[Peace-discuss] Fear renders men…stupid and miserable…

[C. G. Estabrook]

The issue is the history that "everybody knows" - which turns out to be a story
justifying modern social arrangements (Whig history) by programmatically
misreading what went before - including the role of religion (read Christianity)
in the history of Europe. E.g., "fear" was not the motive for a thousand years
of European history; it has in fact played a far large role in ruling class
manipulation of the US. (And incidentally one cannot simply read back the class
relations of the modern world into those of the Middle Ages: that was a point if
not the point of Marx' work.) Drawing political lessons from the Avignonese 
papacy or the indulgence controversy (a sidelight of the Reformation) depends on 
knowing what these were; but Whiggism doesn't find that necessary.  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Carl, a few remarks are appended to your discussion. I don't claim expertise 
> in matters of the history of the middle ages. My knowledge results from 
> wandering about France with attendant reading.
> 
> Regards, Mort
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 3, 2010, at 4:57 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Mort--
>> 
>> The subject is the conventional but tendentious account of the rise of 
>> capitalist (aka bourgeois, liberal) society - simply assumed by the writer 
>> of the comment (a guy?) - sometimes called the "Whig interpretation of 
>> history." Chomsky has shown himself remarkably free of conventional 
>> accounts of history (in re e.g. the Hebrew prophets and 17th c. 
>> Rationalists), especially those that are employed to show the virtues of 
>> the capitalist order.  As he says, one has to be highly educated to believe
>>  such things (as the commentator clearly is). You yourself have recently 
>> posted to this list views on Christianity from Chomsky (an atheist) that 
>> are nevertheless far from the liberal paradigm ("The Legacy of 1989").
> 
> Is education bad? One also has to be educated to be critical of conventional 
> histories.
>> Whiggishness characterizes accounts from Fukuyama's "End of History" to 
>> courses in "Western Civilization" (about which Chomsky is fond of quoting 
>> Gandhi: "It would be a good idea").  And a staple of Whiggishness is that, 
>> with the coming of capitalism, humanity has moved from a millennium of 
>> benighted religiosity to five hundred years of clear scientific rationally.
>>  (The 500 years before that 1500 is a bit of a problem, but since no one 
>> learns Latin any more, it can be safely ignored).
> 
> The era of "benighted religiosity" did not pass; it still seems to prevail 
> here in the good old USA, and elsewhere.  But yes it has declined in Europe, 
> especially after 1789 .
>> To take your examples - those cathedrals "magnificent as art and 
>> architecture" (but not magnificent apparently in some other way?) were not 
>> designed "to bring
> 
>> forth the support of multitudes" as much as they were the work of those 
>> multitudes - communes, originally monastic, then urban; they were often the
>>  result of regional rivalries - the modern equivalent would be regional 
>> football teams.
> 
> I believe that the two functions are not incompatible.
> 
> But you've got something there. Churches even stole relics from one another 
> to establish their religious importance and priority and to attract pilgrims 
> so as to bring wealth to the local (church) community. It became a business.
> 
>> They were not "icons of feudalism," because ecclesiastical institutions 
>> were opposed to feudalism - hence the great political struggle of the 
>> Middle Ages, the Investiture Controversy.  (The opposition to feudalism 
>> gave medieval Catholicism some of its characteristic institutions, like 
>> clerical celibacy): see "Sex and power in Catholicism," 
>> <www.counterpunch.org/estabrook0420.html>.
> 
> You probably know that the medieval (and later) "nobility" and the "officers"
>  of the western Christian church, the bishops, were often in league, sending 
> their offspring and relatives to serve in the church or to its monasteries. 
> You probably also know of the great power and wealth of the western church. 
> Certainly, there was often intense rivalry for that power between church and 
> state, but the leaders of both factions often came from the upper echelons of
>  medieval society and intermixed. Like rivalries in the family.
>> Nor were they "built largely on the donations of royalty and the merchant 
>> class": feudalism as a polity was opposed to "royalty" (see Perry Anderson,
>>  Lineages of the Absolutist State) and the merchant class hardly existed 
>> before the collapse of the medieval mode of production in the 14th century,
>>  by which time the great age of cathedral building was over.
>> 
>> Nor did "exalted power and wealth at the expense of the vast poor and 
>> laboring classes" characterize the ruling class of the European Middle Ages
>>  but that of the next period.
> 
> Visit Avignon's Palais des Papes sometime. It flourished in the 1300's.  Its 
> wealth was enormous, and the Popes there reigned over extensive holdings. 
> Whence was that  wealth accumulated? (I don't have detailed knowledge of 
> that.)
> 
>> (As the author of the Manifesto understood.) The rise of the modern world 
>> (i.e., capitalism) depends on "free labor" - i.e., the confiscation of the 
>> right to life and the use of productive property that was general in the 
>> Middle Ages, and the subjection of labor to the wage contract, "the equal 
>> exchange between free agents which reproduces, hourly and daily, inequality
>>  and oppression."
>> 
>> I'm not sure how you know that "an important motivation for ... 
>> contributions [to cathedral building] was to exonerate themselves of their 
>> 'sins' [sic] and to win a place in Heaven," but one can find statements to 
>> that effect from late medieval and Renaissance grandees, particularly in 
>> Italy, from about the fifteenth century -- once the modern age had dawned.
>> 
> 
> What  about "indulgences"?
> 
>> Such attitudes, like the witch-craze, is a phenomenon of the European 
>> Renaissance, not the Middle Ages. (One of the best accounts remains John 
>> Bossy's Christianity in the West 1400-1700.)  Your evocation of judgment 
>> day in art seems to refer primarily to the danse macabre, a late-medieval 
>> (i.e., after the 14th century collapse) theme that was directed primarily 
>> against the new (post-feudal) exploiters - an insistence on equality before
>>  the law of God.
> 
> Not so. Celebrated tympanum(s?) were sculpted in Romanesque churches well 
> before (11th, 12th centuries) the late middle ages (e.g., Conques, Moissac, 
> Arles, etc.).  They were not depictions of danses macabres.
>> As you say, "This is not at all to say that religion [by which you seem to 
>> mean medieval Christianity] has only been an agency of fear."  But that's 
>> the burden of the commentator's crude caricature - which has nothing to do 
>> with the Middle Ages but a great deal to do with ahistorical 
>> anti-Catholicism - the anti-semitism of the intellectual, as has been said.
>>  The motive for a statement has nothing necessarily to do with its truth, 
>> but in this case the commentator simply doesn't know what s/he's talking 
>> about.
> 
> I think you are being overly sensitive here.
> 
> 
>> Regards, CGE
>> 
>> 
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> Carl, Your first paragraph below strikes me as disparagement without 
>>> substance, buttressed only with some here irrevelent favorite thoughts 
>>> from Chomsky, who, I'm not sure would agree with either the tenor or 
>>> truth of what you say about the issue at hand. I have visited a great 
>>> many of the old cathedrals and churches in Europe, Romanesque and Gothic,
>>>  especially in France. One cannot be unimpressed with their magnificence 
>>> as art and architecture, with their attractive power to bring forth the 
>>> support of the multitudes, low and high. But I've always had a guilty 
>>> feeling in visiting and admiring them, being conscious that they were 
>>> icons of feudalism, built largely on the donations of royalty and the 
>>> merchant class, who gained their exalted power and wealth at the expense 
>>> of the vast poor and laboring classes.  And it is clear that an important
>>>  motivation for their contributions was to exonerate themselves of their 
>>> "sins" and to win a place in Heaven. Evidence for this is overwhelming. 
>>> The other side of the coin is that Hell was a great fear, a motivator. 
>>> That the judgement day could be terrible and terrifying is sculpted in 
>>> innumerable portrayals of the last judgement at entrances to these 
>>> medieval edifices, and elsewhere. That (western) religion has seemed to 
>>> prosper in fearful and terrible times, and has profited by inculcating 
>>> fear seems to me undeniable. This is not at all to say that religion has 
>>> only been an agency of fear. So in conclusion, I think the guy who wrote 
>>> the comment I copied has made an insightful observation. On Jan 2, 2010, 
>>> at 8:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> Although the commentator's penultimate paragraph is accurate, her/his 
>>>> account of the "Middle Ages," common as it is, is as intellectually 
>>>> respectable (if not so sophisticated) as a belief in phlogiston.  This 
>>>> sort of ignorance is pervasive among the college-educated political 
>>>> class of the US; as Chomsky says, you have to be highly educated to 
>>>> believe stuff like that. A proper corrective would be to read some 
>>>> actual history - or even basic works like the Communist Manifesto. It's
>>>>  certainly true that fear has been a political motivator particularly
>>>> in the US.  A society founded on two of the greatest crimes in human 
>>>> history - the extinction of the native Americans and the enslavement of
>>>>  native Africans - has a lot to be afraid of, perhaps principally its 
>>>> own conscience, if not the revenge of the victims. But the fear of just
>>>>  retribution expands in the last fifty years as America's victims come 
>>>> to include much of the world. In their supreme cynicism, that fear has 
>>>> been mobilized by the American elite. The post-WWII domestic policy of 
>>>> the USG is encapsulated in the advice of Michigan Senator Arthur 
>>>> Vandenberg to President Truman, that he "scare the hell out of the 
>>>> American people," in order to get his imperialist policies accepted - 
>>>> policies necessitated by the fact that only WWII had cured the 
>>>> Depression, and the end of the war seemed to mean the return of the 
>>>> Depression. Luckily for our rulers, the new bete noire, terrorism, was 
>>>> conjured within a decade of the disappearance of its predecessor, 
>>>> communism.  --CGE Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>>>> Fear is what makes our world turn…  GGreenwald's piece, 
>>>>> [http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/02] is followed by several 
>>>>> perceptive comments. I cite one of them below ... Here is a comment I
>>>>>  found interesting: The fear mechanism is an old one. In the middle 
>>>>> ages the best artists of the time were hired to depict it. The murals
>>>>>  in European churches show the wonderfully imagined horrors and 
>>>>> tortures of hell. You can understand why a populace would be willing 
>>>>> to submit to the rituals and tithing of the church and to support a 
>>>>> group of parasitic clergy living in gold plated luxury in order to 
>>>>> avoid those torments. The people would be willing to go out on 
>>>>> Crusades to prove their devotion and to bring salvation to the 
>>>>> heathens. The practices of the aristocracy, the practices that caused
>>>>>  poverty, faded into the background. For a while the paradigm shifted
>>>>>  away from worshipping a church and submitting to the powerful. It 
>>>>> shifted toward rationalism and personal responsibility. We have 
>>>>> regressed to a people quivering before authority. "Terror" is the 
>>>>> devil on earth. Terrorism is marvelously imagined, magnified, 
>>>>> created, publicized and depicted in great vivid detail by the most 
>>>>> skilled story tellers available. It is used to get us to submit to 
>>>>> the rituals and spending required to control it. Out of our sometimes
>>>>>  meager incomes, we will support a consortium of wealthy weapons 
>>>>> producers in order to protect ourselves. Manufactured fear 
>>>>> infantilizes us and distracts us from the business of life, from 
>>>>> education, jobs and health. We follow anyone like children, joining 
>>>>> Crusades, hoping for the illusion of safety. In both cases, the 
>>>>> imagination is far more destructive than the reality.
>> ###
>> 
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