What was socially unjust about the middle ages?

[JimG]

WW1 and WW2 were more one-off events rather than constant warfare over the course of a century (although there were countries capable of keeping a soldier occupied outside practice manoeuvres). Before, the whole of Europe, let alone the world wouldn’t normally be broken down into two alliances, nor were there really weapons capable of mass destruction… so much. Sure, greek fire, diseased cows on catapults, otherwise it was, pardon the expression, manual slaughtering. But I wouldn’t count on mediaeval combatants being more merciful with the defeated armies or civilians than WW2 combatants.

War in the 20th century was hardly an isolated event. To quote “The History Guy,”

“The 20th Century was the bloodiest, costliest century of warfare in human history.”

historyguy.com/major_wars_20th_century.htm

 

[Farmville]

It’s my favourite period in terms of historical study but I wouldn’t like to live then (admittedly preferable to 1939 but let’s not isolate single worst years, the middle ages had a couple of their own too).

It was certainly an interesting time, although I prefer more ancient history for the most part. The number 1 worst thing of the time I think was the very poor medical technology combined with extremely deadly pandemics killing vast amount of the population of many medieval populations. The 20’s and 30’s were cool, at least aesthetically! Not in Russia, China, and Germany though. Not to mention the Worldwide depression.

 

[septimine]

Honestly the differences between their era and our are more about window dressing than anything.

In our era, while obstesibly one can rise from the bottom to the top, it’s actually pretty rare. Especially in the case of kids raised in the inner cities of the US, if you’re born poor you stay poor. And as for being a part of the land – well, actually, for some people it’s worse today. Serfs always had land to work, a job, a roof over their head. In modern markets, quite often, the field leaves the workers behind when the owner of the factory decides that there is cheaper labor to be had elsewhere. Some of this is change of age kind of stuff, the industrial revolution and the modern information revolution, like most revolutions have large scale displacements.

In the medieval world, people lived under despots who more or less ignored them and in many cases ignored the outside world. Today, we pretend we choose our leaders, but the way the system actually runs, I’d say we really have only a touch more power than the peasents of medieval Europe. I’ve voted for democrats and republicans, and nothing seems any different, mostly due to our modern version of medieval courts – lobbying. Again, we say that it’s hugely different, that they had it so bad way back there, but really, I think it’s about a wash. We just let the people choose the set decorations now.

They had constant warfare, but we do as well – the world over, there’s lots of wars. They could by and large, and mostly due to technological limitations, protect their cities from most of the damage. Today, we have constant warfare by airplane and therefore having walls around the city isn’t a workable solution. Our wars aren’t any less constant, they’re bloodier though. Although based on population, I think it’s a wash again.

One place that they actually have it better than us is in the realm of social niceties. In the medieval world, you’d get to know your neighbors – you’d all attend the same churches, work together, play together. For better or worse, you knew what was going on in your neighbor’s life. Today, I doubt most people could give you the names of their neighbors. Maybe it’s still that way in small towns, but not in New York or Chicago. The other aspect of this – and whether it’s good or bad depends on what you think of the concept – everyone growing up in a single village had the same set of morals and ethics. It wasn’t something that people felt could or should be changed. Everybody simply believed in the same religion and the same rule-set. That doesn’t happen today outside of specifically religious societies like the Amish. Actually that’s why they sort of intrigue me as a society. Even in reletively homogenous societies such as England or Spain, it’s not all that odd to find a bunch of people who proudly flout the norms of society. It’s also not that odd to hear of someone being shot. I guess if you don’t like conformity, that’s a bad thing, but at the same time, conformity forms communities and prevents criminal behavior.

Although, being that I like computers and the internet, I guess that’s one thing we still have over the middle ages. We have internet.