosen to live in Switzerland instead on Italy.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#50

Post by telotortium »

danbolt wrote: post #48
goto11 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line is not supposed to be taken at face value, and certainly not as a history lesson. In the movie Harry Lime was a criminal selling fake penicillin on the black market thereby killing many people including children (he acknowledges as much, as far as I can remember). The quote is just him trying to justify this to his old friend who is horrified to discover his scheme. This is like when people take "you cant ha…

Can you do one for the "Hard times create strong men..." quote next? I feel like that one gets tossed around a lot.

If you've got time to read 6 posts, there's a very in-depth response to that quote starting here: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
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