I STEAL LIBANON'S STUFF AGAIN | 2006-03-17
This is another comment that I simply insert -- or steal -- for Bob's Blog:
Scurvy was another Great Leap Forward from the Renaissance."
LOL! Well, there go your Maoist admirers. The liberals are still here, though.
I think the Renaissance was more like the Cultural Revolution, myself.
I've seen interesting analyses that see the Renaissance as the culmination of the increasing
influence of Islam on the West. It began with the cult of chivalry and the troubadour,
imported from Islam by the Crusaders. The technological revolution that emerged from the
Renaissance was the result of the rediscovery of algebra, the source of which is indicated
by the fact that "algebra" is an Arabic word. Finally, the political event that marked the
beginning of the Renaissance was the Ottoman conquest Constantinople in 1453.
I don't hold with this theory myself, but it is popular with many who don't like the modern world very much and who would therefore like to prove that it's all due to Asiatic, anti-Western
influence. The most prominent supporters of this theory today are, of course, the neoconservatives.
COMMENT:
You see, I can not only write, I can COMMENT, too!
I would call myself a Renaissance Man, but in this case I will desist.
It is interesting how the Renaissance was popular with the conservative professors of Europe
and nineteenth century America. They used it, in fact, Walter Pater INVENTED it -- to show
how the masses were in a thousand years of stagnation and misery throught the Dark Ages-- in
which they included the Middle Ages --until the Scholars discovered Civilization again in the
Renaissance.
There was no civilization when the Scholars were lost inthe Fall of Rome (a term that always
confused Constantinople). So for exactlya thousand years all was darkness and dirty until
the Scholars of the Renaissance rediscovered the Scholars of Classic Times.
This unmitigated crap was Official Doctrine when I was in shcool in the 1950s. Nobody put
it into the bald and perffectly correct English I stated it in above.
We are, in fact, being destroyed by overcomplicating things that are, stated in English,
plainly absurd.
What is interesting is that the academic bureaucracy that calls itself The Intellectuals
today have taken on the old Tory view of the Renaissance without any interruption. Once
they, the Scholars, take over, all will be well.
Walter Pater and Mao Tse Tung would have agreed perfectly that it is not the PEOPLE who make
a society. They would agree that it is a set of BOOKS that will make all peoples what they
should be.
I will end by repeating LibAnon on this aspect of the Renaissance:
"I don't hold with this hteory myself, but it is popular with many who don't like the modern world very much and who would therefore like to prove that it's all due to Asiatic, anti-Western influence. The most prominent supporters of this theory today are, of course, the neoconservatives."