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The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

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Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#121

Post by admax88q »

drb91 wrote: post #72
smacktoward wrote: post #43

> The true “dark age,” of course, was the early 1940s when, simply as a side effect of industrial killing, great swathes of the past disappeared. One small yet major example—the extraordinary series of paintings of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen, made in the 1170s either by the saint herself or under her supervision, disappeared in the general catastrophe that unfolded in Dresden in early 1945. We only know what…

This is a very specific, narrow interpretation of the dark ages. It is not a good term to use in any circumstance, which the article illustrates well. Secondly, in the event of societal collapse, I'm not exactly looking for a great work of art. I image we lost far more texts through preventable destruction and lack of preservation than we lost novel texts written during the post-roman european collapse. I think the q…

> but that's mostly meaningless and these works hold virtually no cultural value compared to works we can actually read and engage with.

You've basically defined away the problem. If its lost then we can't read and engage with it and therefore has no cultural value.

I mean sure, things we don't have by definition can't contribute to culture today. But that is a useless tautology when talking about lost works.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#122

Post by slurry »

beat wrote: post #106
Amezarak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the explosion of Islam across the Middle East and across to India, bringing with it tremendous scholarship and economic prosperity. This is a very misleading description of what happened. The early Muslim conquests caused major disruption in the Middle East, otherwise known as the Roman and Persian Empires, as cities which had been full of scholarship and prosperity for centuries were invaded and the population con…

Those same Muslim scholars were the ones who preserved and promoted Greek texts that were destroyed by early Christian fanatics.

That's simplified history at best. Greek texts were much (much) better preserved in the Byzantine empire, and were lost to the West mostly because people forgot Greek and copies decayed.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#123

Post by foldr »

dpark wrote: post #120
foldr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want my clothes to be practical. Some people want this and want everyone else to know it, so they buy really ugly clothes just to prove that they don’t care about aesthetics. You seem to think that it’s impossible for prose to be aesthetically pleasing and comprehensible at the same time. But in fact, the quoted text is both. If it had been written in a plainer style, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading all o…

I find it neither. I find the phrasing off-putting and the content low for the number of words.

If you can't comprehend it, how have you managed to determine that the content is low for the number of words?

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#124

Post by Sharlin »

the_af wrote: post #116
dpark wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fossuser’s criticism was not directed at the article at all. It was directed at the Fulcanelli quote given by ohaideredevs. The Dwellings if Philosophers (as translated) starts out with “Paradoxical in its manifestations, disconcerting in its signs, the Middle Ages proposes to the sagacity of its admirers the resolution of a singular misconception.” This says so little with such absurd wording that it’s almost word s…

Which words seem absurd and word soup to you? "Paradoxical"? "Sagacity"? "Manifestation"? "Resolution" Perhaps because Spanish is my first language, none of those seem purple prose or difficult to me. They are very straightforward, with the possible exception of "paradoxical": most people who don't read books don't know what it means. For example "sagaz" (someone who displays sagacity) is a very common word to us; Sa…

I'd say "Sagacity" is definitely a very rare word in English, certainly less common than "paradoxical". It is often the case in English that a Romance loan is considerably more high-brow than its Germanic synonym ("wisdom" in this case).

(I'm not a native speaker either, though.)

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#125

Post by dragonwriter »

gonehome wrote: post #19

This seems like a perfect example of someone who needs to read pg’s essay “write like you talk”: http://paulgraham.com/talk.html I don’t get an intelligence vibe from this style of writing - it mostly just sets off my bullshit alarms.

PG’s essay is good advice for modern American culture when addressing what it is explicitly framed as being for: maximizing the number of people who will read through your writing.

It may not be ideal for other goals, including maximizing utility of your work (or persuasiveness z for persuasive writing) to people who do read it. Different forms of expression between writing and speech, which differences are also different by purposes and intended audience of the writing, have evolved for real reasons.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#126

Post by dpark »

foldr wrote: post #123
dpark wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it neither. I find the phrasing off-putting and the content low for the number of words.

If you can't comprehend it, how have you managed to determine that the content is low for the number of words?

Now you're being disingenuous and borderline trolling.

At no point did I say it's literally impossible to read.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#127

Post by factsaresacred »

beat wrote: post #104
factsaresacred wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The Dark Ages" is also a Eurocentric view of history. That's like describing 'The Great Leap Forward' as a Sino-centric view of history. "The Dark Ages" refers to a time as well as a place. Specifically, Western Europe.

Is it, though? I think it's clear that "Great Leap Forward" was China-specific, but "Dark Ages" isn't really taught as specific to western Europe. Which is the problem.

> Is it, though?

Yes, I believe so. I'm not even sure the Dark Ages are taught outside of countries with European heritage.

Nevertheless, anywhere the topic is discussed, it's usually mentioned in comparison to other periods of European history. That alone tells us that it's a term intended to describe regional rather than global events.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#128

Post by ivanhoe »

Those were the dark ages because previously there was a highly developed civilization with its sophisticated culture, art, science, technology and liberties, and then the western world sunk into an era where almost all of it was temporarily forsaken. It fell into the darkness and chaos (at least from the point of people who lived in the Roman empire). Barbaric tribes raided the lands, many local wars again started since there was no central rule anymore, Catholic church imposed insanely strict rules - pushing art and science knowledge and skills of humanity hundred of years back. Ideas of health and sanitation and hygiene that Romans cared a lot about were practically non-existent, so diseases ravaged the population. And then came the plague and killed more than half of the population and the rest mostly fled to country-side leaving many fortified cities completely uninhabited. It doesn't mean that people were stupid or that they didn't craft pretty things back then, of course they did and the conquering tribes also had their primitive culture and crafts, but it was very limited and heavily sanctioned by church, unlike before, and almost all art was reduced to just religious themes or simple decorations. In Byzantine Empire there was even a brief period of iconoclasm, when it was forbidden to show any humans in paintings, like in Islam. So, yes, maybe it wasn't the world from Mad Max movies and there was no Orcs, but it wasn't that far away from it as the author makes it sound. Just compare it to the renaissance (which was still lagging behind classic era) and you'll see how dark it really was.

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#129

Post by colechristensen »

dpark wrote: post #95
colechristensen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Snobs in general tend to look down on people who … That in itself is snobbery. It's just fashion bouncing back and forth between hating on the poor and hating on the rich. One is fashionable until everyone does it then the opposite is in vogue. Are the cool kids today wearing factory-ripped jeans these days or are they hating on people who do? It is just stupid to say "this style is the only acceptable style and any…

> It is just stupid to say "this style is the only acceptable style and anyone doing anything different is an asshole". It isn't stupid. It's snobbery. If you denigrate straightforward writing as "barbaric", you're a snob, plain and simple. > Surface quality is boring, substance is important. My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance. If your goal is to educate or…

>My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance.

There is the snobbery. Bad writing is everywhere. Some people have large vocabularies and use them well, some people don't. Becoming a good writer also requires a lot of bad writing. Complex writing more so. If you say everything complex is just about style and showing off, it reflects poorly on your ability to determine quality of complex, or any writing.

There is nothing wrong with not understanding something or having no interest in something, but doing this virtue signaling to put yourself above anything you don't understand is anti-intellectual bullshit and you might as well be protesting against vaccines. It's the same as black kids shaming each other for "talking white" or people yelling about how "we speak English in this country".

Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought

#130

Post by chc »

admax88q wrote: post #121
drb91 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very specific, narrow interpretation of the dark ages. It is not a good term to use in any circumstance, which the article illustrates well. Secondly, in the event of societal collapse, I'm not exactly looking for a great work of art. I image we lost far more texts through preventable destruction and lack of preservation than we lost novel texts written during the post-roman european collapse. I think the q…

> but that's mostly meaningless and these works hold virtually no cultural value compared to works we can actually read and engage with. You've basically defined away the problem. If its lost then we can't read and engage with it and therefore has no cultural value. I mean sure, things we don't have by definition can't contribute to culture today. But that is a useless tautology when talking about lost works.

I think you've misinterpreted their point. They were pointing out that whether or not we know the thing existed doesn't change the fact that we don't have it, and it's the fact that we don't have it that prevents it from contributing to culture today.
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