REPRESENTATIVE Higgins saying what we all thought the plan was out loud with the attack on public libraries - they want to replace them all with church libraries.
Theocrats get the :gulag: .
The concept of the "dark ages" is ahistorical bullshit but ok.
but the point is generally correct that church control over media and literature was very bad and we all know it
Reminder that it's called the dark ages due to the lack of sources at the time, not because they were bad.
Right, but what does the average westerner call this time period? Like every term is based on a western calendar and a western perspective. I can't think of a term that conforms to a better world perspective and being effective at reminding the :lmayo: that they were also engaging in these archaic practices in both modern times and in the western medieval age.
they call it medieval? we're more than a century out from the historiographical reappraisal of the period, everyone learns 'we dont call it that anymore'
Freedom is when some dickhead ancient order's dumbshit modern proponents constantly try to make every single decision for you and enforce their dogshit culture on you
https://www.theonion.com/mistranslated-myths-of-nomadic-desert-shepherd-tribe-ta-1819565596
:alex-aware: "This is AMERICA! We have freedom! Like the freedom to give a single person the power to dictate what I can and cannot choose to read!"
And Jesus said, "this is my widget - available for just $9.99"
Christians have this platonic idea that they're good little subjects of holy wisdom and not savage enforcers of the free market who want to turn the USA into a fascist theocracy that ruthlessly pursues capital.
Carlin is a problematic fave but I like this bit from his stand up: “Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
Be careful comrade, idk this person but this is an extremely common fash talking point. This is the issue with vague lib ideals like this they can be taken and molded into a variety of different conclusions.
Yeah but Carlin was coming from the right place with this one. ofc chuds twist what he said and blame it on the jews like they do with literally everything.
I apologise for my ignorance. I am not surprised that a fash ideology is a perversion of another one.
There was a time when only the church has control over who got access to books and what books were allowed, it was called the dark ages.
There's a reason why modern historians don't use the term "dark ages" anymore. That period wasn't a period of horrendous decline or anything, the "dark" refers to a gap in the historical record because fewer records were being kept and/or survived from this period. For the average person, the only thing that changed with the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the noble collecting their taxes.
On the other hand, the European "Dark Ages" also roughly coincide with the Islamic Golden Age where learning and science were promoted and funded by religious authorities.
So I guess... the only way to stop a bad guy with a religion is a good guy with religion? Religion is a land of contrasts? Idk, help me out here comrades.
I think it's a bit misleading to conceive of the historical role of the church as solely restricting access to knowledge. although mass culture and public libraries simply could not have been invented yet, the roman catholic church was preserving and building upon the knowledge that did exist. europe certainly wasn't as dynamic as the muslim world during the golden age, but that's not because the church was like "no science allowed, only religion, which is the opposite of science."
the only way to stop a bad guy with a religion is a good guy with religion
to stop the school religionists im advocating for equipping all teachers with their own esoteric religion to defend their students from other religion :thonk:
Religion can only take you so far imo, eventually you reach a wall where your teachings are outdated and need consistent re understandings of religion, which makes religion use it's credibility because how can something subject to re-interpretation be the ultimate word of God, so you get a counter movement of fundemnetalists who want an absolute and literal interpretation that is inflexible to the needs of modern society.
Fun fact about the Islamic scientists of that era. They figured out how to distill alcohol. They didn't drink it, of course, they used it to make perfume. Every bottle of vodka or whiskey etc you see has its roots in the Islamic golden age.
The Virgin alcoholic European stinky boi vs the Chad sober pleasant smelling Arabian scholar
People forget that besides Luthor lots and lots of other proto-protestants had lots of valid reasons for hating the church and one of them was how they treated any and all external Christian sects. Also this is going to be American evangelical fascist libraries as well, so a hundred times worse in managing control over what is and isn't displayed to the public.
they didn't burn Wycliffe at the stake. i am mistaken about his bible in that they did order it burned---they're just still around so i did extrapolate from that.
ill delete it because Wycliffe is a bad example but i was more commenting about relative impact of printed & non-printed books, and how much more important censorship was during the reformation.
i obv didn't explain it well but the biggest difference is reactionary vs. proactive censor, "publish anything you like but we'll come after you if it makes a stir" vs. the modern pre-approval that people think when they hear 'censorship'
which is mostly a function of state capacity anyway. the catholic church would've liked to stop everyone writing before the pope looked at it but parrallel state-creation was a hard and long process.
just don't want people thinking the catholic church was medieval 1984, not in any way a good institution
Also they were super pumped for you to read the Bible, they just didn’t want you to go off doing it on your own with whatever translation someone came up with. They wanted you doing it in Latin, which they were happy to teach you or your kids, with guidance and context so you didn’t go “Oh wow god created the world in 7 days? That must mean 7 literal actual days!”
