Millennium-Shock

[poliphilo]

I think of it as millennium-shock- the mindset that has propelled conservative governments and dictators and demagogues into power and influence all round the world. We're afraid of the future with its shinyness and its mind-and-body-warping technologies and its promise of an end to life as we know it, and we fall back on the defence of green-mouldy certainties from way back when. Thus the demand for sharia law throughout the Muslim world, thus the dominance of the religious right in the USA, thus a Pope who decries personal religion and demands that his young people submit to (his) authority. We're a race of scaredy-cats. We'd prefer to have the Middle Ages back rather than commit ourselves to the unknown.

I think in the end we'll get over this reactive fit. Science and invention will continue to motor away- and we like the goodies they provide too much to shut them down. And ideas are harder to censor than they used to be, now that we have the Net. Even so, these are hard times, and those of us who don't want a new Dark Ages to descend- and the world be run according to the lights of Bush and Khamenei and Pope Ratzinger- are going to have to make a fuss.

Comments

[ibid.livejournal.com]

1000 AD was a turmultuous time, there was no one 'Anglo Saxon Monarchy' Wessex was the dominant kingdom but Northumberland was independent and undergoing political chaos, The Scots and the Norsemen were attacking. the town of Jorvik was established at this time.

The Anglo Saxon world was suffering from the Norse invasions, Aethelred the Unready [actually a pun - Aethelred means 'well counseled' but his nickname was 'unraed' - ill advised] kept buying the Norse invaders off but of course they kept coming back for more and the English economy was in turmoil (though English coinage kept its good reputation). Aetherlred in 1002 ordered a massacre of the Danes living in England. Oh there are many parallels!

I don't know how helpful it is to think it terms of millenium fear. It would imply that people, rather than being grounded in a particular time, have an overview of the whole of history. We do not have the luxury of comparison because we are not time travellers. Each problem of the age seem insurmountable - wore than anything that has gone before. Yet we always get by - our species survived the black death, the common cold did not wipe out all the North American natives, wars and tyrannies have come but they will also go. But as soon as one madness goes there will be another! But we still keep moving.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.

As you see my grasp of Anglo Saxon history is worse than sketchy.

Like you I believe we'll survive. We're a tough species.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I think we were probably the last school in the country to do it at a level. It was boring until I no longer had to study it, then I found it fascinating! There is something about it that really appeals to me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The way I was taught it, British history started with the Norman conquest. Before then there was Alfred the Great, but he seemed almost more legendary than real, and he was presented as an isolated figure, without context.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I once went through a 15th c scroll showing the descent of Edward IV from Adam. It had Every.Single.One of the generations listed in Geoffrey of Monmouth, with the exception of one particularly dreary series that was summarized in a little paragraph. It was a mind-numbing exercise, a bit like reading the begats in the Old Testament.

Said scroll also had the whole French line from, I kid you not, ffaramond ("idly supposed to be the founder of this bill").

It also had the "we're descended from Arthur and you Lancastrian lot aren't, neener neener" bit, too.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fascinating in summary, but obviously a bore if you're having to read the stuff yourself.

I guess things like this are the medieval equivalents of today's political "spin".

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

So it would seem.

Recently a columnist wrote, of our particularly egregious corrupt politicians and their camp followers, that they were new to the game, "all sharp elbows and no finesse." I think the same can be said of 15c efforts at "spin." The rise of a moneyed and literate middle class was a fairly new phenomenon; both their efforts to seek favor and the warring factions' efforts to influence them are a little oversupplied with sharp elbows as well.

If you'd like to see the scroll, and some of my comments about it, see

http://www.r3.org/bookcase/misc/e201.html

We (the Richard III Society, American Branch) raised $5,000 to pay for its conservation prior to a 2001 exhibition -- the first time, we suspect, it had been on public display since the fifteenth century. The exhibition can best be described as awesome; the Museum constructed a special 20-foot-long case so that the scroll could be displayed unrolled.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

1000 AD for Jorvik? I somehow thought it was earlier, but then of course there had been Eboracum.