[deleted]
The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
51–60 of 249 posts
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Early Middle Ages is common, generally dating from "the fall of the Roman Empire" (which is itself a very ambiguous term) to around 1066. The collapse of the Roman Empire from the 3rd to the 7th century (the process is somewhat more gradual than depicted in popular culture, and the timing depends on where you lived in the Roman Empire) resulted in a serious loss of administrative capability and economic and military…
The Roman Empire's collapse was more drawn out than that. The Empire split into Eastern and Western empires under Constantine. The Eastern half got renamed to the Byzantine Empire and it lasted until the successful Ottoman conquest in 1453. This is not to be confused with the Holy Roman Empire which was not holy, nor Roman, nor a true empire. But which survived until Napoleon conquered it in 1806.
To be clear, we're the ones that renamed it the Byzantine Empire. As far as the people who lived there were concerned, they were living in the Roman Empire, and they would not have understood in the slightest why anyone would think otherwise. Constantine moved the capital, and there was no disruption in the government and administration of the empire until the Fourth Crusade, although they did lose a tremendous amount of territory in the early Muslim conquests.
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#53This 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.
Having read the article, I disagree. What "style" of writing? The sentences aren't excessive, the language is all fairly common (the author even takes pleasure in simplifying "scramasax", clearly inviting us to take pleasure in it as well). What's wrong with it?
It's not meant to be a list of purely literal facts. It's entertaining and a pleasure to read.
As for Paul Graham's opinion piece; well, that's just silly. Something written is inherently different to something spoken; they have different strengths, different attributes, different purposes and, should they have the same goal, can best achieve that goal in different ways. Why choose to discard the strengths of the written?
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#54This 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.
That’s good advice but it’s also highly dependent on culture and time. It’s food advice because the English-speaking culture of today values writing that sounds like speech. It may not have been good advice at all for someone writing in 1920s France. And beyond that, it’s really hard to apply this sort of advice to a translation.
Yes and no. It’s valid that values change and perhaps in the past this sort of dense, self-important prose was the preferred way to write. No doubt many even today would say it sounds more intelligent or educated. However, if the goal is to write in a legible, understandable, comprehensible way, then this has never been a good way to do that. (Indeed, many scholarly works are still written this way, and they are far less accessible as a result. People might feel smarter for reading them but they probably get less from them than if they were written simply.)
As for the translation, I’m not clear when this was actually translated. The stuff I’ve found indicates a publishing date if 1999. If that’s accurate (and it well may not be) then I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect translators to write easy-to-read text in a modern style. I understand the desire to carry the “spirit” of the work through the translation, but I’m not sure that’s what’s at fault when translations read this way. I wonder if translators enamored with the work are trying to use difficult phrasing to make it seem more impressive or educated. I also wonder if sometimes native sentence structure is being replicated in English, where it comes off try-hard when it’s really just an awkward transliteration.
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#55This 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.
Wait until you get ahold of Fomenko
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#56The thing that stands out for me about this period is the lack of a "descent from antiquity". [1] There is no well-established genealogical descent in Western Europe from antiquity to the modern era. Familial lines of descent can be traced to the very late Roman period, and from the early medieval period to the modern era. But there is a chasm that can't be crossed because the societal norms that allowed families to…
That’s not societal breakdown, that just means the inbred aristocracy doesn’t go back to antiquity. Society and its rulers are not the same thing.
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#57This 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.
I can’t claim to be a big fan of Fulcanelli’s, but in the same text, he talked about how philosophers would communicate with ciphers. I have absolutely no proof of this, but wouldn’t put it above Fulcanelli to embed coded messages in his writing, or to write in a way that suggests a cipher. Again, I have no proof, other than that he fancied himself the man who rediscovered alchemy in the 20th century and, since many alchemists embedded codes in their writing, I can see him playing the part.
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#58"The Dark Ages" is also a Eurocentric view of history. What was going on in the Islamic world? In China? The Dark Ages of Western Europe were the brilliant Tang dynasty in China; and the explosion of Islam across the Middle East and across to India, bringing with it tremendous scholarship and economic prosperity.
> 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 conquered, enslaved, and sometimes killed, with the concomitant destruction of libraries and learning. There is a major disruption of the written historical record during this time period comparable to what happened in the Dark Ages or even worse.
It wasn't until after the "explosion of Islam" that the Muslims gradually realized the value of the Greek texts that were preserved during their conquests and everything settled out such that scholars were able to return to their work.
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#59The thing that stands out for me about this period is the lack of a "descent from antiquity". [1] There is no well-established genealogical descent in Western Europe from antiquity to the modern era. Familial lines of descent can be traced to the very late Roman period, and from the early medieval period to the modern era. But there is a chasm that can't be crossed because the societal norms that allowed families to…
Do we know, is this because of a change in society, such that it became difficult or less important to track these things? or is it because of a change in the people, for example people of Roman descent mixing with local tribes, like the Franks, and the local tribes didn't have the traditions of tracking the things that would allow us to trace this back?
Re: The 'Dark Ages' Weren't as Dark as We Thought
#60This 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.
You should use those alarms on PG's writings: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm As for the particular author, he was born in another culture (not all cultures appreciate the matter-of-factness as-you-talk anglo-saxon style of writing, many prominent European writers have called it "barbaric" and "only good for business"). He was also born in a whole other era.
> many prominent European writers have called it "barbaric" and "only good for business"
Snobs in general tend to look down on people who don’t place value on pomposity for its own sake.