I've added a new class to my schedule this year and a few of my students are freshmen of the traditional age. That prompted me to check out this year's Beloit College Mindset List. This is a list of cultural things that have been true since this year's freshmen were born, which was about 1996. A few of the items from this year's list:
* Two-term presidents are routine, but none of them ever won in a landslide.
* When they see wire-rimmed glasses, they think Harry Potter, not John Lennon.
* Joe Camel has never introduced one of them to smoking.
* Hell has always been associated less with torment and more with nothingness.
* Whether to embrace fat or spurn it has been a front page debate all their lives.
* Bill Gates has always been the richest man in the U.S.
Showing posts with label Historical perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Historical perspective. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Is this what you meant by traditional marriage?
Sara Boboltz in Huffington Post reviews some major ideas in the history of marriage to show that today's much touted "traditional marriage" is nonsense.
In Ancient Greece marriage was to determine which heirs were legitimate. The ideal union was homosexual.
In many indigenous societies multiple wives were important simply because of the sheer amount of work that needed to be done.
In Ancient China the son had better side with his father even if it was against his wife. Family members married off deceased relations in ghost marriages so the dead would not be lonely.
In Egypt after the time of Alexander co-wives saw each other as a threat to the power of their own children.
Men in Ancient Rome were family managers. If he needed to form an alliance he would divorce a wife so his new friend could marry her.
In early Christianity sex was believed to interfere with spiritual salvation so celibacy was preferred. But if you must have sex, do it in a marriage.
In Medieval Europe marriage for the rich was a way for families to merge assets and create international support networks. For the poor marriage was a way to combine your small strip of land with your neighbor's. If the father's approved, the best match was the girl next door.
In 1563 the Catholic Church made marriage a religious sacrament. Just don't love your wife too much. This sacrament meant the church had a say in getting out of a marriage.
In the Enlightenment the idea of love in marriage finally gained ground and there was talk of companionship and cooperation. But not too much -- don't give women the idea they can undermine a man's authority.
Queen Victoria's wedding shifted the view of women from lusty to innocent. Men found it less stressful to visit prostitutes.
Marriage in the early 20th Century began emphasizing satisfying sex lives within marriage. Critics predicted the end of marriage in 50 years.
The 1950s (at least in America) emphasized the nuclear family and these held together pretty well. But there was a long list of kinds of people a white person couldn't marry.
Since then marriage has become to be seen as a human right, a partnership of the couple's own choice between equals. And that began to include same-sex couples.
In Ancient Greece marriage was to determine which heirs were legitimate. The ideal union was homosexual.
In many indigenous societies multiple wives were important simply because of the sheer amount of work that needed to be done.
In Ancient China the son had better side with his father even if it was against his wife. Family members married off deceased relations in ghost marriages so the dead would not be lonely.
In Egypt after the time of Alexander co-wives saw each other as a threat to the power of their own children.
Men in Ancient Rome were family managers. If he needed to form an alliance he would divorce a wife so his new friend could marry her.
In early Christianity sex was believed to interfere with spiritual salvation so celibacy was preferred. But if you must have sex, do it in a marriage.
In Medieval Europe marriage for the rich was a way for families to merge assets and create international support networks. For the poor marriage was a way to combine your small strip of land with your neighbor's. If the father's approved, the best match was the girl next door.
In 1563 the Catholic Church made marriage a religious sacrament. Just don't love your wife too much. This sacrament meant the church had a say in getting out of a marriage.
In the Enlightenment the idea of love in marriage finally gained ground and there was talk of companionship and cooperation. But not too much -- don't give women the idea they can undermine a man's authority.
Queen Victoria's wedding shifted the view of women from lusty to innocent. Men found it less stressful to visit prostitutes.
Marriage in the early 20th Century began emphasizing satisfying sex lives within marriage. Critics predicted the end of marriage in 50 years.
The 1950s (at least in America) emphasized the nuclear family and these held together pretty well. But there was a long list of kinds of people a white person couldn't marry.
Since then marriage has become to be seen as a human right, a partnership of the couple's own choice between equals. And that began to include same-sex couples.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
About to jump in the rankings
Amazing! This is post 2000 for my little blog. It has taken me only a bit more than 5 years to write that many posts. Congratulations to all of you who have read all of them.
Lately, each post has been getting 12-13 views with some variation around that number. Over the last month the most visits have come from Russia, USA, and Britain.
On to something that I'm posting just because it interests me..
Wikipedia has a page of the US Presidents sorted by their time in office. There have been 43 men in the office (Grover Cleveland's two terms were not consecutive which is why Obama is 44). 10 served less than one full term (with poor William Harrison serving only 30 days). An even dozen served one full term. 7 served more than one term, but less than two. Another even dozen served two full terms (though Washington's first term got a late start). And Franklin Roosevelt will be forever at the top serving three terms and 40 days.
Those tallies don't include Obama. If he lives to at least the day after his Second Inauguration he will jump from his current 33rd place to 21st place in length of service. And about 40 days after that he will pass Lincoln.
Lately, each post has been getting 12-13 views with some variation around that number. Over the last month the most visits have come from Russia, USA, and Britain.
On to something that I'm posting just because it interests me..
Wikipedia has a page of the US Presidents sorted by their time in office. There have been 43 men in the office (Grover Cleveland's two terms were not consecutive which is why Obama is 44). 10 served less than one full term (with poor William Harrison serving only 30 days). An even dozen served one full term. 7 served more than one term, but less than two. Another even dozen served two full terms (though Washington's first term got a late start). And Franklin Roosevelt will be forever at the top serving three terms and 40 days.
Those tallies don't include Obama. If he lives to at least the day after his Second Inauguration he will jump from his current 33rd place to 21st place in length of service. And about 40 days after that he will pass Lincoln.
It says what they say it says
Though I'm rather sick of the subject (and my recent big post said about as much as I want to say), this post is another about the Second Amendment and guns. Dave, the fine writer at 4 Quarters, 10 Dimes, gives us some background on the amendment.
Dave's first big point is that we need to look at the Bill of Rights in the same way that the Founding Fathers did. We tend to think the way they thought of things is the same way we think of things. But their political point of view disappeared about 1820.
That reminds me of the difficulty in properly interpreting the Bible. It has been less than 225 years since the Constitution was written and already there is a disconnect. The Bible was written more than 1900 years ago and yet we still believe their worldview, their understanding of God, is the same as ours.
When the Constitution was written the driving force was to make sure Power doesn't take over Liberty. That was done through the balance of powers -- the Prez. (the One) is balanced by the Supremes (the Few), and the Congress (the Many). The biggest fear at the time was that the One could take over, resulting in tyranny (which does not mean a gov't doing something I don't like). Tyranny can destroy liberty.
So the Second Amendment was a fallback position. If the Many and the Few couldn't control the One, the states (not the individual) could raise an army and defeat the tyrant.
On to Dave's second big point. The history of the Second Amendment may be all fine and dandy, but the Constitution is a living document. "It is not something handed down from on high, inviolate and obvious." The Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means and that meaning lasts until the Supreme Court says something new.
The Supreme Court and the latest rulings on guns is a big example of judicial activism. But whether I agree with the Court or not, they did their job. They interpreted the Constitution.
Dave notes one detail in the ruling. Though an individual has a right to carry the gun, the Supremes, in a decision written by Scalia, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." Meaning, gun control is Constitutional.
Now to convince Congress that some people shouldn't have guns.
Dave's first big point is that we need to look at the Bill of Rights in the same way that the Founding Fathers did. We tend to think the way they thought of things is the same way we think of things. But their political point of view disappeared about 1820.
That reminds me of the difficulty in properly interpreting the Bible. It has been less than 225 years since the Constitution was written and already there is a disconnect. The Bible was written more than 1900 years ago and yet we still believe their worldview, their understanding of God, is the same as ours.
When the Constitution was written the driving force was to make sure Power doesn't take over Liberty. That was done through the balance of powers -- the Prez. (the One) is balanced by the Supremes (the Few), and the Congress (the Many). The biggest fear at the time was that the One could take over, resulting in tyranny (which does not mean a gov't doing something I don't like). Tyranny can destroy liberty.
So the Second Amendment was a fallback position. If the Many and the Few couldn't control the One, the states (not the individual) could raise an army and defeat the tyrant.
On to Dave's second big point. The history of the Second Amendment may be all fine and dandy, but the Constitution is a living document. "It is not something handed down from on high, inviolate and obvious." The Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means and that meaning lasts until the Supreme Court says something new.
The Supreme Court and the latest rulings on guns is a big example of judicial activism. But whether I agree with the Court or not, they did their job. They interpreted the Constitution.
Dave notes one detail in the ruling. Though an individual has a right to carry the gun, the Supremes, in a decision written by Scalia, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." Meaning, gun control is Constitutional.
Now to convince Congress that some people shouldn't have guns.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Back in chains
In a speech before a predominantly black audience, Joe Biden said the GOP policies would "unchain Wall Street" and "put you all back in chains." Yup, the GOP squawked about slavery. But there is an important point that Biden may not have intended, and the GOP missed.
Yes, the GOP policies are working to make sure blacks can't vote. Those policies have the greatest economic hit on black communities. Drug laws are causing more havoc on black communities.
And more blacks than whites are in prison. The privatization of prisons has meant those companies are looking for more sources of revenue -- such as selling prison labor. Yup. Blacks back in chains.
Terrence Heath reports on an analysis of Paul Ryan's plans for Medicaid. He notes these things:
* Medicaid is not the problem. Overall health care costs are the problem.
* Medicaid is not just for the poor. It is important to many middle- and working-class Americans.
* The cuts to Medicaid do not lower health care costs. They shift costs to those least able to afford them.
* Cuts to Medicaid are as unpopular as those for Medicare. Democrats compromising with the GOP do so at their peril.
The rest of Heath's post documents the pain the Ryan cuts would generate.
Government has declared the economic crash was nobody's fault and aren't pursuing prosecution. But there is evidence of crimes. The perps may not face jail, but we could make them face continued public humiliation.
* Repeatedly parade their crimes in public.
* Repeatedly count up their billions in ill-gotten gains and compare to the human misery they caused.
* Publicize details of dirty deals and disdain for clients.
* Make them pay millions to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.
Here are five things the rich get out of the government they claim they want to shrink.
* Security: A lot of what the police do is focus on crimes against wealth. Business keep the police focus on homeless, unemployed, and drug users to make sure these groups don't take their anger out on the wealthy.
* Taxes and regulations: The gov't is doing all it can to make tax avoidance, customer fleecing, and reckless polluting legal.
* Research and infrastructure: Long term research takes too much time for corporations focused on quarterly profits, so the gov't does it. Corporations take advantage of roads, ports, power grids, communication networks (including satellites) built and maintained by the gov't. Education, paid for by the gov't, trains the chemists, chip designers, and programmers, engineers, and analysts that corporations need.
* Corporate welfare.
* Disaster recovery: Most of the expense of oil spills are paid by the gov't. There is also financial bailout for those too big to fail.
Tony Danza (yes, the TV star) spent a year teaching 10th graders in Philadelphia, apparently for a reality TV series. He lived to write a book about it, due out next month. He wrote an article in USA Weekend, which comes with the Sunday Free Press. One thought from the article: Every time the school's budget is cut the students get the message that education is not important.
Every August Beloit College releases a Mindset List which looks at culture through the eyes of those entering college. It began as a way to tell faculty about outdated references. It is now used as a way of keeping track of the changing worldview of the young. Now that I teach college students I probably should pay attention. Examples:
My readership in Russia has apparently collapsed. A couple weeks ago I was getting more than 200 hits a week from Russia. Then suddenly it dropped to 20-35 a week. No idea why. My readership this week includes USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, India, Canada, Ukraine, China, Australia, Venezuela, Netherlands, and Thailand.
Yes, the GOP policies are working to make sure blacks can't vote. Those policies have the greatest economic hit on black communities. Drug laws are causing more havoc on black communities.
And more blacks than whites are in prison. The privatization of prisons has meant those companies are looking for more sources of revenue -- such as selling prison labor. Yup. Blacks back in chains.
Terrence Heath reports on an analysis of Paul Ryan's plans for Medicaid. He notes these things:
* Medicaid is not the problem. Overall health care costs are the problem.
* Medicaid is not just for the poor. It is important to many middle- and working-class Americans.
* The cuts to Medicaid do not lower health care costs. They shift costs to those least able to afford them.
* Cuts to Medicaid are as unpopular as those for Medicare. Democrats compromising with the GOP do so at their peril.
The rest of Heath's post documents the pain the Ryan cuts would generate.
Government has declared the economic crash was nobody's fault and aren't pursuing prosecution. But there is evidence of crimes. The perps may not face jail, but we could make them face continued public humiliation.
* Repeatedly parade their crimes in public.
* Repeatedly count up their billions in ill-gotten gains and compare to the human misery they caused.
* Publicize details of dirty deals and disdain for clients.
* Make them pay millions to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.
Here are five things the rich get out of the government they claim they want to shrink.
* Security: A lot of what the police do is focus on crimes against wealth. Business keep the police focus on homeless, unemployed, and drug users to make sure these groups don't take their anger out on the wealthy.
* Taxes and regulations: The gov't is doing all it can to make tax avoidance, customer fleecing, and reckless polluting legal.
* Research and infrastructure: Long term research takes too much time for corporations focused on quarterly profits, so the gov't does it. Corporations take advantage of roads, ports, power grids, communication networks (including satellites) built and maintained by the gov't. Education, paid for by the gov't, trains the chemists, chip designers, and programmers, engineers, and analysts that corporations need.
* Corporate welfare.
* Disaster recovery: Most of the expense of oil spills are paid by the gov't. There is also financial bailout for those too big to fail.
Tony Danza (yes, the TV star) spent a year teaching 10th graders in Philadelphia, apparently for a reality TV series. He lived to write a book about it, due out next month. He wrote an article in USA Weekend, which comes with the Sunday Free Press. One thought from the article: Every time the school's budget is cut the students get the message that education is not important.
Every August Beloit College releases a Mindset List which looks at culture through the eyes of those entering college. It began as a way to tell faculty about outdated references. It is now used as a way of keeping track of the changing worldview of the young. Now that I teach college students I probably should pay attention. Examples:
They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.”
For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.
Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles.
My readership in Russia has apparently collapsed. A couple weeks ago I was getting more than 200 hits a week from Russia. Then suddenly it dropped to 20-35 a week. No idea why. My readership this week includes USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, India, Canada, Ukraine, China, Australia, Venezuela, Netherlands, and Thailand.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Ancient atoms
I enjoyed reading the book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It is a history of ideas, in particular what prompted the start of the Renaissance.
At the center of the story is Poggio, who was born in 1380 near Florence. For a while he worked as the pope's personal secretary, though as a layman. His handwriting was beautiful and his style became the basis for the Roman typefont. But Poggio was also a humanist, which meant he and others like him were trying to recover ancient Greek and Roman culture from more than a thousand years before. They considered this their heritage and wanted it to be known.
That heritage had been written in books. So a good deal of this book is about how and where books were preserved, how a monk copied a book when it began to disintegrate, and what Poggio went through to track down ancient books. Even though any particular book could last a few hundred years the survival rate over a span of a thousand years was quite small, even with a monk copying a book to make it new again.
Another large part of the book is about the hold the Church had on the times. Poggio was looking for pagan books, which was another strike against survival. The ideas in these ancient books was contrary to Church teachings so we also get a description of what the Church prompted believers to do. There is a reason why these were the Dark Ages.
I saw a lot of this part of the book as the Church as oppressor, working to maintain its superiority and oppression. The papacy of the time was notoriously corrupt. In addition to being a spiritual leader (with lots of supplicants trying to wheedle various dispensations) the pope was also the head of government over a chunk of central Italy with scheming princes all around him. Poggio called the papal court the Lie Factory. I got the impression that many Church officials knew deep down some beliefs were not true but worked hard to make sure those beliefs weren't challenged.
We also get a description of the Greek and Roman thinking that was buried by the Church. One strand of this thought was by Epicurus. His ideas were disseminated through a long and beautiful poem On the Nature of Things written by Lucretius around 50 BC. It was that book Poggio found.
Here are some of the radical ideas that Lucretius wrote about:
* Everything is made up of huge numbers of invisible particles. Yes, Epicurus proposed the existence of atoms. These particles are eternal, infinite in number but limited in shape and size (elements!), and are constantly recombining.
* Everything is made through this recombination. Thus there is no creator or designer. You can see why the Church didn't like Lucretius.
* Nature ceaselessly experiments (proposing evolution?). Humans didn't start in a garden of tranquility, but in a battle for survival.
* The universe was not created for humans or with humans at the center. Humans are the same as all other animals.
* The soul dies with the body and there is no afterlife. Death is not reward or punishment.
* All organized religions are superstitious delusions and are invariably cruel. At their core is a myth of sacrifice.
* There are no angels, demons, or ghosts.
* The highest goal of life is the enhancement of pleasure and reduction of pain. This was in sharp contrast to a Christian belief in the time of Poggio that if one puts the body through pain one can more identify with the pain of Christ and have a better chance of getting into heaven. The pleasure Epicurus talked about is not rich food and sexual abandon. It is more like building community.
* The greatest obstacle to pleasure isn't pain, but delusion -- unfulfillable desire and fear.
* Understanding things generates wonder.
Yup, each idea is a challenge to the Church.
The last couple chapters of the book show where ideas from Lucretius pop up over the next couple of centuries (including "the pursuit of happiness"). There are books that argue between Christianity and Epicurus (usually siding with Christianity) or try to pull out some Epicurian ideas and claim they're compatible with Church doctrine (usually by denying a central point of Epicurus). But I found the ending too abrupt. Yeah, the book triggered the Renaissance, but what ideas triggered what results?
For example, the book does talk about the idea that since God was all powerful and ran everything, there is no need to figure out how anything in nature worked. Bad things were attributed to the influence of demons and good things to angels. The book doesn't talk about how the denial of demons and angels changed thinking. I had heard elsewhere that when humans decided there were no demons to punish humans who stray and no angels who made things happen, it became possible to conduct scientific experiments. The results of an experiment would be consistent from one test to the next, not subject to the whims of demons. Such connections would have been fascinating reading. Alas, this book didn't include them.
At the center of the story is Poggio, who was born in 1380 near Florence. For a while he worked as the pope's personal secretary, though as a layman. His handwriting was beautiful and his style became the basis for the Roman typefont. But Poggio was also a humanist, which meant he and others like him were trying to recover ancient Greek and Roman culture from more than a thousand years before. They considered this their heritage and wanted it to be known.
That heritage had been written in books. So a good deal of this book is about how and where books were preserved, how a monk copied a book when it began to disintegrate, and what Poggio went through to track down ancient books. Even though any particular book could last a few hundred years the survival rate over a span of a thousand years was quite small, even with a monk copying a book to make it new again.
Another large part of the book is about the hold the Church had on the times. Poggio was looking for pagan books, which was another strike against survival. The ideas in these ancient books was contrary to Church teachings so we also get a description of what the Church prompted believers to do. There is a reason why these were the Dark Ages.
I saw a lot of this part of the book as the Church as oppressor, working to maintain its superiority and oppression. The papacy of the time was notoriously corrupt. In addition to being a spiritual leader (with lots of supplicants trying to wheedle various dispensations) the pope was also the head of government over a chunk of central Italy with scheming princes all around him. Poggio called the papal court the Lie Factory. I got the impression that many Church officials knew deep down some beliefs were not true but worked hard to make sure those beliefs weren't challenged.
We also get a description of the Greek and Roman thinking that was buried by the Church. One strand of this thought was by Epicurus. His ideas were disseminated through a long and beautiful poem On the Nature of Things written by Lucretius around 50 BC. It was that book Poggio found.
Here are some of the radical ideas that Lucretius wrote about:
* Everything is made up of huge numbers of invisible particles. Yes, Epicurus proposed the existence of atoms. These particles are eternal, infinite in number but limited in shape and size (elements!), and are constantly recombining.
* Everything is made through this recombination. Thus there is no creator or designer. You can see why the Church didn't like Lucretius.
* Nature ceaselessly experiments (proposing evolution?). Humans didn't start in a garden of tranquility, but in a battle for survival.
* The universe was not created for humans or with humans at the center. Humans are the same as all other animals.
* The soul dies with the body and there is no afterlife. Death is not reward or punishment.
* All organized religions are superstitious delusions and are invariably cruel. At their core is a myth of sacrifice.
* There are no angels, demons, or ghosts.
* The highest goal of life is the enhancement of pleasure and reduction of pain. This was in sharp contrast to a Christian belief in the time of Poggio that if one puts the body through pain one can more identify with the pain of Christ and have a better chance of getting into heaven. The pleasure Epicurus talked about is not rich food and sexual abandon. It is more like building community.
* The greatest obstacle to pleasure isn't pain, but delusion -- unfulfillable desire and fear.
* Understanding things generates wonder.
Yup, each idea is a challenge to the Church.
The last couple chapters of the book show where ideas from Lucretius pop up over the next couple of centuries (including "the pursuit of happiness"). There are books that argue between Christianity and Epicurus (usually siding with Christianity) or try to pull out some Epicurian ideas and claim they're compatible with Church doctrine (usually by denying a central point of Epicurus). But I found the ending too abrupt. Yeah, the book triggered the Renaissance, but what ideas triggered what results?
For example, the book does talk about the idea that since God was all powerful and ran everything, there is no need to figure out how anything in nature worked. Bad things were attributed to the influence of demons and good things to angels. The book doesn't talk about how the denial of demons and angels changed thinking. I had heard elsewhere that when humans decided there were no demons to punish humans who stray and no angels who made things happen, it became possible to conduct scientific experiments. The results of an experiment would be consistent from one test to the next, not subject to the whims of demons. Such connections would have been fascinating reading. Alas, this book didn't include them.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
I hope you are patient
I heard a little bit about an intriguing story on an NPR show this afternoon about the Ozark Medieval Fortress. An authentic Medieval castle is being built in northern Arkansas (of all places -- one builds where one is offered land). The builders are using local materials and will do all the work according to the current understanding of how builders in the 13th century worked. Building began last year. The site opens this month as a living history museum. Visitors will be able to talk to the workers as they work. They may not be hiring, but they appreciate the help of volunteers. They expect to complete the whole thing in 2030 -- yep, it will take them 20 years.
My friend and debate partner will appreciate the discussion of the rope with 13 knots, which is described under the Construction menu.
My friend and debate partner will appreciate the discussion of the rope with 13 knots, which is described under the Construction menu.
Friday, November 30, 2007
We blew it
The Letters page in Newsweek (alas, no link) has reactions to the article about how 1968 was a defining year that still strongly affects the nation (certainly national politics). One letter has this idea: In 1968 we were a the cusp of real change, of ending poverty, protecting the environment, refusing war, ending racism. And we didn't. Instead, the radicals of the 60s are the establishment of today, not blinking at Cheney's request of phone records and dismissing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan as an overwrought mom. It was all within our reach and we blew it. No wonder we're so apathetic.
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