Thread: Renaissance V 2.0

Originally Posted by Winston

You keep focusing on my inability to read the minds of leaders of the Renaissance as proof that they were slackers like today's "leaders".

Five hundred years later, we revere and admire the beauty of the works of Michelangelo and Da Vinci. I still marvel at the insight and brilliance of Niccoli Machiavelli. I don't need to talk to them. Their works speak for themselves.

How to you know what the average person revered and admired 500 years ago?

Now, can you honestly say that five hundred years from now, people will look at an iPhone 4s and feel the same awe? Or be inspired by a Deepak Chopra book? Right.

No, I can not honestly say that.

Originally Posted by Writ-with-Hand

Winston, without taking anything away from the achievements of the European Renaissance, technological and scientific advancements are always developed from the technology and knowledge of previous generations. It would be s stretch to think Europe was simply dumb, the rest of the world bright, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere the Europeans became brilliant and enlightened. Whats more... the European Renaissance from what I have read was largely financially driven by European colonialism and slave trade.

And in the end the 1500's were the 1500's. I don't know about you but in the 1500's my half-black-__ would have been banned from entering the Priesthood in Mexico, possibly at strong odds of being tried under Inquisition, and in all probability the slave of some converso Jew. I would have had the future option of manumission though, so, I guess I could thank the Spaniards and Catholic nations for learning their protocols on slavery from the ancient wisdom of the classical Romans and Greeks, unlike much of the antebellum USA. So, hooray for the Renaissance.

Gotta hate those evil white Europeans. Seriously, you have to hate them. They teach that in college now.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Ok, all they did was steal ideas from antiquity and enslave the poor, peaceful people of the Earth. Those they didn't enslave they either oppressed or killed in wars of genocide.
The rest of the planet, during the Renaissance, was a peaceful oasis filled with love and daisies. If those stupid Europeans had just stuck to feudal serfdom, the world would have been better off. Besides, who can argue with the Divine Right of Kings?
Best of all: 47 year life expectancy!

Oh, and guys... can you give the Tea Party bashing a rest? Is it needed in EVERY POST? Honesty, you're beginning to sound a bit kooky and obsessed.
Make you a deal. I'll promise to stop looking for commies under my bed, and you refrain from mentioning the Koch brothers and posting charts from Media Matters and Move On dot org.

Originally Posted by Winston

Gotta hate those evil white Europeans. Seriously, you have to hate them. They teach that in college now.

I don't think I insinuated that.

I'm reading a book on the Comanches right now, and I have difficulty not sympathizing more with the Anglo-Americans.

But the barbarity that was present in tribal societies like the Comanche or the evils present in advanced civilizations like the Aztec aside, Europe did financially profit from colonialism and conquest. My acknowledging that has nothing to do with whether or not white Europeans were evil.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Ok, all they did was steal ideas from antiquity and enslave the poor, peaceful people of the Earth. Those they didn't enslave they either oppressed or killed in wars of genocide.
The rest of the planet, during the Renaissance, was a peaceful oasis filled with love and daisies. If those stupid Europeans had just stuck to feudal serfdom, the world would have been better off. Besides, who can argue with the Divine Right of Kings?
Best of all: 47 year life expectancy!

Oh, and guys... can you give the Tea Party bashing a rest? Is it needed in EVERY POST? Honesty, you're beginning to sound a bit kooky and obsessed.
Make you a deal. I'll promise to stop looking for commies under my bed, and you refrain from mentioning the Koch brothers and posting charts from Media Matters and Move On dot org.

I don't know how long the typical person lived before the era we now call the Renaissance. But life "averages" are pulled up or down by various factors like infant mortality rate. Plenty of people lived into old age in Europe before the Renaissance. It's just that many would die off before old age.

I also don't have a whole lot of problem with Europe once having had a feudal structure for their societies. And that's not me implying feudalism was the best Europeans could achieve nor am I imply that is the system of governance I prefer. I'm simply saying that it was a phase and structure that worked for Europeans until the majority of them felt improvements where needed.

The Comanche and plain Indians had a much different social structure to their lives than the Spanish, Mexican, and later Anglo-Americans had to theirs. It was a more convoluted social and political process through bands. But it worked for them for centuries. Not a system I prefer but it had some benefits or merits to it (as opposed to complete anarchy). In certain ways plain Indians lived a much more free life than we do today. In other ways they were enslaved to seasons, mother nature, buffalo dependance, superstition, and some very violent and barbaric cultural practices and interactions between nations or tribes deemed enemies. But all humanity seems to have been structured off of the tribal hunter-gather model at one point or another, then becoming agrarian civilizations at some point. I just don't view the Renaissance or the history of any human development as simply leaping from zero to one-hundred in the blink of an eye. I think as a rule of thumb we learn and improve (or at times decline) from those that came before us. Sometimes the learning might be more horizontal, in the form of one culture learning from another, the Catholic Spanish learning from the Islamic Moors might be an example of that. Plain Indians learning how to ride horses and fight mounted from the Spanish might be an example of that (the Comanche seem to have surpassed the Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American in horsemanship and mounted warfare).

And everything in Roman and Greek antiquity wasn't what we would regard as "great" achievements as much as barbaric and blood lusting. I'm thinking of gladiator events and the circuses that slaughtered animals in such high numbers for entertainment as to be mesmerizing. Your feudal European didn't have that nor was an urban slave population ever reached into the numbers ancient Rome had until the founding of the City of Rio de Janeiro.