The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by gmiller123456 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #207

UnhelpfulYoda wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, this is just the latest fad with 'scholars' ...the whole thing about how The Dark Ages weren't really dark, has been going on for about 20 years now... there are good reasons that this period is called the dark ages. I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick.

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick. The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.' The civil war thing is really confusing…

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states began to succeed, and in their succession documents, they quite clearly stated that it was about slavery. The public position of the North was that they fought to prevent the South from succeeding, and they didn't want to end slavery (followed with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And its that attitude that allowed the South, after the fact, to promote the idea that it wasn't about slavery, and the North wasn't about to correct them.

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

#242

Post by ABCLAW » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #235

ABCLAW wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first paragraph of the quoted piece is a nightmare. The first sentence of the second and third paragraph are poorly drafted as well. In the rest, the verbose recounting fits the theme and does not distract from the point. As a writing exercise, let me re-write the piece: "What happened during the Middle Ages is unclear and the evidence we use to understand it is contradictory. Reviews depict the period as one fil…

The first paragraph of the quoted piece is a nightmare. Mmm... use of the word "nightmare" to criticise something that's discussing the dark ages, where the critique is about just that kind of skill level, but then you go on to present a junior grade summary. Deep troll or accidental writing ability? Too close to call. But that illuminates a fundmental part of the problem here. To many on both sides of the page, much…

You're replying after the quoted paragraph was snipped from the thread, so I'm not sure if you actually read my post with the full context.

The original paragraph was: "Paradoxical in its manifestations, disconcerting in its signs, the Middle Ages proposes to the sagacity of its admirers the resolution of a singular misconception. How to reconcile the unreconcilable? How to adjust the testimony of the historical facts to that of medieval art works?"

This paragraph is obfuscated at best, unintelligible at worst. This is a fairly common writing style in continental philosophy, and in that field the debate isn't whether or not the writing is bad. It's whether or not the writing is intentionally bad.

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

#243

Post by zaccus » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

gmiller123456 wrote: post #241

wallace_f wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick. The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.' The civil war thing is really confusing…

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states be…

>Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states

He may have taken a more moderate stance for his presidential campaign, but for most of his political career Lincoln was a hardcore, outspoken abolitionist. Nobody at the time seriously thought Lincoln was OK with slavery; that's why southern states immediately started seceding.

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

#244

Post by acqq » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #225

z3phyr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pagan does not constitute dark. Most of the pagans recorded history when they were in power.

Yes, the term is problematic: "pagan" was traditionally just a derogatory term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism "The notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition. As such, throughout history it was generally used in a deroga…

And another quote from the same Wikipedia page:

"The term pagan is not attested in the English language until the 17th century.[24] In addition to infidel and heretic, it was used as one of several pejorative Christian counterparts to gentile as used in Judaism and to kafir ('unbeliever') and mushrik ('idolater') as in Islam.[25]"

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

#245

Post by DFHippie » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

gmiller123456 wrote: post #241

wallace_f wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect it will die a slow death, just like the 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery' schtick. The dark ages I seem to have a more-clear picture of: derth of historical record, rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, technological progress, and unfortunate disease, all each contributed, and amalgamated into the public conscious of defining the era as 'dark.' The civil war thing is really confusing…

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states be…

This is a speech Lincoln delivered well before he was president:

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper....

This is the Dunning School:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School

It is Confederate apologia, not Union. It is the origin of the states' rights theory of the Civil War.

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

#246

Post by wallace_f » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:33 AM UTC

zaccus wrote: post #243

gmiller123456 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states be…

>Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states He may have taken a more moderate stance for his presidential campaign, but for most of his political career Lincoln was a hardcore, outspoken abolitionist. Nobody at the time seriously thought Lincoln was OK with slavery; that's why southern states immediately started seceding.

Lincoln used the military to block Southern ports, which was what I understood to be what prompted secession.

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

#247

Post by wallace_f » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

DFHippie wrote: post #245

gmiller123456 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the civil war wasn't about slavery is mostly the view pushed by the North before the war. Before the war, there was a balance of slave and non-slave states, and any time they were added, that balance was preserved. Lincoln's position was that slavery was OK, but should spread into any new states, and that would have tipped the balance in congress to anti-slavery. After Lincoln was elected, the states be…

This is a speech Lincoln delivered well before he was president: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.... This is the Dunning School: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School It is Confederate apologia, not Union. It is the origin of the states' rights theory of the Civil War.

He's not writing confederate propaganda. Can we graduate from this idea of calling everyone you disagree with a nazi or racist? You can see here, what he wrote is consistent with my reading of history: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0032.105/--lincoln...

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

#248

Post by andysomniac » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 11:24 AM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #3

The Dark Ages are something of a misnomer but there does not seem to be any question that levels of literacy, trade, and social organization were lower than the preceding Roman era and than even the latter part of the middle ages after 1200 or so. Indeed much of the 'darkness' is the result of so few written records surviving from the era, which in turn points to far fewer of them being generated in the first place.…

In UK archaeology, a popular term is "Migration Period"

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

#249

Post by scarmig » Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #221

scarmig wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare Britain in the post-Roman area with Rome at the height of empire. London in the "Dark Ages" didn't have aqueducts. But Londinium was part of the periphery of the empire, and it also never had aqueducts. There's not that much information to be gained by cherry picking the elements of the central core of the Roman Empire and asking why they weren't present in far flung areas in the post-Roman era. Ske…

It was always my impression that the term “dark ages” was never about quality of life, but created in opposition to the enlightenment (partly because we don’t know much about that age, partly because of the role superstition and belief held in documented cases). In Austria and Germany most people descripe the Nazi era also as “dark times”, despite there beeing roads built (although the Nazis were so in debt at the be…

The concept of the Dark Age was, indeed, invented in the Enlightenment, and contemporaneous rhetoric did use it to portray the Enlightenment project in a favorable light as a break from a benighted past.

The issue is that the Enlightenment wasn't a project to move human beings to some better plane, but to rationalize society and its members in a way that made it more amendable to control and planning. And so centralized power could use Enlightenment ideology to eliminate alternative power centers, centralizing power in the hands of a single state that could reorganize society for its own ends.

That itself had pros and cons, with the biggest con being the newfound ability for states to execute projects of mass violence more effectively.