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A Darker View of the Renaissance

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Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#31

Post by vijayr02 »

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…

From the Wikipedia page:

> Greene wrote in a letter, "What happened was that during the shooting of The Third Man it was found necessary for the timing to insert another sentence."

So a throw away line in every sense of the word :)

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#32

Post by antman »

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

This reminded me a quote from Douglas Adams’ Hitch Hiker guide to the Galaxy:

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#33

Post by elliekelly »

krapp wrote: post #7
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…

That's been happening for a while, but mostly as a techno-utopian reskin of last century's racist and fascist ideologies[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

And the “Intellectual Dark Web”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#34

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

natmaka wrote: post #30
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.

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.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#35

Post by zabana »

xnyan wrote: post #14
tus88 wrote: post #3

Yeah what a pity the dark ages came to and end. /s

The term “dark ages” is a periodization popularized in the mid 19h century. It’s not commonly used in academic discourse because it is nonspecific and subjective in its definition.

and on top of that, that period was only dark for northern and western europe, the rest of the world (including southern europe though its connections with north africa and the middle east) was doing pretty good.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#36

Post by wolco »

hodgesrm wrote: post #23
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 quote is nice but anachronistic. The Swiss were feared mercenaries during the Renaissance and worked for the papal forces. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a legacy of this history that is visible today. It seems they were first hired by Julius II, who was successor to Alexander VI aka the Borgia Pope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard

That's interesting I wonder if the neutral position it takes now is based on that mercenaries role. Don't take sides but profit.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#37

Post by cafard »

wolco wrote: post #36
hodgesrm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote is nice but anachronistic. The Swiss were feared mercenaries during the Renaissance and worked for the papal forces. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a legacy of this history that is visible today. It seems they were first hired by Julius II, who was successor to Alexander VI aka the Borgia Pope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard

That's interesting I wonder if the neutral position it takes now is based on that mercenaries role. Don't take sides but profit.

The preferred light anti-aircraft guns used by both sides in WW II were built under license, one from a Swiss company, one by a Swedish company.

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#38

Post by wolco »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #22
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

A line of great rhetorical effect but not necessarily great logical worth. First of all if he is correct that the Swiss had 500 years of democracy and peace then it follows that they produced a working democratic model which at the time was pretty remarkable. However being Harry Lime it is no surprise that he is not correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Switzerland Second of all I don't know what populatio…

If we take 1500 as the anchor date.

Italy 2.2 million vs 745 hundred thousand Swiss. Venice is 1.5m, Florance is 750,000 although not part of Italy at this point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populat...

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#39

Post by InitialLastName »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #16
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 have always found this a nearly unassailable argument in favour of the swiss model.

Yeah it's really strong. The only viable assault is that its premise ("Switzerland had 500 years of peace") isn't true (as siblings have noted).

Re: A Darker View of the Renaissance

#40

Post by barry-cotter »

wolco wrote: post #36
hodgesrm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote is nice but anachronistic. The Swiss were feared mercenaries during the Renaissance and worked for the papal forces. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a legacy of this history that is visible today. It seems they were first hired by Julius II, who was successor to Alexander VI aka the Borgia Pope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard

That's interesting I wonder if the neutral position it takes now is based on that mercenaries role. Don't take sides but profit.

Swiss neutrality was a decision of the Great Powers, not the Swiss.

> Switzerland has the oldest policy of military neutrality in the world; [1] it has not participated in a foreign war since its neutrality was established by the Treaty of Paris in 1815.

> Although the European powers (Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain and Sweden) agreed at the Congress of Vienna in May 1815 that Switzerland should be neutral, final ratification was delayed until after Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated so that some coalition forces could invade France via Swiss territory.

...

> The dating of neutrality to 1516 is disputed by modern historians. Prior to 1895, no historian referenced the Battle of Marignano as the beginning of neutrality. The later backdating has to be seen in light of threats by several major powers in 1889 to rescind the neutrality granted to Switzerland in 1815. A publication by Paul Schweizer, titled Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralität attempted to show that Swiss neutrality wasn't granted by other nations, but a decision they took themselves and thus couldn't be rescinded by others. The later publication of the same name by Edgar Bonjour, published between 1946 and 1975, expanded on this thesis.

https://wikimili.com/en/Swiss_neutrality

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