Anyone have thoughts on The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World? Bryan Ward-Perkins long ago convinced me in The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization that the material fall of the Roman Empire was real and severe. But the “transformation” model a la Peter Brown seems more appropriate in regards to culture.
This is strange to me because I’m on the record as saying cultural change can be rapid and non-linear. But, a lot of the sort of books about the fall of antiquity in the face of Christianity seems to be channeling modern concerns and culture wars.
Steppe Ancestry Reached Switzerland Before Germany; Implications For Etruscan Origins. For what it’s worth, I don’t know what says about Etruscan origins, who are as mysterious to me as they were 20 years ago.
WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism. Typical Matt Stoller take:
From what I heard back in 2009, Dimon is a mediocrity who essentially got lucky his bank was too slow to get in on the subprime scam in 2006; he then used his bank’s incompetence at getting into the bubble as justification for how prudent he was.
In 2008 I spent a long evening out with a bunch of quants from SAC Capital. They were all quite aware and conscious of the fact that their business was riven with stochasticity. I think Fooled by Randomness is the best of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s books because it was written before he was famous, and it outlines his vision which acknowledges the role of luck in life. I don’t think Dimon is dim as such. He just got lucky (and of course a lot of finance involves trading on insider information, which is less luck than cunning).
Also, literally every financial podcast where WeWork has come up over the last few years the hosts and guests start laughing and snickering.
Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State. Basically India’s elite has created (or is attempting to create) a regulatory bureaucracy fit for a developed country in an agrarian polity.
Assortative mating and the dynamical decoupling of genetic admixture levels from phenotypes that differ between source populations. The title is intimidating, but this is a question a lot of you are interested in.
A Crackdown on Islam Is Spreading Across China. The Hui are more assimilable than the Uighur.
Cheap exome sequencing comes to Utah.
Haplotype-based inference of the distribution of fitness effects.
Attacks Expose Flaws in Saudi Arabia’s Expensive Military.
Yeah, the author of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World also reviewed Tom Holland’s book for the Economist.
In general, looking at the reviews to Tom Holland’s latest book on Christian influence on Western Civilization (he sees that the process of reformatio distinguishing the Latin West began around 1000), the reviews seem to indicate more the reviewer’s culture war opinion rather than the book itself. I guess the choice to emphasize the classical past/universality of Enlightenment beliefs versus middle ages/Christian particularity has been a culture war issue all the way since Voltaire.
I read _The Darkening Age_ a few months ago and found it interesting. My review from Goodreads:
I’d be inclined to re-title this book _Christians vs Pagans: Endgame_ because it reads like the Marvel Comics version of 4th century Rome. Yet it’s still well worth reading, if only because it recounts important events that have been glossed over by historians less pugnacious than Edward Gibbon.
Some brief historical background: The Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity around 312 CE. By the end of the 4th century, his imperial successors had given Christianity monopoly power over religion throughout the Roman Empire (for reasons that were as much political as theological). Around 392, Emperor Theodosius made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the empire, severely restricting all other forms of worship.
Other religions didn’t disappear overnight, though. Roughly half the empire was still non-Christian when Theodosius issued his decrees, and the emperor didn’t have the resources to enforce his will everywhere. But Christian clerics knew they had been given a green light to persecute any religious practices other than their own. So the more fanatical ones (and there were quite a few fanatical ones) encouraged Christian mobs to destroy pagan temples and harass pagan luminaries.
One of the more spectacular acts of destruction (described in detail by the author) occurred in Alexandria, where the local bishop set off a bloody brawl when he paraded pagan artifacts through the streets, mocking them along the way. A mini-war ensued between Alexandria’s pagan and Christian populations (their younger male contingents, at any rate). During the fighting, a Christian mob sacked the Serapeum, the city’s most magnificent pagan temple, destroying or carrying off its richest treasures.
And so it went, sporadically at least, for decades. That’s an important point to keep in mind if you want to understand the history of this period. The Roman Empire’s transition to Christianity was not peaceful or inevitable. And for many, it was not voluntary. Christianity did not unite the empire (as Constantine may have hoped when he converted). Instead, by imposing heretic-hunting monotheism, it added a major element of conflict to an already unstable world.
(Another interesting book on the topic is _The Final Pagan Generation_ by Edward J Watts.)
Re: The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
The editorial reviews on the Amazon page all begin by praising Nixey’s emotionalism which is never a good sign; “A searingly passionate book…”, “Nixey’s elegant and ferocious text…”, “[An] impassioned account…”, “A vigorous account…”, “Nixey paints with a wide brush…”.
Reading the customer reviews it becomes pretty obvious that she’s surreptitiously written a hit piece against American Evangelicals and is misrepresenting early Christian/Pagan interaction. More of an agenda piece than historical analysis.
Gingers description is spot on. I’m always very sceptical about economic and climatic explanations for the downfall of a state, because in the vast majority of cases this was just one and never the main factor for a collapse.
If a people and culture were as strong in the flourishing period, they always came back pretty fast.
If their is a civilisational break, the fundamentals of state have to be broken itself.
We now know both from old writings, historical research and DNA that Rome 400 AD was just not the same as 200 BC.
On almost no level and nothing had turned to the better. But there were still military virtues and a state patriotism alive, a civilisational tradition of the upper and middle classes having an interest and Investment in the communal structures, the province and state.
People found satisfaction and glory in using their personal means to create something which will outlast their life. They got “culturally immortal” by creating public buildings and paying for public games.
With Christianities neglect for this world, the expectation of the near end and the concentration on the afterworld, the Roman way of life just crumbled.
The rich landowners didnt invest as much in the city, even left the urban environment and you get sense of material and intellectual dilapidation.
Only charity for the poor, sacral buildings and handing down property to the church for making up for the sins mattered.
The church too was not very effective. Later monasteries, especially in France and Germany, became proto-capitalist, highly efficient and re-investing enterprises. Different from the oftentimes bad administered early feudal goods. But not so much in antiquity. Christianity was impractical and more a burden to the state and its institutions.
But it also ruined a lot of wealthy families, even some of the last true Romans left with its neglect of family tradition, blood and this world in general.
There was brutal religious fanatism which destroyed knowledge and scientific thought too.
You get news about violent mobs killing people for their beliefs or lack of acceptance of Christianity not just from Egypt, but from all provinces of the Empire.
People were publicly killed, tortured or humiliated. U would compare it to the Cultural revolution in China.
A lot of things went wrong in Rome and became worse over time, but one thing is for certain: Christianity was a major factor for its demise. Probably the single most important one.
Its an iron of history that Christianity saved antique culture after the collapse of the state. But like so often, religious fanatics only start to miss worldly institutions when they first ruined it.
At the beginning of the last demise of Christianity in Europe from the 1960s on, a lot of people debated about “Christian values” and that European denominations were adulterating the original, early Christian teachings.
But the right answer to such accusations is just; Of course, they had to, because you cant make a state with doomsday fanatics which just care for the other world. You at least have to channel and adapt things to a practically non-lethal version.
There were a lot of fanatic sects around in the less controlled East of the Empire. The only consequences were Civil unrest and the fast and easy expansion of Islam.
It made the Byzantine Empire vulnerable too.
What some Western people in particular consider the bad aspects of religion are their greatest strength:
– Patriarchal families with the husband as leader and many children
– intolerance to other beliefs and the urge for violent expansion
– intolerance to deviation and rewards for fanatics
– rules which make no sense but give your believers structure in their life, make them obedient and discriminate between believers and non-believers
Or does anyone really believe the “path to salvation” is key?
Yes, most people want to believe “something” or at least have hope. Even more for the children or sick if they look with large eyes at you and ask “what is coming after death daddy?”.
But you dont need all the stuff for believing in something. Religion in its organised form spread because it was at least culturally competitive and sometimes, like early Islam for Arabs, also biologically.
The problem of Christianity though was that it was not founded by a state or to give a state a fundament, but to undermine and counteract the Roman state. If the early Christians would have known the future, they might have left the sect instantly!
Because it was just a “no future” doomsday bunch of people. They didnt plan for the future, thats one of the reasons why they are so dysfunctional if its about family, offspring and traditions.
They converted living individuals for the sect, alienating them from their traditions, ethnicity and family. Like in some modern sects they were supposed to offer their wealth to the community.
They were low fertility wise and just lived from fast new conversions.
It was like a pyramide game and not sustainable.
The Christian leaders just slowly changed the direction of their communities to something which could survive without growth due to conversion.
That doomsday might not come in the believers lifetime was a painful realisation.
And the process if adaptation was still fully active the whole time of the Late Roman Empire. The unhealthy ingredients were not even stable yet!
As for the destruction of knowledge and culture, I would recommend the movie Agora. Its the only one which gives a realistic impression of what happened. I know they used their artistic freedom and not every detail is historically correct, but thats just the essence of what happened.
Going back to early Christianity just means to devolve back into something which is not sustainable and easier to being overtaken.
Its the base of “political correctness” and evangelicals alike. So both sides which attack rationality share something of the early Christian tradition which is clearly irrational to its core.
It was traditional European, non sectarian denominations which created an occidental Christianity with which a state can be made and which was, while still flawed, sustainable.
But the raw, untempered fanatism of the oldest ideological foundation of Christianity is destructive. It was for Rome and it might do it once more. They dont appreciate the real world as it is, with its laws humans did not made and can not change. They live in an other world fantasy.
While they dream their dream they ruin the very fundaments of their state and culture and solve non of the real problems, like the too high concentration of wealth and systemic inefficiencies.
Like public goods and buildings rotting, while “the rich” withdraw to their save manors from the Chaos of the urban centres.
While fanatics run amok in the city, people forget their virtues and that the base of what they are fighting about needs to be cared for and sustained.
Once it was a glory to be a hero of the state, now foreign mercenaries do “the dirt job” for securing economic interests.
Yes, late Christian Rome shows many parallels…not the least the neglect for PUBLIC GOODS.
Moderately in depth review (about a 15 min. read and admits its own bias) of The Final Pagan Generation here:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/learning-from-the-final-pagan-generation/
@Mike: Good read, but I disagree on this:
“But the cultural changes that have overtaken America, and that are continuing to do so, are fundamental, and aren’t going to be undone by government policy.”
Government policy could stop or even revert the most important of these cultural changes, but you need a government to do it, not just a president and the administration would need to be bold.
Trump was the right guy to trick the system, make it to presidency and punch some holes into the politically correct armour.
But he lacks a real ideologically elaborated background, his educational and intellectual capacity is limited and by far most important: He lacks support from the oligarchy including mass media and even his own administration.
But who started this “cultural change”? It was the administration of the USA and its oligarchy. Even those aspects which didnt fit, like Marxism, were made to fit by transforming them into Cultural Marxism and “political correctness”. Obviously there was always resistence, but also always a lot of support. And the recent administrations,until Trump, always fully supported the Agenda where it really mattered. Only some soft issues were considered e.g. by the Bush administration. But that was less than half-hearted.
“The big shift came with the generation of young Christian elites who came of age in the 360s and 370s. They rejected their parents’ wishes for them to join the system. Instead, in the face of strong opposition from their parents, teachers, and other authority figures, they took up ascetic life, or at least life in the service of the Church. Watts says that prior to the 370s, the men who went into church life tended to be mediocrities who couldn’t have made it in the secular world.”
And that is exactly the point when the Western Roman culture was completely broken. Its not by chance that soon afterwards foreign warlords took control of the Western empire. Rome was castrated.
The ascets were often quite decadent in various ways. Some tried to get herbal mixtures from the other end of the Empire. It was as expensive to get as a true feast with the best meat, but it had to be this recipe, because the other popular ascet used it.
They were playing ascetic lives, like the spoiled brats they were.
Like our “elite” poster boys and girls who eat special food and have to show it off. It was the same then, people talked about what the “holy ascet” was eating on his pillar. It was/is absurd.
Christianity was flawed from the start and was formed into something which people could work with by the Germanic-Roman elite in the aftermath of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire on the other hand started very promising but took more than once the wrong path.
Its weakness came mainly from the technological and scientific lack of expertise and general long term planning. They did pretty well everything considered.
Christianity is like something which sounds nice at first, but proves to be unbelievably impractical. You constantly have to fix it or use makeshifts and workarounds.
That’s why Christianity in its first, original doomsday-cult form ruined an empire and wont save another.
Christian elements and achievements are great and noted, but its not about going back to a past custom, but to save whats useful.
Pagans too failed completely on the matter. Their spoiled brats in the Christian sect got their decadence combined with delusion. That way no empire could be defended.
Early Germanic Christian warriors showed how it was done. But they lacked the intellectual background, so a Romanised Christian elite took the fate in its hand, culminating in idiocies like the marriage laws and celibacy.
Obs, you write as though there is something called “Christianity”. But you then write as if it includes everything from “original doomsday-cult” to modern forms that are anything but.
Is it possible to make generalizations about something that can be so many things?
@Roger: Yes, because all these cults are based on the same teachers and scriptures and have something in common which I would call Christian spirit. The mormons, to give an example, are part of the same spectrum but beyond what I would call “Christian proper”.
Christianity in its infertile and abiological extreme might be best exemplified by the Scopts, I just found the German version on the issue, you might use translate, I didn’t found a comparable English article:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skopzen
They are really taking something which is inherently Christian and “life-denying” while at the same time passive-peaceful-life saving to an extreme. They lack perspective and roots in this world and are too much concerned about the “other world”.
It is true, and probably that’s what you meant, that from this Christian base in the scriptures, a lot can be made of. So this is a huge spectrum. But then again, we have a mainstream and deviations from it. The mainstream is by far dominant and most deviations were caused by non-Christian influences transforming Christianity.
Christianity at its core is what I described.
Another aspect of this life denying-saving is that early Christians denied military service and to kill people, while at the same time sacrificing themselves in the most absurd ways thinkable. They begged for becoming martyrs! If you read the stories of “the martyrs” from different perspectives, as far as those are available (too often they are not), you almost always get the impression of no victim, but a perpetrator who did any kind of provocation just to get his most cruel “martyrdom”. That’s no healthy behaviour, but reminds me on a cultural version of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, an infection which has to destroy its host, so a cross can grow out of his head.
I imagine the Roman father who tried to convince his daughter to lead a normal life, give life and keep up the family tradition, but his daughter refused to become a martyr. And like modern pussy riots or similar “popcultural phenomenons” of “provocation”, she tried hard. But the administration didn’t wanted to execute her. So she tried harder to being hated by everyone non-Christian in her community and if that doesnt suffice, she will go to the next city, where her family can’t protect her and try it there. Until her greatest wish came true and she was finally executed. Not to change something in particular, but she wanted to be executed and becoming a martyr for the sake of it.
What to say about this extreme? It wasn’t even in a war, it wasn’t even for a greater good, it was the useless sacrifice in itself. You sacrifice your life because you want to prove a point and go straight to heaven for it – so you think.
This is completely decoupled from the reality people live in, from this world. And that’s the deeper problem of Christianity.
Even if they do defend families and children, they usually don’t do it to create something in this world, like a good community, good new community members and so on, but “to prove a point”. Which is why they are against any kind of abortion, even after a brutal rape or if the embryo will have serious problems, defects and diseases. It doesn’t matter, its a principle question of “pro Life in the name of god”.
And thats the problem with Christianity, it doesn’t operate on a rational level in this world, but actually believes in having got orders from heaven directly. They think they have to follow REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES IN THIS WORLD. Their people could die out, even their religion might vanish – humanity and earth being destroyed. For the truest of all Christians, all of this doesn’t matter, as long as they keep their faith and stand true to it and that’s sick. Its a problem and the reason why “strong Christians”, especially if approaching the “early Christian ideal” won’t ever save any worldly unity, people or state on the long run but destroy it.
This can be tempered and transformed, into something “to work with”, but the fundamental problem will always haunt you over and over again.
And it might even come back in a secular, transformed version of “bad white people, bad men, bad mankind, good suppressed people and good exploited planet Earth” kind of new belief system, we see especially on the left side. There too the results don’t matter, they might be horrible, destructive, not constructive for anybody, doesn’t matter, its a principle question and if individuals, nations, people and even mankind has to be sacrificed for staying true to the ideal, so be it. Its erratic because the path is the goal and that’s fundamentally wrong from my point of view, because whatever you do, what matters most are consequences and results, not conduct and attitude. Conduct and attitude matter, but not more than results if planning the future and constructing a moral compass.
If you are a doomsday sect, planning 100 years ahead is not your cup of tea. It doesn’t matter, because its all about souls and judgement day.
@Obs: I’m interested in your background. You are from Europe, right? May I ask which brand of Christianity is dominant in your home country?
And thanks for Skopzen-link, that was new to me. Yes, I have seen that the hardcore Christians often have this martyr’s streak, which makes them seem to have much more balls and backbone than say, any confrontation avoiding wimpy “Western buddhist” I have met.
@Karhumaa: Yes, I’m from Europe and the dominant brand here is Catholicism. Its also dominant in my family to this day and my children are baptised etc. I’m very sorry for the good parts being corrupted by the bad ones. That’s the way I always looked at it, even as a child when some aspects were presented as “given” and “not to question” to me. I couldn’t help myself when studying the bible or church decisions than to discuss inconsistencies and what in my opinion was a failure. But its interesting to see that some aspects I thought of being wrong then, I see differently now, because I don’t look at it from the individual, but rather systemic perspective.
Balls and backbone is conduct and attitude, like I said. Great to have it, but if you die and everything you are and stand for just lost ground exactly because of what you did, your sacrificial behaviour, you achieved nothing in this world, you are a loser, probably even did more harm than good. You did worse than the average wimp, it’s a failure and you made the wrong choice, wasted your potential for the false belief – or at least the false interpretation of it. And Christian/Western people have this proclivity to this kind of life failure, exactly because of the Christian background and its infertile-abiological, real life denying tendencies.
The occidental societies handed down this tendency to secular modernity, so that now, if others accept the whole package, even completely non-Christian societies, can do largely the same things for the same reasons. But I can hardly think of THIS Western style modernity having the same character without Christianity. I just don’t see it. Both its good as well as its bad aspects and weaknesses have, to a certain degree, Western Christian roots. Without the Western Christian background, modernity would have taken a different path and it still might do so in the future.
Here is an exhaustive review of The Darkening Age:
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/11/review-catherine-nixey-the-darkening-age/
Razib, I saw you retweeted this really interesting paper a few days ago, Ancestry-Dependent Enrichment of Deleterious Homozygotes in Runs of Homozygosity – https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(19)30337-4
Takeaways:
1. African ROH have greater proportion of deleterious alleles than Eurasian ROH (though total number of deleterious homozygous alleles is greater in Eurasians)
2. Total number of deleterious alleles overall is greater in Africans than Eurasians, because of greater ancestral heterozygosity in Africans. (See Figure 3). This contradicts previous studies, however they validate this finding using various calling methods, although using GERP scores the pattern reverses. Any thoughts on this?
Gibbon pointed a finger at the early Christians, but he was too smart a guy to sucked into monocausal explanations.
Anyone who is interested in the subject should listen to Patrick Wyman’s muti part podcast series on the Fall of Rome:
https://soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast
I read Gibbon, I have read Ward-Perkins, and Peter Heather, and I listened to Patrick Wyman. The problems of the later empire, can, I think, be traced to defects in its political institutions. Christianity was, if anything, a plus.
OTOH, the Roman Empire lasted for almost 5 centuries in the West, and 6 or 15 in the East. No regime in the Modern world ought to be counted to be more than 3 or 4 centuries old.
Obs, it seems to me that what was “mainstream” in 1019 is very different from what is mainstream in 2019.
And “based on the same teachers and scriptures” is highly problematic. What people say the scriptures “really mean” changes over time. The same applies to teachers. In fact, some teachers will become unimportant, or some of their ouvre will be dismissed as unfortunate error. After all, they don’t have all the advantages we do today.
Positing that they all “have something in common which I would call Christian spirit” makes your argument true by definition. It also allows you to “prove” how awful Christianity is by defining this “Christian spirit” as something people today will think is icky. So thus for you, the “truest” Christians are crazy.
We all know what they say about “true Scotsmen”.
@Roger: You are right to some degree, BUT, and that’s a biggy:
“Positing that they all “have something in common which I would call Christian spirit” makes your argument true by definition. It also allows you to “prove” how awful Christianity is by defining this “Christian spirit” as something people today will think is icky. So thus for you, the “truest” Christians are crazy.”
The contrary is true. Most people today think its normal, but its based on Christanity’s worst aspects and its dysfunctional.
Once more we have the absurd situation that some Christians today, especially in the USA, are more normal and less affected by the early Christian spirit – lets be precise – than the secular leftist mainstream.
Sexuality is free for the secular mess so far, yes, but the more extreme parts of the post-Feminist leftist people are as antinatalist as the early Christians. This will even increase more with the “climate crisis” and “ecological catastrophy” propaganda and the anti-male sentiments of the new feminists. Sexuality will become a negative target and traditional families, especially those with many children are already a problem – unless they are protected minorities, then probably not as much – so far. Lets see who wins in these arguments, radicalised Feminism or protection for minorities and non-Western norms, because this battle has just begun.
Take these comparisons for making the point:
-Early Christians considered ethnicity, family and offspring unimportant. The truest Christians didn’t marry, they did not procreate, they just “spread the idea” and died as martyrs.
Who is more like that? The average conservative Christian in the USA, or the average leftist-urban-college people?
-Early Christians considered violence sinful and preached a strictly nonviolent lifestyle. Weapons were bad and military training awful. They broke up gender norms and questioned the rule of the patriarch, of the father and husband in traditional families.
Who is more like that? The average conservative Christian in the USA, or the average leftist-urban-college people?
Of course, the same tendency in 200 AD was very, very different from those we see now, but really so much different? AND whats more important: They moved in the same direction, they started something which came back as a destructive force first in the 1900s really, but truly in the 1960s, accelerated from the 1990s on and completely ruined the Western people’s demography and familial stability.
That’s the point I was really making: Some conservative, European style traditional Christians are more or less functional, with obvious flaws, but still. Because Christianity was adapted to be a non-lethal cultural formula after it became more and more mainstream in the Roman Empire. It still was a major factor in its demise, but if the early Christians would have stayed the way they were, Christianity would have never ever become the denomination of the Empire in the first place. The Romans would have been forced to persecute them and if they would have been just able to isolate the Christian communities, they would have died out anyway, because their natural fertility and productiveness was very low, even lower than the low Roman one.
So they had to adapt to reality to became as powerful as they were.
But under the surface, and still in a lot of Christian cultural aspects, the weaknesses were still there and they were a constant menace for all Christian people.
Its quite funny that the most extreme tendencies came back with Cultural Marxism introduced not even by actual Christians.
But this indoctrination fell on fertile grounds because of the deep Christian based morality, which was particulary fostered by some English and American sects, bourgeois circles even before that. It was just covered by traditional European interpretations of Christianity, for as long as the church was powerful and united with its people and states.
When that natural connection of a people and its religion was broken and the churches started to “go back to the roots”, they devolved into this dysfunctional mess again. They even tried to compete with secular Cultural Marxism for being the greatest do gooders. They thought that way they will be better accepted in the new cultural environment, when in fact they lost credibility and usefulness for both the conservative and liberal parts of society alike.
That’s were some highly irrational, but not as Cultural Marxist inspired American sects jumped in, which, without a central structure, were not as easy to transform by “the elite”.
They, sometimes, in a lower intellectual form than Catholics and Lutherans of the past, are closer to the European style Christianity after its adaptation to reality, but unfortunately with strongly delusional aspects. Like extreme anti-abortionists or anti-evolution preachers and the like.
A lot of crazy small groups with no higher order central and educational structure like e.g. the Catholic church. Harder to manipulate by the system in their chaotic form, but too irrational to really create a meaningful alternative for anything. At best a base of resistence and demographically healthy parts of society for a short period of time. They can delay some things, but they are themselves no alternative.
And like I said, the major structured, more rational denominations devolved into a dysfunctional, even to a large degree harmful, form of institutions. Just compare what the major Christian organisations of the past said on societal matters and what they say now. They completely dismantled their own self-defense on the demographic and cultural front and approaching planned suicide. In many ways the opposite of pre-WW2 and especially pre-1960s positions, but again closer to the early doomsday Christians. Its like they preach and expect their own end, like the early Roman Christians looked forward to the end of their Empire and judgement day.
@obs “Like extreme anti-abortionists”
You mean those nuts who think third-trimester abortions and “comfortable” infanticide aren’t the best thing ever?
“small groups with no higher order central”
No order central? WTF I hate free range Xtians now.
The whole abortion and infanticide issue is a very sensitive Christian topic. The most extreme Christian position always said no abortions ever, not even if it was a brutal rape or the embryo is deformed and won’t survive the first months after birth. Lets take that position seriously and the only argument anyone can really come up with is, that of the immortal soul. “A soul” which is decoupled from the human flesh we can see and which matters more. At the time of fertilisation the soul being “inhaled” by the body. Even if the embryo is just a bunch of cells and might, because of a serious defect, never develop normal human characteristics, its still a soul in it. What kind of soul, if there was never a real human spirit in this body and never can be one based on the building plan the embryo has is a mystery – only god knows.
That’s no guide for real life decisions, for making up for the failures we being confronted to throughout our lifes. It means to take the burden from god with a smile and don’t ask.
The only restriction, the only allowed birth control is abstinence. So they don’t even say its good to have children, or many children at all. But they say abstinence is the best, and if you can’t stay abstinent, you have to get married, because out of wedlock sexuality is even more of a sin. But if you marry to get children and your wife can’t get pregnant, well, bad luck, your choice and god’s will. Die childless because it doesn’t matter anyway. Why are you taking yourself so important? Who wants to give birth anyway? You just throw people in this earthly vale of tears – got it?
Reminds me of postmodern, people talking about how bad the world is and that its irresponsible to throw a new life in this bad, bad place. Yeah, now we have climate change and ecological catastrophy and still so much bad sexism, racism and other isms, better don’t procreate at all, better die childless with a small, just a very small ecological footprint. Humans are a virus anyway, this wholesome perfect planet needs to be cured – from humans. How great would it be, polar bears running on the ice, everything frozen until the next asteroid hits Earth. But perfect, to this point, how they all eat each other so nicely, without humans doing such bad, bad things.
That’s decadence of the same kind as in late, downgraded Rome. Its amazing how much similarities you can find. Even single mothers and husbands moving to the mother in law’s house – almost matrilinear conditions in very late, urban Christian Rome.
But back to Christian ideals:
If your wife and sexual partner gets pregnant, you have to give birth to the child, even if its YOUR child you can’t decide about it. And if you don’t want it, you shouldn’t have had sex, god will take care. If it can’t survive, doesn’t matter, god’s will too.
Go on with sexuality and marriage pattern: Children, including daughters have to be free of the family and father. That came from the time the early Christians were a hideous sect and a lot of Roman or Jewish fathers had no intention to let their daughters go to their commune. But Christianity said: They are free to choose, the family has nothing to say.
The spouses have to be adults and the older the better. For a better decision, educated in god’s laws and a longer period free of this sinful sexuality. Probably she refuses marriage, wants to stay man- and childless, to just follow her true purpose in life. Become a martyr, a nun – or just lead a life agreeable to God in another way. Family and children are overrated.
Now we all think women should be adults in a biological sense when marrying, but in Medieval Europe, and even before, the age of marriage and the first birth was drastically rising. Women married sometimes at an age of 25 plus. Not just now, in the West, but in Medieval Europe, in a time with a much lower life span and shorter fertile period!
They were supposed to marry late, but have no premarital sex, because that would have been a sin. And if they would have premarital sex and get a child they didn’t wanted, they would have been even more sinful and punished by the community. The child would be shameful and shunned in a lot of regions (not everywhere the same though, because there were regions with very high rates among a poor peasantry), could even die of neglect, but do not interfere with god’s plans.
Christianity in the Western sense promoted premarital sexuality and “sinful behaviour” even though it shunned and punished it. Because it made unnatural laws. If a woman marries just with 26 plus, she has about 10 years (!) in which she is supposed to stay abstinent while being physically matured and fertile. In many European regions it was difficult to impossible for the poor and middle class people to marry much earlier, even if they wanted. And even the more wealthy non-aristocratic families quite often preferred the “good late marriage”.
They made unnatural laws which don’t fit with the biological reality and are not competitive. It was always supposed to crash more often with individual, real life behaviour than the vast majority of traditional societies and even most other higher cultures.
Its about very high, artificial, detached from real life moral standards. That was a feature of Christianity: Everyone had to be sinful, one way or another, everyone had to be humble. You always had guilt, you always had a bad consciousness if being a moral person, because your bigger and smaller sins haunted you. So the only salvation of your sinful life is to follow all rules, even the burdensome and useless ones, the church made up.
That it worked out so well for Europe had very specific reasons, because Christianity brought advantages too and Europe and its people had pros as well, even before Christianity. That combined, with the technological and civilisational advantages created after the first crash of an Christian Empire, the taming of Christianity and the slow development of a new, higher civilisation, plus the fact many people did use workarounds and didn’t take everything the canon law and church said too seriously, was the reason it went so well until recently.
If the civilisational advantages were taken from Europeans, they could still survive, but more often than not without the strict Christian moral standards. Those almost never worked too well. Because in itself, they are a minus for competitiveness. Take European settlers in the Midwest. If they would have always been the nice Christian guys from bourgeois England, they simply wouldn’t have made it there.
Only in the developed states Europeans created, in the ordered civilisational structures they used, they could AFFORD to act accordingly. You can even observe that on a smaller scale: The more independent small farmers were, the more wealth they had, the more Christian they were in Medieval and early modern Europe. Even while following these strict standards, they could afford to marry somewhat earlier and live a decent life despite the efforts they made for a “Christian life”.
The less developed the countryfolk was economically, the more problems they had with the canon law, especially marriage laws. It was also, but not just, lack of education involved, but that was never the main factor – it was the lack of choice. The Christian standards are unrelenting, human instincts have to revolt against them if its about survival.
More births out of wedlock, more infanticides and abortions, more marriages between closer relatives, more brutal and less sensitive language and behaviour, more violence in general, just to name some of those differences observable.
Its like the later Western bourgeois way of life. You need to be able to afford it. The whole Western civilisation, especially the English model, is a luxury good you can have with a lot of wealth and in a position of social and political security and power. If it gets dirty, and the historical English knew that very, very well, you have to throw your gentlemens behaviour out of the window very quickly or you lose. And losing in those games of life doesn’t just mean to lose some money, it means to lose everything.
A lot of Western people, like the decadent late Romans, forgot about that. They think they can create completely unrealistic, detached from life moral standards and get away with it. Sorry, no, that won’t work. What really makes me angry is that a lot of those responsible for this mess won’t get old enough to suffer from the consequences, but the young probably, and the next generation for sure will face it.
If someone really thinks the greatest struggle in life is to save unwanted, unborn children with defects of OTHER PEOPLE – not even the own, that’s not my approach.
I might compare it to pictures of cats as an internet phenomenon. Yes, they are soo cute, but its an illusion and should be used for distraction. Its not the meaning of life to make everything cute which isn’t and everything bad which doesn’t sound nice at first glance.
Even those cats are deadly beasts of prey, whether you try to ignore it or not.
Cats, dogs and aborted children. Christian America can’t be more upset by anything else?
A muslim girl I knew some years ago, after being in my city for just a short period of time said: “So many dogs and cats, but so few children.”
Obviously, she was right. But the solution is not to be a radical anti-abortionist, because you don’t create healthy families that way and even if you want to prevent abortions, think twice why. That’s my opinion, may it be unpopular.
About the American fascination with pets. I recently watched “Chernobyl” and almost a whole episode of this otherwise great series was devoted to a guy who had to shoot dogs left in the contaminated area. Seriously? You saw people losing their children, their health, being eaten alive by radiation syndrome, dying a horrible death, thousands and thousands of people lost their home, a whole portion of Europe was under the threat of serious radioactive contamination – so many good people died. But the greatest tragedy was a guy who had to shoot contaminated dogs. For a whole episode! That was so “new Western”, so American.
Seriously, where are the priorities? I would have seen the problem too, but how much time and space do you give to these infantile “feelies”? And popculture as a whole shows us how much worse it got with every decade.
And that’s the problem with Westtern Christian culture, it CAN (doesn’t have to) make you so weak and soft intellectually. It makes moralistic people still extremely aggressive, even violent and ready to kill, but for the wrong reasons. Not their real interests or a solution oriented policy.
Not that I wouldn’t care for cute animals. Or I myself would have never wanted a healthy child of mine being aborted. I think its just wrong, as long as the conditions are not truly horrible by all means, with no chance for a halfways decent life left – no chance at all.
But still, people have to do some moral maths. How does the world look like in 10, 20 or 100 years from now if we follow the same path we went the last 10, 20 or 100 years? Do we really want that? No illusions, no self-deception. People have to consider cause and effect.
But that rational approach was so ruined by a specific kind of Christianity and its secular, admittedly distorted, derivatives, with its newest form of “political correctness”.
The vision of a new, godly, moralistic world is back and demands sacrifices everywhere and people don’t want to see the problem until its too late. The realisation will be truly unpleasant, but it has to come, because the good things we still have in the Western style world are unsustainable with every next step we do in the wrong direction. And the furter we go the harder the shock that has to come, inevitably, will be.
Like the ancient Romans, in the “eternal city”. From one year to the next, everything was broken, the glory gone and barbarian hordes controlled the ruins and pitiful remains of a once great state and civilisation.
What I forgot to say, about the low and the high explanation of the world in Christianity vs the Greco-Roman Pagans:
Compare the early Christian philosophers with the classic Greco-Roman ones. The Christian ones never win, their quality and logical persuasiveness is much lower, it is a downgrade in comparison. BUT, and thats big, they manage, even if sometimes with workarounds, to unite, to interconnect the Christian beliefs and moral laws with higher philosophy.
The Pagan philosophers, even if they were nominall Heathens, virtually never manage to connect to the folk tales and beliefs in the same way! They are detached from the populations superstition and religiousness. They might use religious topics and allegories, they might even mention gods and the like, but the close interconnectedness of higher thought and lower religious feelings is lacking. That was, more than anything else, in my opinion, the Christian USP. They managed to create a god belief which could operate with higher philophical world explanations – not as good as without the Christian limitations, but better than most other belief systems of the Roman Empire.