The Darker Ages?

[vern_humphrey]

I listed only one specific fact, increased size of a corporation yields an increased bureaucracy.

Do you really need some kind of scientific study to show this?

You also said:

And unfortunately, all too often this bureaucracy is used as a cover for ill treatment of employees or customers often both.

And frankly, both the assertion and the conclusion are subject to question – small businesses have more overhead (which is bureaucracy) than large ones.

If you do, and are awaiting this, sorry but this is not going to be forthcoming. I care not to prove the obvious.

If a ball is dropped, it falls. I care not for the scientific consensus backing it with data.

Then why say this:

Often I hear people speaking ill of the large corporations.
Often there is very little other then anecdotal evidence to back the claims.

 

[vz71]

At the risk of pulling this thread further off topic then it needs to be, I believe you are pulling my words out of context.

I am working off of the concept that increased bureaucracy leads to problems.

All of the demands for proof are not going to be answered here, I up front stated that this was what I believed. If you care to believe it, great. If you do not, fine.
I need no further proof then my own experience.
Few people do.

However, the idea that small businesses have a greater bureaucracy then large corporations is really laughable given the context. The context here is “Mom & Pop” shops. The implication is a family owned small business. Bureaucracy may exist, but on nowhere the scale that a corporation would necessitate.

If we really want to further the discussion (and your defense) of corporations, may I suggest another thread be started?
I believe the subject of this thread has to do with History, not present day corporate America.

 

[vern_humphrey]

At the risk of pulling this thread further off topic then it needs to be, I believe you are pulling my words out of context.

I am working off of the concept that increased bureaucracy leads to problems.

And let me offer three points:

1. That concept isn’t proven.
2. Small businesses have more overhead and hence more bureaucracy.
3. The complexity of dealing with many small businesses is greater (and hence the satisfaction quotient smaller) than dealing with a single large business.

All of the demands for proof are not going to be answered here, I up front stated that this was what I believed. If you care to believe it, great. If you do not, fine.
I need no further proof then my own experience.
Few people do.

Then you should take no offense if I point out my experience is different.

However, the idea that small businesses have a greater bureaucracy then large corporations is really laughable given the context. The context here is “Mom & Pop” shops. The implication is a family owned small business. Bureaucracy may exist, but on nowhere the scale that a corporation would necessitate.

Let’s imagine you had to buy all the parts to build your own car instead of buying a car ready-made from a large business. What do you think the odds are you would get a reliable, safe car that way? And what do you think the odds of satisfaction would be if all the different parts makers were saying, “It’s the other guy’s part that’s causing your problem?”

If we really want to further the discussion (and your defense) of corporations, may I suggest another thread be started?
I believe the subject of this thread has to do with History, not present day corporate America.

I’m not “defending” anyone. I’m pointing out that the idea that large corporations are inherently more “bureaucratic” and less responsive has little basis in real evidence.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think the most straightforward definition of slavery would be a system in which human beings can be bought and sold as individuals (in contrast to serfdom, in which humans come with the land) and in which the condition of being buyable and sellable has no expiration date (in contrast to indentured servitude, in which a person’s labor can be bought and sold but the person is not permanently classified as property). Defined in this way, slavery was certainly not outlawed during the Middle Ages, though by and large it did not flourish except on the frontiers of Christendom (due to the Church’s strictures on enslaving Christians and to the widespread practice of freeing slaves once they had been Christianized and assimilated).

Edwin

I do not purport to be a historian, but long ago I took a graduate course in legal history, and have read the old slave cases of my state, and some history of slavery in places other than the U.S. It is interesting that in those parts of the West where slavery had existed for centuries, it was relatively benign as slavery went, largely because the Church had rules relating to it that had been developed over time. Under most systems derived from Roman law, and over which the Church had a great deal of influence, slavery was considered a temporary condition (though, doubtless, it was abused), and as such it tended to be a “revolving door”. Because it was a “revolving door”, any slave was, at least theoretically, going to be a free person at some time. For that reason, they had rights, no doubt often breached, but often respected, because one could never be sure he would not someday face a former slave as a free man.

The English had no significant history of slavery prior to the 17th Century and, when casting about for a system to define and regulate it when slavery proliferated in English trade and in the colonies, they resorted to the Common Law regarding chattels. (“Chattel” is derived from the word “cattle”, but extends to all tangible personal property under the Common Law, even today) Thus, under “Chattel Slavery”, a system all its own, a slave had no rights at all; any more than a cart or a pitchfork or a horse had rights. No doubt some slaveowners living under the English Common Law were decent people and treated slaves reasonably well. Some freed their slaves. But the law certainly didn’t require that they do any of that, and indisputably, many did not. And since slave status, like chattel status generally, was immutable, there was the assumption that neither the slave nor his descendants would ever become free. Thus, for example, the Dred Scott decision was perfectly consistent with American Law, which was derived from English Common Law. A wagon wouldn’t become anything other than a wagon by crossing from Missouri to Illinois, and neither would a slave. I’m not justifying it, but that’s why it was decided the way it was.

When Louisiana became a state, chattel slavery ill-fitted the existing Continental model. It is interesting to note that there is a great deal of racial admixture in those former slave-holding nations that were under Roman-derived legal systems, (including southern Louisiana) whereas there is much less in those that were under English Common Law-derived systems, and it has been speculated that the differences in the laws of slavery are responsible for those differences in racial admixture.

 

[anthony022071]

I didn’t say we don’t – I said Toynbee defined the Dark Ages as between Boethus and Abelard. His apparent standard was the quality of the written documents, and he chose philosophy as the field.

The Dark Ages are where we have few on no written records. They generally follow the collapse of Roman auhority in the West, and you can make a case for the Dark Ages lasting for different periods in different countries. In England, for example, the last ancient writer that comes to my mind is the Chronicler Gildas, and the first written documents after him are Anglo-Saxon documents written by Irish monks a few hundred years later.

There’s actually plenty of documents from that period for historians to go on. The Catholic Church brought the ability to write Latin,and hence the vernaular also,whereever it went. There are plenty of church and government documents,letters,histories,poems,philosophical and natural science works,inscriptions from that period. In England,for example,there was the Venerable Bede (673-735),who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of England.

 

[DL82]

The mistake people are making here is in assuming that there was a system of law and order similar to our own in the “Dark Ages” or even in the so-called Age of Chivalry that followed.

The written records that exist are usually from the courts of more enlightened rulers. Only a few lucky enclaves of post-Roman Europe functioned in any way like a modern state.

There was something of a ‘smash and grab’ exercise that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, and not everybody was so enlightened. Though the Papacy claimed a certain spiritual authority in this period, it is foolish to think that this authority worked like the US Supreme Court over the secular rulers of Europe, not all of whom were even Christian. In reality, many kings, dukes and lords were simply the biggest bully on the block, and made and broke laws as and when they felt like it.

As far as justice is concerned, methods like trial by combat (if you win, you’re not guilty) or trial by ordeal (usually by burning, if the wound heals, you’re not guilty) were commonplace. Punishments were often cruel and public, and owed more to the public’s desire to see gruesome spectacle (as in pagan Roman times) than to natural justice.

Of course, the Church still taught then the way it teaches now, and rulers still had to avoid being excessively cruel to their subjects because of fear they would turn against him and revolt, but I’d be willing to bet the standards of holiness of ordinary people was no better then than it is now.

There were also much greater abuses of the Church’s authority, such as sellers of indulgences and false relics, or ‘sin-eaters’ - poor men and rogues who would buy your sins, confess them and take the penance on themselves. Prostitution was openly tolerated by the Church because it was feared that without prostitutes men would be unable to control their lusts. Some convents became little more than retirement homes for ‘repentant’ prostitutes. Priests fought in battle, most notably Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s bishop, who used a mace to avoid the Church’s prohibition on clerics carrying swords, and many senior clergy were just the sycophantic friends and family of the powerful. Just about anybody who could speak a few words of Latin could claim ‘benefit of clergy’ and be tried by an ecclesiastical court instead of a civil one, even for the worst crimes such as murder and rape, knowing that the worst punishment they could face there would be a harsh penance and denial of Holy Communion for a period of time.

 

[vern_humphrey]

There’s actually plenty of documents from that period for historians to go on. The Catholic Church brought the ability to write Latin,and hence the vernaular also,whereever it went. There are plenty of church and government documents,letters,histories,poems,philosophical and natural science works,inscriptions from that period. In England,for example,there was the Venerable Bede (673-735),who wrote the Ecclesiastical History of England.

Compared to the Roman Empire and it’s vast output of laws, census reports, letters, books and so on, the Dark Ages are indeed dark.

Let me point out that the Venerable Bede lived more than 300 years after Gildas wrote “Groans of the Britons” and was of a different invading ethnic group. The period between Gildas and Bede was truly a Dark Age in England.

 

[anthony022071]

Compared to the Roman Empire and it’s vast output of laws, census reports, letters, books and so on, the Dark Ages are indeed dark.

Let me point out that the Venerable Bede lived more than 300 years after Gildas wrote “Groans of the Britons” and was of a different invading ethnic group. The period between Gildas and Bede was truly a Dark Age in England.

Well,it’s not so much the dearth of documents from that period that makes it known as a dark age. It became popularly known as the Dark Ages because because of the overall breakdown of civil law and order,civil behavior,stability,security,and the loss of the cultural refinements that characterize a great civilization.

And also,during the Renaissance and Enlightenment,intellectuals and historians scorned the Christian religion,the superstition,the scholastic philosophers,and the supposed bad taste in art (Gothic) of that period. Edward Gibbon,who wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a typical example of this scornful attitude. He almost equates,or conflates, the rise of Christianity with the ignorance and superstition and fanaticism of the Dark Ages. For intellectuals of the Renaissance and Enlightenment,Catholic practices like the veneration of Mary and the saints,praying for the dead,pilgimages to holy shrines,and the belief in angels, demons, and miracles,all went under the general headings of “superstition” and “fanaticism”.

It’s only in recent years that some historians have stressed the fact that the Catholic Church promoted education,literacy,law and order,the arts and sciences after the fall of Rome,so that the Dark Ages were not nearly as dark as had been long supposed.
The Dark Ages can even be considered a period of great illumination on account of the faith of the many saints.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Well,it’s not so much the dearth of documents from that period that makes it known as a dark age. It became popularly known as the Dark Ages because because of the overall breakdown of civil law and order,civil behavior,stability,security,and the loss of the cultural refinements that characterize a great civilization.

It’s the lack of written records. I have cited Toynbee, who was one of the great historians of his time.

And also,during the Renaissance and Enlightenment,intellectuals and historians scorned the Christian religion,the superstition,the scholastic philosophers,and the supposed bad taste in art (Gothic) of that period. Edward Gibbon,who wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a typical example of this scornful attitude. He almost equates,or conflates, the rise of Christianity with the ignorance and superstition and fanaticism of the Dark Ages. For intellectuals of the Renaissance and Enlightenment,Catholic practices like the veneration of Mary and the saints,praying for the dead,pilgimages to holy shrines,and the belief in angels, demons, and miracles,all went under the general headings of “superstition” and “fanaticism”.

It’s only in recent years that some historians have stressed the fact that the Catholic Church promoted education,literacy,law and order,the arts and sciences after the fall of Rome,so that the Dark Ages were not nearly as dark as had been long supposed.
The Dark Ages can even be considered a period of great illumination on account of the faith of the many saints.

The Church saved civilization. However, there was a dark period before the Church began to make headway – how many written documents do we have from Britain in the 5th Century?

 

[SoCalRC]

how many written documents do we have from Britain in the 5th Century?

We have quite a few documents concerning 5th century Britain, such as the Gallic Chronicle records, records regarding St. Germanus (ex. VITA GERMANI, written in 480), Prosper (Tiro) and his Chronicles, etc.

If you mean civil records, no, there isn’t much. Though there is quite a bit from small periods, like Octha and his “16 keels” of warriors (which seems to have been the end of the Picts) or the “second migration” led by Riothamus (though we are still not sure if that was a single person or a title).

But given that most accounts are of pretty much perpetual civil and territorial war, with lots of looting and burning, it isn’t hard to understand why maticulous city records, etc. are in short supply.

 

[vern_humphrey]

We have quite a few documents concerning 5th century Britain, such as the Gallic Chronicle records, records regarding St. Germanus (ex. VITA GERMANI, written in 480), Prosper (Tiro) and his Chronicles, etc.

If you mean civil records, no, there isn’t much. Though there is quite a bit from small periods, like Octha and his “16 keels” of warriors (which seems to have been the end of the Picts) or the “second migration” led by Riothamus (though we are still not sure if that was a single person or a title).

But given that most accounts are of pretty much perpetual civil and territorial war, with lots of looting and burning, it isn’t hard to understand why maticulous city records, etc. are in short supply.

It is civil records and other writings “generated by events” that are the stuff of history. Much of what we have from the Dark Ages is really redacted oral material, written down generations after the fact.

The Picts, by the way, lasted until about 800 AD, and were accepted into the Gaelic tribes by Kenneth Mac Alpin. There is still a recognizable difference between lowland Scots and Highlanders.

 

[Scarecrow]

The thought occurred to me the other day that during the Dark Ages some or indeed most of the laws were very just and very very moral.

Abortion was outlawed
Homosexuality outlawed
Slavery outlawed
Pornography outlawed
and perhaps most famously of all there was severe restrictions on warfare…

I don’t think they would have stood for utterly terrible state of modern media these days either, especially the Video Game industry which is effectively totally uncensored. And Scientists would have probably been forced to follow stricter “Bioethics” rules.

So here’s my question… does anyone else believe that we are living in even Darker Ages right now? does anyone else believe that the so called “nuclear age” is one of the most violent immoral times in history? I mean last century was the first time that for the entire century, every single second there was war on somewhere…

I submit that we live in “The Darker Ages”…

I think we are entering a new dark age. WWIII is imminent if not already begun on a low level. Soon there will be all out war. Read revelations.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I think we are entering a new dark age. WWIII is imminent if not already begun on a low level. Soon there will be all out war. Read revelations.

When you go to the check-out counter at the supermarket, you’ll usually see tabloids that scream that the Bible “predicts” something like global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, a new ice age, and so on.

Revelation was not meant to predict the weather, nor the stock market. Nor was it written for our specific era in history.

 

[Scarecrow]

no one is predicting.

Read the news, read washington expert reports. You have to be blind not to see it even without the bible.

ps. I never go to the Inquirer about the bible like most people.

 

[vern_humphrey]

no one is predicting.

I think we are entering a new dark age. WWIII is imminent if not already begun on a low level. Soon there will be all out war. Read revelations.

Read the news, read washington expert reports. You have to be blind not to see it even without the bible.

I’ve been reading the news since I first learned to read – the headlines are always full of impending catestrophes. It’s been that way for as long as we’ve had newspapers and newsmedia.

 

[SoCalRC]

The Picts, by the way, lasted until about 800 AD, and were accepted into the Gaelic tribes by Kenneth Mac Alpin. There is still a recognizable difference between lowland Scots and Highlanders.

Not quite. You have to remember that the Picts were a confederation of tribes. I was referring to the conquest attempts of the groups the Gaels called “Cruinthe”. If you want to trace Picts post 6th Century into Scottland, then it would be more accurate to say that they lasted to the 10th century when Pictland, or Pictavia, became the Kingdom of Alba. That is when the Picts became “Fir Alban”, or ‘men of Scotland’.

History, by the way, is the collection and evaluation of whatever evidence is available. Assuming written records from a city/state implies that oral traditions, like say the ministry of Jesus before the Gospels, is not relevant. Or, that non traditional social structures, like the early Christians are of no historical value.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Not quite. You have to remember that the Picts were a confederation of tribes. I was referring to the conquest attempts of the groups the Gaels called “Cruinthe”. If you want to trace Picts post 6th Century into Scottland, then it would be more accurate to say that they lasted to the 10th century when Pictland, or Pictavia, became the Kingdom of Alba. That is when the Picts became “Fir Alban”, or ‘men of Scotland’.

History, by the way, is the collection and evaluation of whatever evidence is available. Assuming written records from a city/state implies that oral traditions, like say the ministry of Jesus before the Gospels, is not relevant. Or, that non traditional social structures, like the early Christians are of no historical value.

The Gospels were either written by men who were eye witnesses, or by men instructed by eye witnesses – a far cry from stories handed down generation by generation.

For a good look at the problem of reconciling oral literature with actual events, consider Tain Bo Cuaoilgne, or the Mythological Cycle.

 

[rpp]

When you go to the check-out counter at the supermarket, you’ll usually see tabloids that scream that the Bible “predicts” something like global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, a new ice age, and so on.

Revelation was not meant to predict the weather, nor the stock market. Nor was it written for our specific era in history.

I can only hope the bolded section above is correct.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I can only hope the bolded section above is correct.

Pretty much.

In general, Catholic interpretation distinguishes between “prophesy” and “prediction.” Prophesy relates to the prophet’s own time and situation, not to the far-distant future. In regard to Revelation, the Church simply says we must go through a time of trial.

Now, given that Revelation was written during Domitian’s Persecution, and since then we have had other persecutions, wars, plagues, the Muslim conquest of the East and of North Africa, and so on, that seems fairly obvious – when are not going through a time of trial?

If we are going to claim Revelation has predictions, then they must meet two tests:

1. They must be knowable ahead of time – back-predictions don’t applied after the fact count.
2. The event must correspond closely to the prediction.

 

[SoCalRC]

The Gospels were either written by men who were eye witnesses, or by men instructed by eye witnesses – a far cry from stories handed down generation by generation.

Huh? What historical evidence do we have of that? If the Gospels represent a more accurate portrayal of history then why are they so inconsistant about even the most important events? For example, what were Christ’s last words on the cross? Even in the same Gospel, we have inconsistancies between texts, like the ending of Mark (now, seemingly, the oldest Gospel).

This is understandable if you consider an underground oral tradition starting in Hebrew or Aramaic which is then spread to a Greek speaking world far away, and then finally recorded 70 AD. or so. But if we limit our history to civic records, we can find only scant evidence of Jesus’ existance, and no real evidence of the significance of his ministry.