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Page added on October 15, 2012
Kunstler: Heretics Unite!
History is in a bad mood, as reflected in its acting troupe, the human race. What goes for the micro of an individual human personality also seems true for group. We have our bright moments, or years, and our darker ones and cycles within cycles of these and even sometimes bright and dark at the same moment.
I am reflecting this week on Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which concerns itself with the mood of Europe in the early 1400s, but in particular the career of one Poggio Bracciolini, a poor boy whose beautiful handwriting took him to the center of power as secretary-scribe to the first Pope John XXIII (deposed and de-Poped), and later as key agent to unlocking the lost secrets of classical antiquity. (Apologies if I have already lost you in this week’s departure from my usual japery).
The depravity of the late medieval church hierarchy, and its sick grasp on the totality of everyday life a thousand years after the fall of Rome, is the outstanding feature of the period. What started out in Judea as a humble cult in thrall to the new idea of God-given grace, degenerated into a vile whoredom of concentrated wealth devoted to the routine infliction of cruelties. Poggio was especially struck by the fate of one radical reformer, Jerome of Prague, persecuted as a heretic. Jerome had made a career of inciting subversion in his wide travels around the universities of Europe, and was constantly in trouble with the church establishment.
Around 1415 Jerome ventured to the Council of Constance in Germany where cardinals, archbishops, and other church poobahs had gathered to resolve a vexing administrative problem: the schism that had one Pope in Avignon, France, and another in Rome, each answering to different kingdoms of Europe. In the course of things, Jerome the reformer made a pest of himself and was branded a heretic, thus nominating himself as a candidate for gruesome execution. Poggio witnessed Jerome’s defense of his actions and beliefs before the council higher-ups, which were delivered in Latin with an eloquence not displayed since the days of Cicero. Jerome was eventually burned at the stake anyway, but the heroic power of his rhetoric made an impression on Poggio.
In the course of things at Constance, Poggio’s patron, so-called “anti-Pope” John XXIII, a.k.a. Baldassarre Cossa, got kicked out of the club and Poggio was released from his duties to pursue his true life ambition, which was the rescue of forsaken manuscripts from the high culture of the Roman empire which lay moldering in the vaults and attics of monasteries all over the continent. He traveled far and wide in all weathers and seasons in a time when even the best roads were little more than mule tracks. The indifferent monks let him poke around their storerooms and in cases where he could not purchase a dusty scroll outright, he either pilfered them, or copied them out laboriously in his beautifully clear Carolingian handwriting.
In rescuing the works such as the complete orations of Cicero, the Epicurian discourse of Lucretius (De Rerum Natura – On the Nature of Things), as well as the practical dissertations of Vitruvius on architecture and Frontinus on the Roman aqueducts, he opened the door to the revival of human spirit that we call the Renaissance. If you look closely at the artifacts of the centuries pre-dating the Renaissance, you detect a long-running mood of severe psychological depression when the human race dwelt in abject hopelessness and poverty, with only the hocus-pocus of the church promising better times beyond the mystery of death as the Zoloft of the day. Poggio was not alone in his enthusiasm for the lost world of the ancients, and eventually the rediscovery of a realm of ideas beyond the drear preoccupations of a corrupt church turned on a light for humanity that has burned for five hundred years.
I mention these old and arcane matters because the mood of humanity lately seems to be darkening again, and to some large degree for understandable reasons. Between the melting of the polar icecaps, the destruction of all edible life in the oceans, and the vulgar spectacle of the paved-over American landscape with its clown monuments mocking all civilized endeavor, and a long list of other insults to healthy life on earth, there’s a lot to be depressed about. We stand to lose a proportional amount of human capital accumulated over the past five hundred years as the benighted people of post-Roman Europe lost, and it may take us a thousand years or more to recover – if we recover at all.
It’s especially disturbing to see the infiltration of the latest version of Jesus mumbo-jumbo – Southern Republican Nascar Evangelical orthodoxy – take over the collective mind of the USA. The poverty of ideas this represents can’t be overstated and the timidity of any opposition to it is a disgrace to our heritage. Maybe that’s an argument for electing a Mormon president, since that peculiar branch of the church is so self-evidently childish and ridiculous that it will probably do more to defeat religious fanaticism than all the humanist dissertations ever written – or a thousand clones of Madonna Ciccone dancing in stadiums under laser beams in titanium brassieres.
13 Comments on "Kunstler: Heretics Unite!"
Arthur on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 7:15 pm
Next week JHK is going to attack judaism, honest. Not that I care. It is just that good ol Abe from the Bible/Torah/Koran does not really fascinate me that much, not like Baumgartner does. Now that at least is a descendance from heaven that really verifiable happened, in contrast to that crap from the desert.
DC on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 7:50 pm
What goes around comes around. X-tianity cheered on, and actively assisted in the destruction of classical civilization. The ‘alternative’ xtianity offered, was 1500 years of superstition and ignorance, and a brutality Rome itself would hard-pressed to match, even in its heyday. Now, xtianity stands ready once again, to consign the art and science that has been restored to the bonfires, just like they did 2000 years ago.
US corporations are ravaging the world, but its the X-tians that are cheer-leading it on and providing all the necessary rationalizations for it. The corporate military in the US is for all intents, a modern day, low-rent Xtian crusader army, bought and paid for by Exxon-mobil, but staffed by fundy fanatics, convinced that stealing the resources of ‘those’ people over ‘there’, is doing gawds work….
rollin on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 8:25 pm
Even the monks, fairly educated people of the times, did not realize what they protected. A few did but most were oblivious. Sound familiar? On the other hand, one should not confuse the icing of civilization with the cake. We never really left the medieval times, just layered over it with a thin layer of so called reason, logic and ethics that appears to be falling off rapidly.
Jerry McManus on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 8:27 pm
I think JHK is parroting Greer’s euro-centric view of “the heroic heretic”. I posted this over at kunstler.com, lost in the hundreds of flames and other inanities that pass for comments there:
If it hasn’t been mentioned already, it’s worth pointing out that the Islamic dynasties that were thriving during the European dark ages had just as much to do with preserving cultural artifacts, especially from the ancient Greeks.
This during a time when the aforementioned monks were busy scraping clean the roman and greek texts so that they could re-use the vellum for their hand copied christian gospels.
Islamic math and science flourished for centuries as a result, and was eventually spread to western europe via the moors of Spain, despite the best efforts of the popes to burn heretics at the stake.
DC on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 9:10 pm
Yes history is strange, while(our!) X-tian anscestors (fanatics) were burning people alive for the crime of being witches, and teaching, or least implying that the Earth *might* actually be round, and not the center of the universe, Islam was like Jerry says, the complete opposite. The knowledge that fled east in the wake of x-tian book burnings and other destructions, caused a renaissance of it own in the east.
But, then around 1500CE or so, Islam falls prey to fundamental fanaticism of its own, for a variety of reasons, still not fully understood, Islam enters its own dark ages, and to this day, has never left it. Then the pendulum swings back towards the ‘west’. I suppose its not impossible things could shift again, given how barbaric and backwards the ‘west’, largely due to the United States, is becoming.
Guess well find out soon enough which way history is going to turn this time.
BillT on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 1:03 am
And to think that we as a species were much more advanced thousands of years before Christianity reared it’s ugly head. Look at the thousand ton stones in the base of the temple at Baalbek, Lebanon, or the machined granite ruins at Puma Punku and ask your self whether we have advanced or regressed these last 5,000 years. Ancient civilizations knew more about the solar system and earth thousands of years ago then we do even today. No, we are only enjoying a seemingly advanced civilization, not the real thing.
Barrie May on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 4:01 am
Great to see that Kunstler has not lost his ability to write about our impending doom in such an entertaining and humourous manner. It’s what makes him a great writer!
And, for the record BillT, Howard does not blame Christianity for the evils of the world, just its misuse by self-serving hypocrits and powerlords.
Just like Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and other religeons are fine when they inspire us to live by simple values, question the status quo, and seek to understand the wonders around us. It is just when fundamentalists try to force everyone to adopt their own particular (often twisted) interpretation of things written down thousands of years ago that it goes awry.
But going back to Kunstler’s core premise, it seems to me that we are beholden to try to do much what the Roman’s and later the Monks did. That is a) put in place the solutions to current problems which, even if we can’t implement, future generations can use and b) preserve as much of the knowledge that we have developed in some indestructible, but usable form for our descendents.
Gates outcast on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 9:35 am
True, the Middle East saved the great works of Greece and Rome after the fall, but others from the falling Roman Empire fled to Ireland, and the Irish saved and passed on them. A small time they flourished with all the great minds that came mainland Europe,but those Vikings came and back to the dark ages,again. JHK is right another age of witch burning, demon hunting,and the earth crashing is coming; so go out there and live, create, love, until the zombies arrive.
Arthur on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 9:37 am
Yeah, Baalbek is fascinating. From wiki: “The western, tallest retaining wall has a second course of monoliths containg the famous trilithon: a row of three stones, each over 19 metres long, 4.3 metres high and 3.6 metres broad, cut from limestone. They weigh approximately 800 tons each.”
It is likely these stones were already there when the Romans used them as a foundation for their temple, meaning these stones could have been there for ages. Who on earth (?) might have brought them there?
Recently I visited a historic museum in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands:
http://www.eindhovenmuseum.nl/algemeen/fotos-bekijken.html-0
There were goats, mud and primitive buildings, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke escape from the fireplace. This is how they lived before and after the Romans, like 500 A.D.
Now between the leaves of the surrounding trees of the museum complex, you could see the buildings of ASML in the distance. They produce one of the most complex machinery on this planet, wafersteppers, used by chip giants like Intel and AMD to produce the microchips, like the ones in your computer. So between these muddy houses of 500 A.D. and the hightech wafersteppers of the present at the same location, there is a timespan of merely 1500 years. Now how many unknown timelines of 1500 years of similar development are there hidden in the ‘bushes of history’? Baalbek? Sphinx? Atlantis?
Questions, questions, questions.
csatadi on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 11:53 am
Romans were great people – even their slaves has confirmed it.
Arthur on Tue, 16th Oct 2012 12:10 pm
For westerners with 100 (EU)-150 (US) virtual energy slaves per capita at their disposal (by squandering nature’s capital accumulated over millions of years in a few decades), it is very easy to sneer about slavery.
Enjoy it, while it lasts.
Mike in Calif. on Wed, 17th Oct 2012 8:22 am
Kunstler is an embittered, failed leftist who, by his own admission, has been twice duped by his Kumbaya brethen – once in the sixties and again in 2008. Why he writes about politics and why any one would listen is a mystery.
Contrary to what Barrie says, Kunstler takes precise aim and uses Genetic Fallacy to convict modern Christianity and all of Christianity. But that’s not enough for Kunstler. He plainly lays out his other hates while omitting his own Judaism and even his dear left wing ideals which have failed him repeatedly. There is no ambiguity in “infiltration of the latest version of Jesus mumbo-jumbo – Southern Republican Nascar Evangelical orthodoxy.” Even that is not the end of his acid as he squarely and shamelessly attacks the ~entire~ Mormon religion.
No, I’m not Christian. But apparently I do have a better grasp of history than Kunstler, Greer or McManus above. You do realize that the “European Dark Age” and the Islamic “Golden Age” are literary devices of contrast devised by Westerners for Westerners, do you not?
We may debate whether Muslims in conquered territories briefly eclipsed Europe in overall literacy rates, but it is unlikely. Much of the paltry sum of material “transmitted by Islam” was in fact transmitted first by Eastern Christians. The rare patron Muslim ruler helped the process. More common was disdainful neglect or outright destruction. In general, Muslims wrote little and kept less. This is not the favored line but it is nonetheless true. We know, for example, that the Black Death ravaged Egypt as thoroughly as Europe but the paucity of records has made that reconstruction difficult (versus England, Germany, others).
Barbarian movements and Christianity certainly put a brainlock on Europe for 500 years, but by the 13th Century there is no doubt that Europe had already vastly outpaced poor Muslimdom. Further, radicalism in this retrograde (as Churchill put it) superstition is not a recent phenomena, but has been present from Day One, not the least of which in the “prophet” himself.
Many of the claims to justify the contrasting “Golden Age” are found to be false on examination. Among them:
Invented the astrolabe: Nope. Hypatia knew of it.
Invented soap: Nope. From Babylon to Galen soap is variously known and described.
Invented algebra: Improved, yes. Invented, no. Ancient Greeks.
Invented stirrups: Please.
Devised “Arabic numerals”: Nope. India.
Even that picturesque icon of the Nile, the lateen rig, owes nothing to Arab or Islam. Etc. Etc.
All of this skirts the real problem with Kunstler (and the “Transition” movement). On the one hand, he/they sing on and on about localization while simultaneously insulting, villifying alienating nine tenths (or more) of those who would agree with that first tenet. Conservative preppers/survivalists/whatevers out number left-leaning transition folks easily 10 to 1 (probably much higher). Rob Hopkins knows this and has in recent years tried, unsuccessfully, to prod transition people into dropping activism in mixed company. His idea, quite rightly, is that localization would be more robust and more self-reliant if it is ‘bigger’ and more inclusive. To this, from a survival angle, we can add more secure (strength in numbers).
Now that Kunstler has a garden and new neighbors, do you think the Mormon family down road will warm to ol’ Jimmy when they learn what he thinks of them? Shoot self in foot, insert foot in mouth. Ironically, the transition people who sometimes sneak in the nebulous “social justice” nonsense are in fact virulently intolerant as showcased by Kunstler. Shoot self in other foot.
Mind you, I like Kunstler when he sticks to Peak Oil, meaningful living spaces, the end of suburbia. He leans more to the doom end of spectrum than many transition peeps. And I agree with his pessimism. But he definitely needs to learn some people skills if he’s going to live in a small town environ.
A wise “heretic” wouldn’t make enemies of otherwise decent neighbors.
Arthur on Wed, 17th Oct 2012 11:34 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartres_Cathedral
Have a look at the Chartres cathedral from the middle ages and you will know that ‘superior Islamic culture’ is a myth. They have nothing but their bazars and kashbas, still have nothing more and never will. Arab saying:
“My grandfather rode a camel. My father rode in a car. I fly a jet airplane. My grandson will ride a camel.”
When the Anglo centric oil age will be over, as well as globalism and intercontinental travelling, it is going to be very quiet on the Arab peninsula as well as in Timbuktu and other ‘centers of higher learning’.lol. Maybe hundreds years later a European sailing ship will loom at the horizon, again, noticed by a naked man leaning on his spear…