BIG SCIENCE
FINAL and F O U R T H — P A R T
Richards Heinberg, oil and Robin Hood (introducing; Sysiphos the Centaur).
The question underlying all of this is any of this relevant to us? Is oil becoming peasants once again? That´s my guess, and Heinberg´s guess too.
this story is more or less finished, the heinberg fact-sheet is in the pipe…
The similarities between the 1600s and the 1300s are striking; burst of naval activity (anglo-dutch war 1650s, 1660s and then some), financial crisis in France and Spain (1620–1640s) plus PLAGUE (London), the internal fighting in France (Fronde), the sciences burgeoning (ASTRONOMY) —compare this to ;
hundred yrs war (FRANCE-ENGLAND), financial crisis in France (1350s) plus PLAGUE, in-fighting in England (1381) and France (class-war La Jacquerie), the explosion of science and enlightenment (Italian renaissance, ASTROLOGY forbidden). Hinges on France as a centre for concern.
This “wave” is connecting two catholic countries inexorably — Spain and France. The French start the inquisition in the 1260s, the Spanish take it up in the 1380s. The 1600s sees a new resurgence if most visibly outside the realm of Europe, the writer Voltaire talks about the Portugese this is the tail-end of the inquisition. On the one hand such symmetries are trifles, but if we arm ourselves (as scientists) with new formulas of understanding, we suddenly become aware of strange synchronicity afoot in our search for pattern.
It is astonishingly stupid to omit Germany (the holy Roman empire) for the period 1200 to 1400 and beyond, yet this omission is somewhat warranted. The golden bull of 1365 was more or less a response to the centralising effect of the French king plus his usurpation of the papacy. In scientific terms the need for wood was as great in Germany. Germany however was eclipsed by the Dutch, and the Dutch were eclipsed in a more large-scale kind of action by the English, who did not want to annihilate or purturb a fellow protestant nation needlessly. Fight they did yet this war was not a war over principles and was not aimed at extermination. It was a trade war. It is all about France, anf as we know two thirds of all Europeans lived in France (we should know also that more than half of the French so-called, did not speak French, this all-french speaking nation had to play out over three centuries of 1400 to 1700)
That´s mirroring. One clue to our dilemmas is flip-switching (symbols are meta and physics). For this read on, or go to end of 3rd part (Rees´ triangle). But the main argument is tree-felling, and availability to and garnering/ assembling of the means for ship-building (actually men, ports, capital and wood, the first two of which we may subsume), which sadly makes history into foreign policy and a hidden concern in history (i.e. access to timber). The flip-switching just mentioned is the notion that as complex systems shift they take on a new dress, sometimes one of violent inversion and convulsion.
The symmetry is uncanny. Is it real? Uh, not really. This is an essay, and it may be best digested on an empty stomach. Take the time, follow the path. The idea that this symmetry underpins the rest of this essay is mostly a misplaced hope, that would as Stephen Toulmin points out (Cosmopolis, 1995) reinstore Cosmopolis and the geometric ideas current in the Renaissance for all the wrong reasons. No the notion is certainly much more subtle than that.
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The fourth part — a look at Renaissance and late Mediaeval history
Using Greece was to show how trees fuelled the Greek expansion (and how historians do not talk about it), in the next piece we examined Rome depicted over a 200 year period, the shift from an non-military to a military economy was pushed through — the same went for the feudal system (Renaissance, a misnomer at best), but more importantly the world as described by Richard Heinberg (last 200 yrs so far of oil). Slaves in terms of human peasantry have been key through these shifts, but in our case oil plays that same role. Play these cards right and you will understand what energy really means. This starts a war over history, but one which is quickly resolved; IF and only if we are in a global recession, there are previous episodes in history at our immediate disposal — I will here cling to the Renaissance for comparison. The Renaissance was a period in economic decline. (Added to this is modernity, which to Kuhn is a fragile state, and to Popper a power-system — see further).
The 70 min read label is in actual fact non-applicable, the afterword is very extensive, if you came here for Heinberg´s views it will suffice with 30 min. Plus, a glance at the fact-sheet. Factsheet towards the end on The End of growth (look for Heinberg´s picture) so I come full-circle at last.
Let us not avoid the issue, and make good on our promise — further down there is a factsheet on Heinberg´s position — the basis for my “adventure”.
THROUGH A SEE-SAW DARKLY
What now we have to consider sincere, is not the smooth of the 18th century, nor the high point (see-saw) at the crest or top (as with Cicero), but the contents of a cookie-jar falling; i.e. a downward slope of history. Think of it as a pyramid with one up (spin) and one down (charm), three states. Yes I am trying to befuddle you, so let´s get moving. Open chute.
count-down to infinity (words of advice)
As you see the sections 1,2 and 3 I highly recommend reading ONE first, not to confuse but, I have had the benefit of writing this garbage (try the path)
on the other hand if you are more on the 2 -side, follow the twos, your choice
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I-ONEtwo-three-I123123123123123123…
The purposes of this is three-fold; ONE to set in perspective Richard Heinberg´s classic The End of Growth, TWO to explain where I stand in relation to a theory of everything (we often call this history, though I think it resembles the ideas of our culture more, hence my preference for Arthur. O. Lovejoy), the basis of this pyramid is psychology/Bateson, THREE start the story of Sysiphos and Siberius (it is not important as yet, but will be developed on its own elsewhere, it illustrates I think how we are in a phantazy and someone just sold off the magic door-knob to the Neverland closet). A theory of everything is simple, we all do that when we is little. Yes, trust me.
If you´d like to skip the bullshit, go to juststarthere-entry (below)
I will try and set up some sign-posts for those who might want to do that.
J U S T + S T A R T — H E R E = ! (skip some five pages from here on)
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/%¤(/=?(&%# One of those GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
There is little reason to believe Hegel literally, his notion is almost kabbalistic or symbolistic, and requires of the subject an objectification of imagimation, and this is only half of what will be required of that ‘subject’ — more seriously I have been fooling around with Hegel (for it is only fools who tell the truth) and when synthesis is reused in history (are we not using 70s and 80s ideas in clothing these days?) we might, mockingly call that TREVIVALISM. The notion has to do with tri + revival. But this is numerologic objectivist insanity. Two indicates rantland, so welcome to rantland. Tell me what you know about the Renaissance? Most historians are incapable of explaining what the Renaissance is, this should make us pause. Rats, can we get anyway nearer an explanation then? I think we can, the focus has been too strongly on resources (a development which kicked in later in the period). Complex. And just jump to ONE and come back here later. Complex, and complex-ITY. You will only find historicist notions on the subject, as far as the eye can see. One conclusion with Steve Fuller related to his book (cf. Fuller) is the Dutch take from the French and Italians the law-system and transforms it (1500s), this is noted by him as the modal logic fallacy. Now as a grand finale to my investigation of big science, I am focusing almost like David Harvey does on the PROBLEM of scientific progress (extractive colonial activity). I will contend Dutch adaption of calculus made them convinced the map was the territory, a common error, and the notion that once applied to accounting it will wreak havoc is explored. As we know the Dutch failed to maintain their possessions and their might (explored also in Schama, cf. The embarrasement of riches). The notion of the state (long before Montesqieu develops his ideas of compartments) is handled by people like Hugo Grotius; ‘For whether we look at ancient or more modern times, we find enormous variation [in the method of election]; not only across centuries and provinces, but also over years and individual cities’
Grotius (Hugo de Groot) is aware of systems-change, but I think the momentous changes that takes the netherlands to the top of the heap is not law nor the ideas of Grotius, even though this is evidently a back-drop. His ideas are inspired by Aristotle´s investigation of forms of government, remember the Dutch created a capitalist/monopolist confederacy. Their model of colonialism was (and it was not abandoned but ‘preyed’ upon once again by the scumbag Leopold II) a democratic colonialism, not a state, but a legalistic colonialism (see further). I still cling on to the idea that the Dutch changed everything, unlike Naomi Klein´s notion of capitalism (cf. Klein, This changes everything, although it should be noted Klein plays on irony).
It´s too long. Frankly who cares. Move to path ONE and come back later.
I´ll admit it is long. A good excuse is complexity has many properties, including one we seldom think about (not even if you are rehersed about what complexity, black swans etc is or amounts to); complexes involves pandoras boxes of interconnecting dots, sometimes editing out things is impossible, why? Because in complex systems up and down cease to exist, and making structures visible requires flourescent paints, chem-trails and writer- (not government) intervention to keep the complex system up, so to speak.
Black and White
Or rather how the study of economic history takes an objectivist stance, we might see how the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi famous for his concept of FLOW is in essence a cyberneticist who tries to convert an entire psychology community — a hard task. So what does flow do to economic history? Are they related? Csikszentmihalyi is interested in happy states, and contends we are unhappy — this is an overlooked property of his ideas. To rephrase; humans are flow, nature is flow, and an apt response to glaciers melting is firearms, why (see further Nafeez Achmed, below)? The Dutch invented new ways of running an empire and uniting a federacy of towns in a new democratic fashion. This was so inventive, the adversarial Spanish/Catholic for all their might, were all but defeated in 1630. As Toulmin shows this is the point at which the Catholic side starts rethinking its position on science, seeing this is also seeing how Descartes is hardly acting in a vacuum. They had it coming. But the flow of luck shifted as the Dutch lost out in the struggle — they were pushed further out on the curve, yet there seemed to be plenty to go around. The notion of flow is related to this in the sense that systems are inter-dependent, and flow necessary. There was in essence winners and losers among the colonial powers, yet we are mistaken if we put mistaken labels on this activity, one being nationality (euro-centric), since a flint-lock is a flint-lock ever which way you dice it. The Netherlands were by and large emulated by ROW (the other colonials). This brings about closed-loop logic -black and white thinking.
In the modern world closed-loop thinking takes similar and sinister forms
cite from the after-word (about social science)
The artillery Steve Fuller has put up on the hill points at sociology, and says that there should be a difference between between “on the money” science and “in the money” science — and also of how the agressor is sociology and not Steve Fuller.
This investigates if science is sometimes a hazard. My observation is that it was less the change of laws and legal system, coupled with an accompanying organisational innovation than new inventions in math in the 1550s that put the Dutch at the top of the heap. I am still investigating this but it seems their accounting was improved due to these findings of mathematics. The Dutch are a fine example of a phase in history comparable to our own. The point is not lost on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, but he is unaware that he is cybernetic, this rule evidently is applicable to the Dutch (see further), and as far as I am concerned if we can show why the Dutch foundered... We should note however that both Maslow and M.C. are semi-complex/ cybernetic in their thought, but their spirits are willing, and if half of what they said was revealed we might change our mind about their work. The link between the Dutch and the psychological theory of flow is tenous, but it may in the end be part of a Big romantische vorvirrung.
Rant continues. Shifting gears, Richard Heinberg is explicitly not interested in a marxist theory, along the lines of Lenin who says that any worker´s movement will fail unless it has a theory — that is like saying any after the fact nonsense really. It might in fact have made sense at the time, considering, but theory is not the property of any man. Logical positivism grew out of the absolutes of the 1920´s, Popper was a child of logic positivism. On the other hand Popper´s universe ultimately leads astray (it is too much freedom through alienation). Yes, we should discuss more, that I will accept, I share however to the very core Heinberg´s views about The revolution, namely it is not a revolution at all. History at this moment in time is not fateful but spiteful. If you read this you will appreciate why. To achieve fame in public academia you end up like the moth that flies to the flames. Remember Thomas Kuhn, a rockstar of science. Science in fact should always avoid being Friedmanian dictatorship (cf. Milton Friedman). Yes rents are scientific, the natural world however is not rent-seeking. Remember Sherwood. But how do we escape bad science? By not allowing closed-loop thinking, easily said and difficult to carry out in practice. Then again it is worth a try as things go forward, if the world is seriously changing course. We may suppose so.
My neighbours are Yehova´s witnesses, I like them, and yet I do not share their views, on the whole a scientist and philosopher, will face this every day for the rest of his life, which is why most people do not become philosophers. (from the critical afterword, see below)
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The telling of tales of history matters, they are revelatory, that may be why some people avoid history and its lessons. I think intelligence should be focused, not on enemies of the state, but the state of the Nation. It would be a mistake to say I look for simple answers, rather I look for complex systems and accept and embrace them. If you study systems your only choice is system simplification, and doing so in order to be intelligible. As in a science against science. The result is a science similar to mathematics, but based on surface pattern — in my case this has led to results in many walks of science.
There is but one cock in Sherwood, the only judge of hidden delight and daily routine, he rules over shrub and street alike for his voice is heard all over as in a science against science. Oh, sorry had to. (a glimpse of my Sherwood tale)
Thinking logic. Active logic. Naomi Klein. A note on economics.
In chapter seven of This changes everything, the author asks if capitalism can save capitalism. This seems to be a working model for Naomi Klein (cf. Klein, 2014), in a twist Soros it seems is thinking that too (reflexivity) (cf. George Soros, 1987). It is in one sense vainglorious to defend capitalism, on the other hand Klein and Soros both are poor metaphysicians. They seem to believe in the creatio ex nihil story, forgetting the fossil fuel crunch, and at the same time forgetting God eats Snickers, and Snickers only. Taking a more conciliatory stance this is not a question of the state of a nation, the last one standing is going to be unable to fix the ecological problem, we do not need lunacy at this rate or state, or at all. The question for cybernetics, and systems-thinking is the sociology of sociology, the investigations of Bourdieu are half-systemic only. One might suppose a similar problem between some followers of Popper as against Hegel, same as the distinct vociferousness of Bourdieu to Niklas Luhmann. Kuhn and Bourdieu share philosophically epistemological outlook (cf.Fuller). See further for these complicated things in the critical afterword. The writing of this article was not led by the idea of making things more complex, this notion is common but should if possible be avoided. Bringing to bear the Renaissance and discussing what the Dutch were doing to destroy their own fate is a statement proving, that if we do not heed their faults, we will too. The marxist notions of change have been helpful to the sciences, and this might be one line of argument, another which I find more useful is the science of science itself. We may explain it this way; ethnography invented the passionate observer, what ethnography calls participatory observer perspectives, we must not disband critically observing science (one step beyond Descartes). Many historians make this mistake, including some of my Heroes... Batesonian thinking can be used to do marvellous stuff, McLuhan snapped up these ideas through various sources. But going to economics, we are in a similar world. Harold Innis and Renaissance poetry were very formative in McLuhan´s case (another inspiration was opposition to ideological marxism). As we will see Steve Fuller has seen what most people could spend 20 yrs studying without results, namely that the Popper and Kuhn debate is possibly a fundamental human existential question. Surprise, this rant continues (choose path ONE or else..).
Most of my ideas stem from the recognition that the two worlds of hard science and soft religion separate society. The debate is a fight over the Enlightenment, a subject which lies close to my heart. Also, Fuller shows how either position is possible, in a sense Popper and Kuhn are the ultimate ying-yang. But let us get up to speed. Read that which helps you out in a world of new biotic strains.
some more preliminaries…
It seems we live in a world of the Church in which the central banks have the long-term view, and the banks and Wall-street has the short-term, this way nobody has any responsability (see further below Duhem-Quine thesis). Saíd has read of, or snatched ideas from Foucault, the eternal outside-in perspective is alien, yet helpful (cf. Orientalism). Skip this and go to next paragraph for the start. The symbol and the materials are always in a sort of flux. A good general understands when saturation occurs. At shifts in history mathematical patterns play out, as in chemistry largely. The religious view is in fact possible, if you really believe — that is why a comparison with other times may give perspective to these issues. Meister Eckhart chose to stop persecution of dissenters, his thoughts went to King David, or to Saul/Paul. The clamp-down on virginity is for good and bad. The equivalent of teen revolt in the Middle Ages was the saintly inspiration. In the protestant areas witches, in the catholic ones disobedient women. The point being that the Pope excommunicating the Mob, is almost similar to the hopeless battle against the internet of our day, or astronomy which unfolded during the Renaissance (Giordano Bruno et al). To systems-thinking the West grew out of Islam and Byzance. The Enlightenment was created in the mirror of Catholicism, any process is always systems-dependent(cf. Toulmin 1995). Meister Eckhart is obviously silly in some respects, but dispassionate observer perspectives are promoted by Eckhart — his “policy”-conclusions are debatable. His ideas comes from Aristotle, via Thomas Aquinas’ ideas of the life worth having (via contemplativa), but we should note (as does Fromm, cf, Having or being)that work is not separate from life in Mediaeval thinking. I suppose we need to rediscover work, as in a double-twist. Think of our time as not the end-times, as in a sense Not The Nine O´clock News were not really an instance of news. I am not an enemy of religion for all that. Some theologians recognise the divide between semitic and latin or germanic traditions in Christianity (cf. Niebuhr). I am a McLuhanite and a Batesonian. The world we will now explore deals a lot with McLuhan but in the round-about way. That is how you can avoid this whole question of theory for theory´s sake. Just come back to this paragraph later. Here is a short introduction. My motives are these My Dear Reader. Introducing systems to a more general public. They are useful concepts, and anyone can use´em. Democratic.
XENO-EXONOMICS — be sure to skip this
The economists Mark Blyth and Steve Keen share the idea about complexity, or second-order phenomena. They go their separate ways in terms of what debt is or isn´t. Our economy is faltering. The Trumpland we live in is in a sense common to all the Western world. USA was split by Trump (cf. Blyth) in the two moving pieces of middle vs coasts, or rather Trump preyed on this underlying territory. The boomers amassed debt and joined forces with the elites, if not totally then at least politically (the democratic party bubble), this is shared ground by Keen and Blyth. The problems now amassed might involve robotised health-care to the elderly to cope our way out of paying for it all (cf. Blyth). This topsy-turvy world, to me who is ill-versed in economics, is cybernetic. Language is code, picture is intuition, as I referred to Bateson can be seen as COLD and McLuhan as HOT. My contention is economics suffers if it does not take account of these worlds of understanding. Steve Keen seems to agree; (for what it´s worth here is my take) we have a division (a/b divisor) between state and voters as divided by voter´s loans. (system ONE)
Looking at this set-up we can draw a number of conclusions
Banks and FED make up a separate system, the state header and voter´s loans denominator is sytem one. Here is system ONE and TWO (Banks/FED divide)
If voter´s loans increase, FED must increases — the two systems offset each-other by “counter-balancing”.
This is a set-up essentially clarified by Steve Keen (if I got it right), as a cyber-guy all I can say is the Banks seem to serve as a double-standard (BIND). If this is true it explains the psychology behind it. Caveat Lector.
But there is a story here (as related by Fuller, cf. Steve Fuller) to do with morality. Banks are operators of money, yet money should not be based on barter (cf. Keen), well Keen says banks should not be based on barter, I take it one step further. Banks should not be based on money. Ok, ok I get it, juststop.
The Duhem-Quine hypothesis states that we can have paradoxes in science, to my mind it even could be seen as a theory of meaning, or rather a better statement is how it might be stated as a theory of unmeaninmg, or pointlessness, or alienation. An improvement on the ideology debate in Marx. The often used terminology is UNDERDETERMINATION (cf. Fuller).
How did I come to this conclusion (for we must indeed move on, and leave Plato scribbeling away in his man-cave…)? As I mentioned in a previous part of Big Science money has a double nature, and as banks are yoked to money, ok you catch my drift. If you ride the Moon you need money. Ok, sorry.
Bohr and Einstein are the Keen and Blyth of physics, i.e. Bohr and Eistein are second-order phenomena to nature (start laughing). There you have it-FLOW.
FLOW of feed is visual to Steve Keen in how mortgage debt pushes real estate higher, that my friends is a second-order phenomena (an onion-skin).
an internet pod (Hidden Forces) has a Keen interview (LINK)
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?v=huH65q87Qdw&redir_token=K4bwkIbXwiyRwO_dEY8dTEyZi7V8MTUxODI2ODAxMUAxNTE4MTgxNjEx&event=video_description&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hiddenforcespod.com%2F
Last words on theory
Gregory Bateson is a theoretician of the mind, and for those willing he is highly accessible. I have made the statement that Bateson is the Darwin of the mind, and McLuhan the Marx of the mind, should I defend it? To push things in a popular-science direction, one might add that Kuhn is hot and Popper cold, i.e. using McLuhans terminology. Bateson is not a historian unless we see history as a game of comparing — can a butterfly act like a banking crisis? These issues are present in Wittgensteins family-ressemblance idea. The operating principle of the MIND is comparing things (the subset of things, which allows for comparison of ANY THING with ANY THING) I follow that path. Going back to McLuhan (that wild oat) we must ask ourselves why McLuhan was fascinated by the meltdown that was the creation of the Renaissance. The reference to McLuhan you can hop into by reading my Reading Marshall McLuhan piece here at Medium although it can be seen as a work in progress, we are instead dealing (here) with that quixotic beast we call the Renaissance. In a kind of way (cf. Karen Armstrong, Mohammed, A biography of the profet) as Islam dwindles a sort of cell-junction appears that devolves or involves Europe. Europe (and all of the Historians agree) came out of the fog very late and Islam in a sense birthed it. It pricked the illusion and convenience that was Constantinople. Cybernetics is heretical, and intently scientific. Wittgenstein should not have poked at Popper (the story goes he attacked Popper in public discussion with a fire-rake!), and Kuhn was comsumed by hell-fire. As Steve Fuller shows, the public persona of Kuhn (and even I have fallen prey to it) was a fall-guy, as such Trotsky was, and Gorbachev was too. Kuhn, the ultimate fall-guy. Check out Fuller´s book, or start with Richard Heinberg — the real reason for this exercise in economics, history, history of ideas and essayism.
J U S T + S T A R T — H E R E = !
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Mediaeval history
Make no mistake the late middle-ages is a very different thing from the “high” middle-ages. To me the 14th century is the pinnacle, the high point.
Robin´s tale has explained these things in terms of ecology being at the heart of any economy, but also in pointing to the shift taking place slowly and then escalating in the 14th and 15th centuries, added to it is a climate-change of colder weather. Expect trouble ahead. Hear that wind creaking?
Lionheart or not — the general walk of these things seems clear. Here we have a system soon to change — and in this piece we will look at the nitty-gritty details of that, it is often forgotten how this period, the so-called Renaissance, was a Big decline. This should be, at best, all the pieces falling into place.
You could look at the period into which we will now jump, from various angles. It is remarkable that Montaigne ponders the fight between Pompey and Caesar, as he considers their fight honourable. Erasmus, who was perhaps more knowledgable about the original sources than Montaigne, takes a less positive stance in relation to Rome. It is true that seen from the inside such a fight may be considered honourable. Rome was in a civil war already back in the 400s BC, so it was an ongoing (cf. Alföldi, 1988). An issue Réza Alföldi is grappeling with is the role of the latifundia, if I may I think the latifundia were all-important as a back-drop to Roman history. Putting land and trees in that same category of matter. But there are always differing views, and reasons are reasons, and history is not science, we must never think that. Cybernetically speaking the example of M Csikszentmihalyi is helpful, you see what Mihaly saw was a strangeness of the sub-atomic system of society. He stumbled on flow. This in one sense is Heisenbergian. Now it seems since culture can do away with a fundamental idea in nature that is natural, it seems likely this way we opened the door to hell. Not having flow in a sense is hell (Shoal, the Jewish hell). De Montaigne sees Rome on its own unbiased principle yet misses the bigger point about the meaning of the word honourable. Killing people is not honourable, not even for Caesar. But remember, reading Montaigne we see how absolutely conflict-ridden was contemporary life, Rome after all, i.e. all considered was a possible island of hope in a world gone mad. Erasmus disliked escapism as in novels about far-off islands in the sun, yet without a flinch he would allow another utopia, that of Moore — this all taken together shows how wild was this time. Utopias were an outlet, much as pulp is today. Symbol however was reflexively present in colonialism and thought made into reality (Nathaniel´s Nutmeg by Giles Milton explores the war over nutmeg, in a succinct story of the real happy isles). In hindsight we see how important was nutmeg and pepper (sadly sugar/slaves/rhum as well as colonialism dies slowly in a cross-fire including the angsty birth of America, the banning of the slave-trade in 1807/1833) for the slowing economy, but it was also important (if such a word is appropriate) as a death-knell of many indigenous peoples. It has been overly emphasised in some sense. Every force has an opposite force, force cannot be created or destroyed, force is constant unless we interfere with it. Colonialism is not our main concern, it is a symptom not a cause. Yet colonialism is an outlet, a safety-valve. Colonialism will not be explored. Isaac Newton has applications even now. A new castle, one which was equally strange grew on top of the early days of Erasmus and Montaigne, leading to the harsh wars of religion (Josef Polisensky sees in the 30 yrs war a fight between regions and ideology at the same time: four regions and two ideologies, the main fight was that between Holland and Spain, Polisensky thinks systems and working logic).
Yet the consideration of a broad interpretation of religion stays with us today. Richelieu in some ways resemble Wycliffe, hold that thought. Milton in a sense is the twin of Richelieu (looking for twins is a non-sensical hobby of mine). This funky idea would show how 1300 to 1600 we have closed loop. We hope this approach helps in pinpointing shifts of the history (the map of history) between the yrs 1300 to 1600. Sherwood is a system, but not an experiment — remember Sherwood. Always.
My conclusion is scientificism, as developed in Newton had heirs in neo-platonicism, that same “ideology” which inspired Augustine. The strange fact is the Church stretched the theory, made a special reading of their own. For the doctrines of the Church were a castle built on a sequence of ideas, and as the Renaissance rerouted this sequence it had to rethink its basic tenets — the basic tenet of neoplatonicism most prominently. It inspired Descartes. We are his children. End of story. The reasons for this are uncomplex and evident.
The true concerns for Augustine were personal, yet on top of them he builds his castles in Spain. Stephen Toulmin has a leaning towards rhetoric as ethics. He collects that from Aristotle, and we find it in Augustine too. The idea I have followed here of neoplatonicism is my own. Now going back to that language sholar called Erasmus. He spread human values, a paralell to the ever-present unfreedom of the Church, not that he was alone, Italy had had it for years. A blossoming freedom. Ferrero takes the view that Colombus was comitting suicide, or rather that Italy did with Colombus and Vespucci (and other wild explorers). Genoa, Venice and Cyprus. The birth earlier on of Bologna and Padua and of critical medical studies, however primitive. You can smell it even today, as Italy struggles its intelligence rises. But it was to be short-lived, for Italy was thrown into chaos as the numeral six replaces five in the calendar, it is said London burnt to get rid of the plague for good in 1666. But what happened in between 1400–1600? This we might investigate, although it is a vast ocean. There are draw-backs to my method all of which will become visible. To cite McLuhan and Shafer (p.143, Gerald E. Stearn 1967)
Dialogue between Robert Shafer and Marshall McLuhan
SHAFER“This must have created a vast dimension of Renaissance megalomania. The whole idea at that point of his fame lasting forever is, of course, so much a part of that. This was true of the Renaissance man in many ways, in his exploration and his colonization, his conquest of space.”
McLuhan”Also the idea of the establishment of an empire as a permanent structure. No accident that Colombus and print coincide”
SHAFER”Before Gutenberg, people had relatively little incentive to become egotistically projected onto a whole civilization.”
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footnote. S. Toulmin writes in his, by now, CLASSIC book about the Renaissance; Cosmopolis how it might have been better had we followed Montaigne rather than Descartes.
The rock-bottom problem is the fountain of youth stopped, and we are meddling with the plumbing, as if this would help.
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1 and 2 (follow the path)
E N E R G I A -vs- F L O G I S T O N
Since I develop my ideas here with you (My daring darling reader) they are generally speaking critical of rationality, they are an attack on civilisation in terms of an oppressive culture that restrains natural life, science has two sides — (as Weber points to) one of politics (application of tenets held to be true) so that policies are argued (this is anathema to Max Weber, this is Kuhn´s idea one might say) in the real world, the desks of quiet women and men doing climate science is an example of the opposite, namely that of science proper, which at all times must be dispassionate (Popper´s idea, almost). For any history-buffs out there, the views of Big History here go logger-heads with micro-history. Searching for TWINS and decorating my super-macro view with fanciful detail. Egon Friedell is IN THE MIND so to speak. Bateson whom I have mentioned is a psychologist/philosopher, and much of this is predicated on human cognition. The approaches I use are decidedly BIG, yet I speak about Friedell and psychology and stuff — how so? Here are my conclusions about energy. Energy is the main organising principle of our society, hence economy is brought to the fore, but if that is unwarranted how do we go about changing it? My kind of science is a science looking back to the systems-approaches of the 50’s and 60´s — impossible histories of just about EVERYTHING, inspired by Friedell. No, allow me to rephrase that. T.R Glover in his book Paul of Tarsus has a complex picture of the mess that was late antiquity Greece and Turkey (no details of Glover are pertinent to the following, but he argues for complexity). What I am saying is Friedell and Glover are very similar in outlook, the period 1910 to 1930 has a special outlook, it seems the 50s re-connect to this “style” of thinking. It might also with a little frown be made clear how Adam Smith´s abundance was Liverpool and Glasgow abundance fired by slavery, and how the rise of the Dutch was via a new kind of destructive stewardship in the colonies, as in rape and murder, to critisice the Portuguese over the Dutch is an exercise not worth the ink and paper. Any idea has a material back-drop. This kind of MORAL fix to history I embrace, and so did Weber and Sombart and many of their most unscientific forbears (pseudo-theology of the 19th century). Also think of how Heinberg himself is into that game, mixing up dusty storms of ecology, flashy energy and the almost unrelated science of whitepaper economics — here is a strong sense of everythingness. It shows the dialectician in him. To cite Gollum; We likes it, my precious. Re-introducing wholism.
That is why some people will shun how daring is wholism, daring but necessary perhaps. Let us take an example, of how Columbus went to America. As in the case of the Greeks who (as resources dwindled) went off to settle in Marseille and Emporia and Sicily, so Columbus went. In hindsight it was decidedly osé (provocative) and successful, but remember who could go; only the people who dared all. You risked your life on deck, you risked your life below it. In terms of folksong: I got one fist of Iron, the other of Steel… A lot of people didn´t -a lot of people died. Only a nation in unison with the genius of Cristoforo Colombo, and a nation desparate enough and on its knees might harken, although it is said he asked the Caliph for money and got it. Columbus had read Marco Polo, and held his book dear, and he had read the Muslim sources. Wholism begets honesty. Any reduction has ingredients — economy is just one ingredient. As we will see ideas are breeding contrary ideas. Islam payed Colombus´voyage. I have not substantiated these rumours but buy the rumour sell the fact, right.
Is Lionardo Da Vinci a fit twin for Erasmus, it may be debated on grounds of sanity, but inside my feeble mind it all makes perfect sense… but did Christopher Columbus commit suicide? (cf. Guglielmo Ferrero) Oh, gods! More pressing is how we MUST study the end of the Middle-Ages, as expressed by thinkers such as McLuhan, they may be revealing of our times.
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Bearded men — Marcus Aurelius
It is no secret he was double-dealing, Colombus, but still, he was a busy-body. He spent years trying to get the means for his trip, in Portugal, and in the chaos that was Spain. In terms of prosperity, the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe were much more prosperous than the two centuries after the peak in the 14th century (1300s), i.e. the years following it were an age of decline, Jean Gimpel is a bit unsophisticated on this issue muddeling his concepts slightly. When we compare ourselves to the Renaissance we miss how essentially wrong this view is. Prosperous how? Either the word Renaissance most be discarded or we must change. The expansion and pride of the 12th and 13th centuries we seldom think about, the contraction of the Renaissance in similar fashion we forgot. We generally call that age, on grounds of technological innovations and the freeing of the individual, the RENAISSANCE, Erasmus´ life is one representative of it Colombus´ another. But as much as Aurelius (the emperor and not the saint) wore a beard, so too are we (hipsters with beards) living in an age of after the peak (this I think is Heinberg´s general supposition). I am wearing a beard too… The joke here is on all of us. The dependency on cars and oil-inflation (sorry! the notion of cost-push inflation cannot be overlooked, the notion that a key-resource grips the whole economy, stifling it), can in a rather straight-forward kind of way be tied to the havoc that happened as the manorial system (throbbing heart of feudalism) had sudden seizures. Here is the connection as I mentioned to OIL.
Hint; it involves horses, since horses are more efficient than oxen are (see further). Read those two sentences again, for they are the gist of all of this. Jean Gimpel is not alone in this creed, we snap it up and investigate in short order (cf. Jean Gimpel 1975, The Mediaeval Machine).
THE RENAISSANCE
Essentially backwards
Take the example of Desiderius Erasmus, his love of the Classics was essentially backwards. This if anything is a paradox. Then is everything up for grabs in Sherwood? As we saw in partido uno, temperatures declined globally during the 13th and 14th centuries it was to continue up until the 18th with climatic variations. Jared Diamond, the well-known thinker on civilisational decline who wrote e.g. Guns, Germs and Steel is worried about our world instead. You see. Civilisations seem to have this habit. Yet my idea of a shift should not be taken at face value, why expect a shift? How can late Mediaeval society inform us? I am curious to find out, yes how exacly? The average lifespan of the 1600s was 50, today its 100. We can compare toy-cars, but is it as such a useful idea? We can look at it two ways, either we say it is a game, or we say, ok, so show me the evidence — I am catering to both groups.
Going back to our ideas of history, which is quite different from what Diamond is talking of, his discussion is about facts not about opinion. The creation of the Renaissance is a strange beast. Marshall McLuhan, being an historian of the Renaissance is the one who points to this paradoxical idea in history. Caveat Lector. Now most people would not see how the abundance of religious literature and the classics (in the Middle Ages proper saint´s autobiographies were all the rage) in the Renaissance would point to a significant PARADOX — Marshall McLuhan begs to disagree. So the point being in times of change we tend to look BACKWARDS. If you want the Heinbergian conclusion go to FACTSHEET. Go to the end to get any thing ressembling a march through the original The End of Growth — on which all of this rests and grounded in (look out for Heinberg´s picture). But from now on the route will take strange detours (BEWARNED). For more on McLuhan and history follow path 2 in this piece, or else stick to path 1. Prepare for a wild ride through History! Put the madcaps on! Here we go! — (The End of Growth, Heinberg, 2011). Heinberg made into fiction and essayism. I add the deep sensation of shotgun logic as I add things on top of other things to no useful end. I find it increasingly difficult not to add sequels to this story — but I will wrap things up in a neat package — the only problem being I cannot expunge Heinberg´s book it stays with me like a ghost. Wholism rules. Post-modernism rules. Well as Lovejoy points out any ism is in fact a set of ideas that can at times contradict and so the history of God, or the history of e.g. liberalism (or any ism as Lovejoy says) is not the history of ideas.
How societies adapt — a revelation
This is the final and fourth piece of BIG SCIENCE. As Heinberg has pointed out a number of limiting factors are lining up like those three stars of the mages — ecology, followed by energy and last but not least economy — and in that order… Let us compare first with a no nonsense thinker, a non-historian who excels at history (because of his non-bias). Jared Diamond says an elite and an ideology can both hinder the ability to avoid a change. In Diamond´s example, the Norse in Greenland failed to change for both reasons; they were Christian (the colony was destroyed circa 1450) and were not able to take in Inuit ideas, that is Diamond´s ideology component. The elite as a brake to positive change was also present he says, in that chieftains had a short-term interest in outjonsing the other cheiftains. Put differently Diamond says an elite can stop change if they have a short-term interest in keeping the business as usual paradigm going. Are we anything like that? The difference between the Middle-Ages and our own time is that Climate plays a bigger part, in our story the factors societal also, we think, are deemed more important — so why even begin to compare? Wait a second! The climate matters more… So in principle these examples are same, right? Both are climate-dependent. Can we compare, if so how? There seems to be less rub to the rub to paraphrase Hamlet, here suddenly similarities with our age appear. At last a revealed truth.
Nafeez Ahmed understands that most people will not get it, that is perhaps why he says; “You can´t deal with melting glaciers with guns.” , so true, and an apt response to a world of utter bewilderment. But we might see the light. This cite from the film Crisis of civilisation — the deeper issue here is wether we are delving in humans and not in civilisations. Be that as it may. We are in trouble. The answer to the paradox is solved in this piece. The way I think is to compare Jevon´s paradox with the peasant wars — we must thank Heinberg for setting us on the path to understanding.
The Minstrel now picks up his lute, and sings once more. Tune in. The snows begin to fall on the rounding of the Earth. It was reported someplace in Germany in the 1550s how small crosses did fall from the sky; a miracle!
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S U M M A R Y so far in Sherwood — W I L D F I R E
It seems ok. Yet we fail to understand this hugish monster and what is about to happen. Chronos is eating his children again. In the first part the facts that a rough technological world engulfs us was made evident in Laurie Anderson´s plea of sanity. Big Science -Hallelujah! I pointed out how this element of a technological défi (obstacle) is present in Richard Heinberg (the three e:s, also present in a thinker such as Martenson (cf. Martenson, The Crash Course, 2011). I started by introducing Robin Hood a representative of ecological yet hidden factors in history. We see tree depletion over time (…that ship of Theseus and the big generals of Themistocles/Cyrus). In part two I introduced the idea of Greek history and Augustine as parts of a bigger narrative of tree-felling to some extent missing in Fernand Braudel in that Braudel misses the HUMAN OPERATOR paradox (Jevons´ so-called paradox, more on this below, well there is NO mystery it is a pradox after all…) I also alluded to fixes in Western history echoing through time (ideas about power), in part three the idea that big systems fail much as the mediaeval church (with a capital See, this is a punt on money, see further), and also that technology is such a dependency too. Remember Heinberg sees trouble ahead. My discussion over a tea-pot (see previous instalment). That is to say of modern life, and especially of it and it only, not of any age but of our own. The question now is what can there possibly be to say about this, why a harrowing fourth part? Here starts the mystery of the frogs.
3
The Sleuth
In the cellar of the Bar-maiden, Dutch had his office. He had lured me there as a spider lures a fly to dinner. The Bar-maiden was owned and run by the Naked Ape, so it was a very real player in Sherwood, the Woods district. Dutch peered at me youthfully interested in my person, smiling he said.
What´s your game cowboy?
I held onto my bag, like a patient waiting for the dentist. Clueless I said.
I am waiting for the dead-cat bounce of retail, I think.
His pen dropped out of his hand, blotching his partchment.
Oh, I see. I think that means you are hired for the job. You see we need a crank, a really good one.
- this is a small excerpt from my mystic tale Sysiphos and Siberius. Work in progress.
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Running the frog-show — Plato was right
One simple answer is consumption is difficult to explain, but my conclusion was that consumption is the kind of consumption which is wasting energy — now that is seemingly circular. But it cuts through the crap. But consider this; all consumption is predicated on products, products front-run by vested interests. Now this front-running is coming to an end — to cite Plato we are like frogs on a pond — although Plato´s point was mostly the vast speed of the process, but also how the “frogs” had fled his native Greece. As Plato found out not everything is logic, to us ecological thinkers it would have been more logic if Plato had explained these relations to us. Which is what he did, it is just that we did not want to see or hear what he said. He even mentions the trees godammit! Popper hated Plato but for other reasons, we should love him for cutting through the crap. Heinberg makes the point that the frogs have to pull out if water depletes. Here again consumption follows the wind. A very simple explanation for the Sears and Co apocalypse in America, is oil is more expensive. But if oil rises in price, heaven awaits for all of us, perhaps… I am befuddeling again I know.
One way for a lean way of explaining the mess of global meltdown (economy is stupid, not you) is using paradoxes. Remember Achmed! The simplified idea here presented lends itself to seeing the Middle Ages (approx 1000–1500) as a paradox. Do not forget this rests on simplifying the historic facts. The peasant wars are explored with Jevons´paradox, and then compared to our own set of underwear. For paradoxes underpin civilisation.
N.B. I will also mention how history is not simple, including how the Middle Ages is a quagmire of gigantic proportions — I have stated in previous instalments what I see as safety valves of this process; mostly colonial activity, and along the lines of Heinberg; the Middle Ages changes in order to hold, but the centre does not hold after 1400, it breaks. We should take note that in Mediaeval society trees are replaced by wind, but more importantly by coal as we come to the end of the 16th century. Coal from wood is making wood FUNGIBLE, and it was also wasteful in terms of ecology. You all know the story. Coal-markets were developed early on in Mediaeval “capitalism”. Jean Gimpel argues consistently and convincingly for a modern view on these markets/ factories and what have you of seemingly unmodern past in Europe.
Miniature Baltic Sea microcosm of the 1300s
We are less sensitised to human change. I have to display what have happened in symbol-history. The clue is not obscure words such as semiotics but rather how the words trip us up and how they change; a constable was a cupbearer, a minister was a stableboy, and in the climate-chaos the agri-dependent Teutonic knigths were ready to board and become sailors on the Baltic sea. The studies I pursue lead astray by default into ALL the sciences. The Baltic in a sense is a miniature of the High-seas of piracy of the 17th century, with a fight over Russian trade and Herring and other goods between the Hanse, semi-national pirateering and the slow rise of Monarchy (1300s).
In Polisensky´s work Bohemia is regarded as a micro-cosm of events, a mirror if you will into the question; what the hell was the Renaissance, really like? See also afterword on the role of Aragonia/ Katalonia in the 1300s, as a perfect mirror of these relations. They are contemporary and very similar.
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Uses of history
Heinberg is focused on the recent past, I like to tell that same story using a deeper stretch of posterior events. By no means are you OBLIGED to share my points of view. But you may get a few free-spins if you do… Much of the writings in history is in the details, or historicist. Historicism is all fine, yet it avoids the bigger quest for Univerality and avoids being honest. My version of the Middle Ages is simplistic and relies on the ideas of Jean Gimpel. One basic tenet of Gimpel´s is the rather big technological advances of late mediaeval society — hence my notion that the 14th century is a high point of history. The statement I made in the introduction is implied in this view of the Middle-Ages as rather modern (1000 to 1300), which might seem a strange thing to say, yet in terms of relatives (looking at periods generally)it maketh sense. The centre-piece of this story in terms of avoiding reference to 200 books of history on the Middle Ages. This argument is relative, you see it is advanced in relation to society. The technological advances of later ages, e.g. the 17th are better, but society has changed, this hinges on the simple caveat of “periods” in history, all rather accepted ideas. Fruits and roots. Technology matters. These days we accept different ideas and even differing periods of history, so that history is more a diffuse metamorphosis, up to a point historians were competing over the “real” timeline of history — today we take timelines just as serious, only they may apply to differing investigations into history. In the case of Technology, we are in a sense in two worlds — and ‘history’ shows that the determinism of any world history is hopelessly misplaced. The point of periods in history where technology was extremely precocious proves it. The Middle Ages was such a period.
Why is land suddenly a commodity?
Richard Heinberg explains consumption in terms of history; Think about frogs, if frogs get less water they have to adjust, or possibly move, additionally they may wait for the scarce rain. To Heinberg, and I believe this to be a deep truth about our world, we are frogs with excess water, and as that abundance diminishes we must change too. Now, do not get me wrong, Heinberg is positive, see as consumer society evolves into something new we can all be princes says Heinberg. My way of explaining involves frogs, but more advanced is the notion of the peasant wars as a parallel, the connection to Heinberg´s work is the Jevons´ paradox — in essence it clears muddled ideas about the peasant wars as historic necessity, as well as muddled ideas about Jevons´paradox. It points, for those willing to listen, to our modern world. I can see how this is a very muddled idea of mine, about consumers being like frogs, but we are in this together remember, I cannot figure it all out by myself. Moving on. I will in defence cite Talking Heads; Stop making sense.
Heinberg shows how the system we built (call it what you like, e.g. happy-land) exploited efficiency, not to save money, but for quite other purposes. Plato sees the frogs spreading out, leaving for Sicily (not the iles of scilly). Technically substitution, efficiency
Energy. Feel it in your mouth. Oil is on a one-to-one an inelastic commodity. In short it isn´t what we thought it was, it isn´t a commodity. Instead it is a DEPENDENCY. Moving on. The epidemic is now spreading of happy-land, a land of everlasting abundances. Land became an issue in the shift into Ricardian economics. Still I have clung onto the idea that Heinberg is the twin almost of Ricardo. How are Heinberg and David Ricardo related? They are both of them describing change, and pointing to freaks in the data. The land we call Happy-land. So is Heinberg the present-day disciple of Ricardo? Yes, in so far as they both point to shifting balances. Remember Robin changed over time! Surely we have no reason to belive Happy-land might change? Robin is not green anymore, his blossom is passed. Land rent varies over time. We will see how the end of the Middle Ages (circa 1450) re-inflates the idea of money in Florence, as e.g. the Fugger family shifts from linnen to grain. This is most commonly seen as a sign of speculation. Italy was a frothing horse. What I am highlighting here is how over time economy, energy and environment in turn come to the fore. Italy is often used as a micro-cosm to explain the period we call the Renaissance, we must look further afoot. The relation to us cannot go into details of our world, but superfically relations exist. In essence in our day ECONOMY charade for all of it. In this strange world the frogs are not the peasantry, allow me to rephrase; the water is oil, yet in adapting this model (my own metaphor) the peasants are water too — this explains why we find it hard to grapple with (i.e. both with our own Happy-land and with late Mediaeval history). Then who are the frogs of the Mediaeval world? Well France, what else? (see further)
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In terms of the (cf. Lovejoy as the pioneer of this discipline) period of the physiocrats (approx.1650 to 1850 if we are generous), the history of ideas can lend a helping hand. David Ricardo stops the trend, the elongated (oblong) period in economic thought predicated on land as the primary asset, on the one hand stretches back in time as a mainstay of mediaeval ideology, but land ownership was non-existant. Ownership rested ultimately in God´s hands via the Church. The Magna Charta in 1215 is far from any real development, but it adresses this very problem it is true. No laws in Mediaeval Europe existed on the subject of vassal´s rights to land, the concept doesn´t exist. The King owned all the land so to speak. Beyond this period the modern era sees re-discovery of land as an asset increasingly, waking up the Golem of Malthus again and again. (The cyclicity. The cycle. The bye-cycle. For is not Occham a TWIN of Wycliffe? And how did they fornicate on bicycles? None can I say.) For those who rummage through all of this (well worth the effort) I must nudge you forward, you are half-ways through!
A word about Heinberg
Heinberg has a reference library at; http://www.endofgrowth.com/
The final note in The End of Growth is how we must go from a quantitative to a qualitative appreciation of human life (my notion of re-enchantment of the world (cf. Schiller)). A similar concern is visible with Stoknes (cf. P.E.Stoknes, 2015) the question is also one of belongingness to the earth. Erasmus on the other hand sees the Earth (the lower classes etc, including Leonardo Da Vinci in terms of being an artisan, as separate from MANs needs, we need to shift the ideas away from this fallacious idea into a more connected one). Hey, I make this mistake, but writing has made me think about my own change.
A shift in mindset is necessary says Heinberg. Joseph Tainter´s concept (as oftentimes used by me in the above) complex -ITY is visible through differing examples. What I may have contributed is the long European tradition of symbolism and also of factual actual history. The price is a small one should we end up in over-shoot (cf. Heinberg, TPsO (2003) 2008).
A critique was levelled at Claude Lévi-Strauss as to his method and his scientific rigour. There is little doubt in my mind that my methods are universialistic, that they are “all over” and generalistic and blasphemous. Outraged I hold against the current state of affairs being too narrow. Yes narrow, my precious, narrow.
Rome was dependent on a special set of concepts, the Church was dependent on a special reading of the literature of the day, present-day science can in a leap of faith be said to be into this complex game of dependencies as well, atleast in terms of being either a madman or an economist (Boulding, 1948). A society has responses and abilities. A series of important dependencies can as Heinberg points out (The party´s over, p.34–35) be beneficial to a society or to an empire. I take note that complexity is sometimes symbolic, hence my stress on the history of ideas. We might note in passing how the spread of ideas is related to dissent, i.e. in periods of down-draft we have ideas, spreading. The Church, the feudal system (which proved somewhat more resilient), the Roman ideas of militarism (what I call military economy) or dependencies on key resources (as we will see the peasantry plays a special role as it shifts from matter to symbol), such as coal, wood or oil.
Symbols
My addition is that systems can have a symbolic character. Our case is no different. The Romans would not agree they were limited by land (farming in big capitalist Latifundia), nor do we accept the notion that we are energy-dependent (we are blind to it). Richard Heinberg refers to this as Draw-down in a previous book (The party´s over), namely that we exploit a resource more (exchange of the ox for the horse, big-scale instead of small-scale farming and eviction of the farmers). Also Heinberg points to specialisation, and tool-thinking (my terminology) as additional obstacles (cf. Heinberg, TPsO). If we are looking for a deeper look at Heinberg´s reasoning we should look here. I think anybody can see a deeper level of techno-dependency here. Accepting a line of thought is getting stuck on a way of doing things — but it is also a much deeper dependency (a double-bind). Max Weber refers instead to Rationalität (as he talks at length about it) and I am very much inspired by his way of idealisation of history. Draw-down of ideas? Yes the material and the symbolic are inter-connected. This is the core. As branches becomes roots, and roots… I have a relation here with Herbert Marshall McLuhan on all of these issues, in that I share his views of history. Is this a restatement of complexity as symbol?
The qualitative
I have had to face obstacles in my own life, our individual lives are reflective of the situation we are in society at large, I realised the saying rags to riches is better layed out as a two-way proposition; riches to rags, as well as rags to riches. But we prefer to take the simple answer, we prefer to dream instead of a better life (for good reason). That we prefer dreams ties in with Heinberg´s idea (cf. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors we live by, University of Chicago press) and he dwells on it a lot in relation to over-consumption and consumer society (cf. Heinberg p.25–26 in the book The party´s over). Lakoff´s statements are more general on the human condition in modern society (also my very own ideas below of most of science as specific to a society on a rising tide), whereas Heinberg has a much more critical notion, J.H. Kunstler plays on it as well. This largely are the most prominent ideas of The party´s over. But what about Heinberg´s 2011 book, The end of Growth? So in a sense I make a philosophical thing out of the notion, as Heinberg makes a more down to earth one about practical economics and life.
Any closed system has a beginning and an end. The basic tenet of the documentary film The four horsemen, is that the whole of society behaves (in terms of natural scientific notions)more or less like any biological system, even the individual life. This idea is pushed to the fore in the end-of-growth story (Heinberg, 2011). There is no reason to be esoteric about this, although it seems fancy enough. At the best of times Christian religion expresses the over-stretch of the ego in terms of iconoclasm, wasted it seems on the Romans, as well as on modern man. Gibbon sees the emperor as that scumbag which makes the nation walk, the open contempt of the senate the driver of national pride. We have well defined limits. Well here the argument is more on the economic side, and the result on the eve of the collapse is how we must move away from logic to real life logic (meaning). The Malthus we hate, we hate becuse he is essentially telling the truth. I will now in my small way try to exploit the post-carbon world Heinberg envisions, doing so through history (the Church toppeling down, peasant revolts, the Knight and its demise, and finally Jevons´s paradox…). Explaining a paradox is a tricky thing.
YOU HAVE COME TO THE HaLF-WAY POINT, start walking back, or…
We are very unhappy primates at this point in the story, our disconnectedness involves not being able to be calm and perspectivise. I emphasise very much the psychological considerations (e.g. role-models for the young, and the history of cultures as echoes through time). Roger Scruton (cf. the utopian fallacy and the planning fallacy) seem to think we get stuck on paradigmata (icebergs of cultural preconceptions), although perhaps there is nothing wrong with sticking to a plan, the intricacies are somewhat deeper than just a plan (cf. my critique of rationalism, e.g You are Crazy I know, cf. also Stephen Toulmin, in his masterly COSMOPOLIS, essentially a criticism of Cartesian rationality). Remember, the history of ideas is not politics. Heinberg sees the complex problem but misses the contents of his own thought, this mistake is not uncommon, it is in the historic details of the Renaissance made very visible and scary. Most historians miss it, Gimpel is one. Enter pilosophy.
To perspectivise we need help. There are ideas in Erasmus over the Earth element — an idea he fetches from antiquity. The heavens above is not the earth below, and elements are neat categories (if we were to use structuralism as in Mary Douglas, Erasmus and Plato suffer from “cosmic pollution”). The air is the best, fire and water the second best, and earth the basest element.
Yes this has turned in to a 70 minute read, but let us face it, winter is long…
The idea of Maslow has been thrown down, but how about W.W. Rostow? Did they write in a rising tide? Yes, certainly, both of them did. So now that our age is descending down an incline, it somehow reaches take-down. Are thoughts compressible? What is it that Heinberg overlooks? Symbols is all.
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Essayism
AT THIS POINT THE STORY CONTINUES BUT FOR THOSE WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THIS SUMMARY WE MIGHT SAY THIS TO BE THE END. GOOD BYE BYE, HAPPY SKY, FARE THEE WELL, AND STAY OUT OF HELL.
CHECK OUT HEINBERG FACT-SHEET BELOW (and welcome back for path 2+3)
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I am not sure yet what Sysiphos is, perhaps he is our dependencies. Don´t mind Sysiphos, the idiot, the wiseman, the brother of Siberius.
Robin´s story is re-arranged
Even if we find it hard to understand Mediaeval peasant society, or what we refer to as feudal society, there is hope yet. I say maybe the Middle Ages can help us out? In this story both a tale and an essay will play out — one containing a tale about CENTAURS the other will discuss the finer points of RENAISSANCE history. The essay will show how the Church is comparable to Government, and how Thomas Paine detects that — or if we are to cite Sisyphos;
Marc Anthony was an honorable man, and so was Thomas Paine when he showed how ANYTHING can be proved with logic.
We must be careful to pass judgement, but think of Paine as one voice in the midst of a dream of both nation and blood, and freedom. Thomas Paine dreamed of Land as the factor to steer political life, in that way he is directly a descendent of physiocratic thinking (a flat-earth tax). Jefferson went to France in 1789, he visited Lafayette. Paine in some sense could be described as a Saint-Simonian (cf. Saint Simon, one of the first social thinkers) although they are unrelated. Proto-liberalism. There seems to be some truth to what Sysiphos says, Caesar and Cicero, Napoleon and Thomas Paine, so can we pair up Erasmus of Rotterdam with anyone? Remember Sysiphus has Siberius, that is why the tale (see further) should rightly be called not Troilus and Cressida, nor Hamlet. But Sysiphos and Siberius. What a game. Why Erasmus has Venus? Does he not?
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Humanistic science is not economy and physics
How do we fit the Middle Ages to our own? As a final stroke I add a story about centaurs, but first let us sort out how periods of shift may be compared. I have not been fair, even though a story of a more historic and gutsy content was established by me it did not follow the pages of The End of Growth.
I will at least try to amend it. I had another approach than Heinberg. An inside-out story as opposed to Heinberg´s outside-in story of facts, economic facts mostly. Real fact (real world facts and their entanglements) is often an obstacle to understanding, go the other route of an inside-out story and economics is made more alive, they come second not first. The technical terminology in anthropology is EMIC and ETHIC. In one interview Heinberg says, we must tell this story (the end of growth story), by all means possible, including myth. I have followed that path. As you can tell I agree with him, so in this my fourth part let us get down to proving just that, and let us be very afraid of what is upsetting the apple-cart, or rather be careful of the cart, or both. This my fourth instalment is concerned very much with comparing William Stanley Jevons with the Peasant wars, and from it draw a number of useful conclusions.
My comparison is that of our age with the Middle Ages. What is leading us astray? But as you know by now, the proof will be roundabout and inspired. Richard Heinberg is a bit like the sceptic who questions everything and thereby comes to truth again. Going back to the renaissance. As we will see, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas á Kempis, Bosch and Bruegel are not people questioning — and you might not know but they are all the same (see further). They are quiet conservatives. The renaissance is thus debunked. Will we be able to see the Renaissance? Understanding the Middle Ages is in fact debunking the Renaissance as well. Allow me to explain. This short-circuit of history might serve us well.
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The great circle — temptacion
Sometimes we think of history as science, it isn´t, and never can be. On the notion of the RATIO in history or of critical historiography Friedell says the following; The tradition of writing in Greece and Rome, inserted exemplars and events, and speeches, but wholly unselfcritical, it was thus unaware in the sense we think of history. Unaware of the crime. It started, as the occasion was, from the soundness of logic in holding facts to be truer if made visible. The final result was that the portraiture was being etched into the reader´s memory. One was looking for the living appearence or artistry of the form, not for its dead scientific description. (Friedell 1937).
Now put those madcaps firmly on, but I must add this; this citation from Friedell is not the last word. All he does is to clinically describe how the ancients used history — considering my M.O. I think you know where this is headed.
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This dilemma looks very much like the one facing the Romans (see part three). Lead-pipes or no lead-pipes, the Roman collapse was a collapse of complexity, can we avoid that? (citation from part two of Big Science).
Rome, Cicero and Machiavelli
The lightbulb will not change itself. Energy is a bummer in that sense. LEDs are all fine and a game-changer but not if we increase their number. The smallness of our planet will not go away any day soon. The lightbulb, to reinterate will not change itself, that is why we must change instead. The comparison of apples to oranges is disturbing. Tempting though it is.
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The word romance is affiliated with romantic, but at heart with Rome as well. It is unfactual to say romanticism picks it´s root from Rome, yet… Studying history the fractalist way, like I do, language as in etymology is re-entering as a vehicle of understanding — this is re-discovering the annales history, the systemic history, the structural history of the early adopters in the 1950s. The idea of making pairs (Paine and Napoleon, Cicero and Caesar) is in some sense vain, I hope it redirects our interest to history instead of falling prey to detail. Machiavelli is compared with whom?
- And in much of what I do, I fiddle with romantic (as in the ideals of romanticism) notions of essayism and copying older ways of literature. Romanticism is a flower. During the 17th century as Friedell points out Classicism has a short extatic burst, funnily it ressembles romantic ideas. A double-turn? Who knows? The 1630s is a foretaste of romanticism and classicism (classicism is a development of the 18th century romantic period proper, e.g. Winckelmann). Polisensky remarks that the process of change in Bohemia and elsewhere was in some part a refeudalisation (cf. Polisensky, The thirty-years war). Both Machiavelli and the fabled Hobbes, and the religiously besotted Milton are part of a period of fallow in moderity´s march. Cicero is of another sort as I have shown already. Here we have only to think of different points on the curve rise, top or slope.
Sloth — Sociology is alienation
Weber is too busy elsewhere to reflect on the details of his contemporary world like Georg Simmel. Simmel pinpoints bad things about cities (cf. Mark C. Taylor p.26–27). Such as a society of superficiality visible at partys and in social occasions, as opposed to honesty and truthful demeanor, he sees superficiality and explains it scientifically. Yet this alienation is created in a rising tide, and if I am right our tide is falling. A flame of hope. The sweeping simplifications I have made in considering our ecological dilemma and our post-modern world, is on the one hand not a problem for literature as such. Fiction allows for F I C T I O N so to speak. The real issue however is this one; I can easily blame my search for the Middle Ages as the reason for my sketchy rendering of Rome. Allow for outright lies even. One could also say that as the Romans were true to form, and conservative, they describe all of this and so IT IS NOT MY PROBLEM. But such a notion would be part insincere. The details of Rome. Ok, what about? Defending positions must be said to be at one level dependent on your place in history, the writers in sociology (such as Georg Simmel) were all sitting on rising tide (of coal) they were writing about the filling of our cities. We are dealing with a descending tide, the undoing of it (cf. J.H. Kunstler). The 19th century (and 20th to some degree) sociologists look into Roman ideas and sources that talk about GROWTH, we on the other hand are depopulating our cities. That is how I think about it. Tentatively (and boy I love invention of new terminology, sexy right?) we might call this notion structure-relativism (cf. Heisenberg for a similar idea, also Bourdieu). Simmel does not miss batesonian unity. The notion of a married couple as in a sense free and unfree at the same time figures in Simmel — the DOUBLE-BIND.
We think of history as prosperous. We are not sitting on a rising tide; a case in point, why did the Renaissance (a period in decline) look for neoplatonicism more? Why? Be that as it may but neoplatonicism was developed in a decline, so to speak it was tailor-made for the Renaissance — this ghost is now staring into our face. As I explained in part one, the mediaeval city was not a centre of population growth (as far as scientists can tell), though it may have been a centre for big urbanisation, populations growth took place in the countryside, not the city. The ideology of the time sucked people in (development studies has the notion, push and pull) but scientifically speaking the cities were places of prosperity yet not of growth in numbers. But trade disrupts too. Trade for the most part brought the plague to Europe. The idea of Maslow has been thrown down, but how about W.W. Rostow? Did they write in a rising tide? Yes, certainly, both of them did. So now that our age is descending down an incline, it somehow reaches take-down. Are thoughts compressible? What is it that Heinberg overlooks? The changing tide is a changing tide for “flow” and for the more fundamental ideas by Maslow, i.e. if the future is a slower paced world, a renaissance has come for these theories beyond the materialist fallacy.
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Frogs — Pride
The Renaissance saw glory and honesty, even Montaigne (whom we have reasons to adore) sticks to his love of Rome instead of thinking critically. Today we must see Michel de Montaigne as an aimiable character and a role-model, yet two things come out of his character (and out of that of his AGE); he is cynical to the bone about human nature (remember Machiavelli), and paradoxically he is hopelessly romantic about Rome (a quality he shares with Erasmus). Erasmus Montanus (a Holberg play) plays on the destruction of truth in the young student Rasmus Berg who becomes a studiosi and changes his outlook, the rags to riches story. This itself is Ludvig Holberg´s story, coming from Norway to Copenhagen in the early 1700s, visiting England etc. Theory and practice at work. We glean here the BIG PICTURE story of ideas in history Hegelian fashion, as McLuhan says, it will be for some one or other else to work out those details. Feel the pressure. Plague struck in and around this time and made Holberg humble and thoughtful and sane.
Ok, so are we at he top, and will a slope begin to develop under our feet? This makes for a disturbing likeness between, our decline, Rome´s decline and the decline of the late Middle Ages, the 1800s on the other hand is in a sense more similar to the 12th century, i.e. the “rise” of feudal civilisation. And yes things move slower in the past, but the idea here is approximation.
Heinberg makes a similar point about how consumerism is a fad only. This would be the spot to cite Heinberg.
Let us cite Mark C. Taylor instead.
“More often than not, we are touted as more choices actually are a limited menu of options designed to meet the needs of business rather than the needs of people.” (p.165)(comment, that is the end of history Francis Fukuyama talks about, we should not blame Fukuyama for revealing the truth, a world of fantasy rather than reality). Hedge-funds are innovative, yet sophistication does not take away complication.
Patterns (saturation or proliferation?)
History according to Toynbee is always the same, it follows a pattern. Such a theory is morphological and takes a universal stance, I like to think in similar terms. Periods in history is not really an issue, and yet their starting-dates and ‘meaning’ (i.e. heading of period) are debatable. Which brings us back to square on again. In Greek history the 900s BC is a transition-period, if you take the stance that a whole new ball-game is being started, saying (like Toynbee, and others) that the 750s is the start of Greek history is possible. But if you take (like Schliemann and Robert Graves, and many archeaologists) the view that Solon´s decrees and Peisistratus´ compilation of the Illiad were mere half-witted tries of reviving a glorious past, your view is that there is a hidden mythological world preceeding even the advent of the Dorians and their ilk. These myths are still there so both of these views make sense, but only because the view on history is different.
Talk about putting a cart in front of the horse. The creation of professions in Greece is the creation of choice, but the importance here is the sudden proliferation. The opposite to this is a clogging-up or a saturation, the result is similar. The system is saturated and breaks down, this indicates change. When the Church breaks in the 1400s there is a sudden proliferation. In the 1600s there is another kind of proliferation or change separate from the break, or change. We have here the visual of switches in history, the creation of a new society. Funky, to say the least, almost Sherlock-territory.
Calvinism takes active part in this change in England (cf. Robert Merton).
You see I have devised a plan to accomodate climate change between the 12th to 15th century and make it visible, resulting in many stories of poor Robin. Small versions. The tilt is towards change, and myth varies over time. We know the story, but do we infact know that climate plays its part, and that any myth changes over time? Yes deep down we knew there was that twist. (cite from part one of BIG SCIENCE).
MELTING UP — entering wonderland
The start of the renaissance involves uprooting the villages and imposing land ownership, for good and bad. The end of it sees the treaty of 1648 (a peace was signed in 1635 in Prague as well), a treaty ending the war in Germany. The Tulip mania coincides with these events. A final word has to be said about this, for as the Middle Ages reaches that high point culturally and the feudal system breaks (1450s), but suddenly it seems to bloom. We see now how the 1400s are looking up to be down-years. We should mention the peace of the Pyrenees of 1659 — but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Frogs boiling slow.
Gluttony
Bloom. This is either a problem to us or to the Romans. The Roman Imperial “renaissance” is in bloom too, but reading Suetonius on the emperors of Rome we realise that the real struggle is between families and the insidious urban hell that was Rome, here Seutonius is looking back and is aimiable to Gaius Cassius Caesar. Also Seutonius mentions how Caesar had a horse with cloven hooves, the gods were ever present in the minds of the ancients (analysis of the details of Caesar´s life is an obsession to Seutonius). An important quote from Braudel in Heinberg reveals the historian in him which is hidden in plain sight, for history is part of all of this(Heinberg, p.31, 2011). The 1600s have been a hard nut for historians to crack, they approached it I suppose like we all do, from the view-point of the 1700s. Now it is high time to look at it from the view-point of the Middle Ages. As a descent, and an era of conservatism we might judge it better. The quote by Braudel in Heinberg´s book is a comment on the peasantry and their reluctance to shift into an economy of money — but remember historians are still fighting over the dead corpse of the zany 1600s (what was it all about? How could the religious wars evolve? etc) and as we discuss the 1500s expect even more squabbles. This was a time of the religious melt-up, the frosting economy, and the search for the self (an idea the Renaissance steals quite litterally from the reflectivism of religion, which we associate with the birth of self-critical science).
The Church was inter-woven (or inscribed even) into the world, there were priests both poor and rich — a big concern for the Renaissance it seems.
The two different sides of church life is the power hierarchies (worldly power-brokers, e.g. Bishops, organised geographically) and the closed-up world of the much more egalitarian world of the intellectuals.
The division is sometimes forgotten. Out of the nunnery came, feminism, self-reliance, critical thinking, Occhamism. Wycliffe sided with the King/Nobles, almost a move similar to that of the chess-master Richelieu. Wycliffe was against the monastaries and orders and that is the warning shot. Remember in fractals we see at the beginning what we see in the end. Protestantism was against the monastic movement, for better or worse change came suddenly.
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Go further down to avoid the faery tales…
SIT DOWN YOU TROUBLED SOULS, come Yee close. In laurels sit the minstrels all of past times, we see them not — they are relieved of their other place for a short while, awaken are they from their sleep. Robin comes up to us, frankly. And he says; COME WITH ME INTO THIS MERRY GLADE! I WILL TELL YOU A TALE FOR ONCE — THIS ONE IS CALLED SIBERIUS AND SYSIPHOS. HE NOTIONS US FORWARD. SIT DOWN IN THIS CIRCLE. YOU MUST LISTEN TO SYSIPHOS! WHEN HE STEPPED FORWARD ON THE TOP OF THE STAIRS YOU YOURSELF HAD BUILT, HE SAID; Humans! Citizens! In the times of old there were no dinosaurs, and yet now we have Centaurs, why is that? HE MADE A QUIET MOMENT AND ADJUSTED HIS GLASSES. In short, why Centaurs? There is no science that can create these creatures, and yet here I am! HE RAISED ONE ARM. This, my dear Humans is not an arm. THIS HE SAID EMPHATICALLY. WE NOW HEARD HOOVES STAMPEDING, IT HAD BEEN A SIGN.
WE ENTER THE GREEN GLADE, YET AN ARMY THERE AWAITS US. What now? AN ARMY OF HORSES WITH HUMAN FACES FORCE US TOGETHER, QUELLING OUR ADVANCE. We loose sight of Robin. We are entrapped by Centaurs. Was this a trap? Where is Robin? The centaurs depart, but we are left alone in a wonderland we have never seen, how do we return to our own world? Can we force open a trap-door and return? Luckily it is spring, the ice is melting, there is some time yet… Where is Robin, tell?
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If we come out of the play-house, and I argue we cannot, the question still is personal, almost in your moral setup.
Deep down this piece is about the Renaissance. For even though a previous age, and to some extent Gary Oldman is a Tinker, a Taylor and a Spy that is also untrue. The down-trodden, bleak and distorted world of the spy novel (or of Carré) is only seemingly a world of the Renaissance man, the positive flip-side of the Jack of all Trades coin. The reason for the seeming sameness is the variability and flexability. The Renaissance insisted on another sort of Jack. Was Erasmus such a man? We must come to Erasmus of Rotterdam later on. John le Carré is very sensible and useful literature, molded perhaps on the malaise we find in Graham Greene. As Religion makes a point; Fundamentalism in Islam is the new cold war, but I do not agree. Yet the one produces centaurs, and the other not, voire! (Sysiphos´ very words!) — a criterion of truth! Avoid using detectives as role-models. Centaurs are better role-models in fact. If we are to believe John Updike they give up their immortality for love. Magic wand or M16, you choose. Radical Islam more or less was a creation of, the search for knowledge by the backwards West, combined with a Christian attack via the crusades (cf. Armstrong, Holy War, 2001). Every sword has two edges sure.
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MODELLING ON THE ANCIENTS
We might think of plan-E (cf. Eisenstein, p.127, 2013), we might think about self-doubt. Let us start with Saint Augustine. In the last parts (2 and 3) of BIG SCIENCE this thinker was made to help us in our search for the feudal ages. He was made to be the maker of the Mediaeval paradigm. Was the Church fallen from atop a wall into a trench? That one fell down, much like the apple-cart. For we see both how the Church survived and how it prospered. The argument I make here is the oil of Mediaeval society was not wood only, the best analog to oil is THE PEASANT himself, now this quite frankly is bewildering. In fact the peasant wars (in a very twisted way) is linked to the downfall of the Church. In our day and age the fiction of a Hollywood should be replaced by a real mystery, namely the more factual Sherwood. Thomas Kuhn in this describes the true “state” of the scientific system as shaky. Going back to the peasant society breaking down, the same crisis was seen in Rome; of the slave revolts, and the evolution of (a more proper word is destruction) the citizen army. An inter-linked chain of relations, i.e. a complex system. Our world is constructed of no church, yet can we use the model to try it on? I will argue the Church fell down and was lost. But indeed the Fair French king Philip helped the Papacy as he relocated it to Avignon, surely he did? Is the Knight, the Government which Paine finds so necessary? Is in fact the Church the state, and the feudal knight, in the fragile shock-test we are now setting up, the corporates and their financial partners? Ok stop it! Here we are launched into a Mediaeval world, one which we just was escaping in haste. Sisyphos is waiting for us, we should move on. Who is Siberius, pray tell? Thomas Paine opened that door! WHO IS THAT WHITE CENTAUR WATCHING US FROM THAT HILL? Robin averted his gaze, it´s Siberius. Just stay on the path.
Greed
Why be so romantic about Rome? Remember Erasmus was a placid island in a sea of trouble. Rome was a romantic place beyond politics and real life events in which all could find their particular fantasy. Wyclifism was to cue calvinism. Hold that thought! Or it is more the case that religion is part and parcel of a symbolic system. All systems behave the same way, including symbolic ones. Little did Erasmus know or care what was in store for Europe. Oh, yes hell awaited Europe. Even the hallowed Hieronymus Bosch is a creature of this age, a caged animal. The funny thing is, these creatures were not creatures of change. Catholicism here has a very special flavour a plainspokenness in a very troubled age. Creature of change is a concept I use in my theory of history. I see in Bruegel much more of a man of changes, yet all he does is mix symbolism with realism — Van Eyck was the starting gun of a race to heaven. None of these (what may surprise us) are according to me the agents of, or creatures of change. Pretty yes, but captives, and so are we some say.
In 189 AD the poor of Rome revolted, saying that the Emperor had taken grain to himself thereby skewing grain prices. The Arab spring is at about the same thing (as Pippa Malmgren has pointed out). Our empire is bigger, and so our “grain problems” are bigger. These kinds of issues makes Richard Heinberg concerned, and it should, it should in fact concern all of us. (cite from part three)
Brabant was an exception — debunking the Renaissance
I like, in fact I love middle-stages, ambiguities, half-ways, half-truths even. Brabant is a half-way house between Florens and Flanders, quite literally.
You are an idiot if you do not love art! Art to me is science almost. Sorry, this kind of bullying forms no part of philosophy, it is an opinion, sure, but nothing more. Think Switzerland, or Luxenburg, or the off-shore banking system in the Pacific. Some areas of Europe were rich. Venice now had rivals. Which were these? For one France. And as the Renaissance crumbles, so also these new centres of power — England plays no part at all in the Renaissance. Elisabeth the first reigns in an essentially feudal country (a kind of Magna Chartaland), when she dies all hell breaks loose. Well England wages a war with the Dutch but this is on the fringe. On the other hand Flanders, and the Dutch were split by Spain´s strong influence, it revolted in a cry of nationalism in 1567. This is often said to be the start of the 30yrs war. In a sense the feudal system that breaks is not falling, the feudal lords are only inflated into Flanders, Spain, France etc. These are the new “lords” and as the Renaissance ends, feudalism in some sense remains — using French we say: plus ca change, plus c´est la même chose. But what about Brabant?
Even Da Vinci forms part of a select circle in Italy, at the end of his life The Old Master himself admits, as he says “The Medici made me, and unmade me” (cf. Nardini, p22. 1999), not the Brabant artisans, yet this phenomenon is similar, it is the exception not the rule in a time of upheaval and tragedy. We should separate happy camping from camping in the bullet-rain of history, a much more gorey affair. The bullet-train of history if we are to believe Heinberg, is slowing down.
Before we come back to Brabant — the pivot to Florens we should look at Jean Gimpel, the marvellous sage. Energy is a bummer. To explain it I use theology, but McLuhan´s theology. Calvinism is a kind of Quietism, one that makes the individual holy instead of God — here is the Renaissance in a nutshell (i.e. the individualism comes to the fore, as it did with Cicero, and with the Greeks).
When a society speaks of freedom, run for the hills. Consider Gimpel on Leonardo; In all the books that have been written about him including Freud … one fact is missing; Leonardo´s greatest problems were caused by the contempt in which he was held by the humanists. Having lacked the opportunity of attending a university to study…” (p.142, Gimpel 1976).
Reading De officiis by Cicero; the ideas about useful occupations, we find that all labours manual are sorted together — so one explanation is we have BOTH Latin and Greek ideas corraborating the idea that men of letters should not mix with practical occupations, on the whole this double-exposure is one big explanation for the sentiments of the humanists (although Luther was not really part of their ideas) — likely it was in their blood, although Da Vinci saw right through it.
But what is Brabant? The short answer is Brabant is a freak of nature. And yes people die in Brabant, Erasmus for one, was an orphan. As Europe descends into chaos Brabant (a region in Northern France and Flanders) is a happy island of calm, insulated by the storms. Insulated by riches, by dynamism, but last and not least lacking the peasant revolts. I still think the Renaissance is an ideal we should strive for, do not get me wrong, but fact is fact.
The funny thing is, Thomas a Kempis (a religious), Bruegel (all of the abovementioned Renaissance icons) and all the rest came out of Brabant. And Erasmus is one of them, as is Bosch, see my point. Coincidence? I tend to see in Bruegel the most accomplished naturalist, he is almost a complete contemporary of Erasmus. Yet they are not the rule.
It is hard to critisise Gimpel, yet he includes the Renaissance in the Middle Ages where I see them as separate. But beware, both the tactic of myself and the tactic of Gimpel are dubius (cave canem — watch out, dog). Heinberg compares Rome like Gimpel compares Rome, apples to apples. But Cicero treats his slave Tiro really nice, how did this come about, for it is the tell-tale both of these thinkers miss. If indeed you want to know anything about the Renaissance read Gobineau, that vulgar slut of a man. The Renaissance was vulgar. ITEM we have a force pushing up-hill, the primus motor in the Holy See, we have a Ciceronian pinnacle of abundance. That middle is the real Middle Ages. They are epitomised in the activities of France between 1250 to 1350 (this Gobineau sees, only his conclusions are Nietzschean)this is the IDEAL TYPE of Weber, after that we have the Renaissance. The King tries to save Grace but he ends up debasing the currency. At some point the wave that had been pushing toward the heights of power begun pouring in the other direction. The pouring, the petering out, saw groups expressing their democratic tendencies in funding of armies of war. That in essence is the Renaissance.
A group of men, and the right kind of implements and the Knight is a lobster. But as I said it had to be many men fighting one man, of course the musket changed all that. The new weapons were now put to the test as the nations were emerging out of the chaos that we call the Renaissance, one which historians call THE GENERAL CRISIS. To avoid confusion jump two paragraphs.
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Back in fairyland the way out of the magic closet is this one.
Why didn´t we ask from the start, Sisyphos blurted out. Sisyphos is a centaur, the wise one, a bespectacled Centaur. Is that zany or what? He resumes. Sysiphos speaks at last;
You could have asked anyone among us, you just have to find that path, whence you came. We centaurs are always in trouble — between the river and the forest. We thought at first you were invading us, others have done so before. You are not the first you see. Invading our dales and glades and merry plains.
That was all Sysiphos had to say. The few of us, only some 200 men, walked back with Sysiphos. It seems we were double that number or more as we entered Sherwood. The crossing of the river, the war, and the Tower. We helped Sysiphos with the tower. We found Robin too, but he was not talkative, now we knew the way out he said — good luck to you! He didn´t even say he was sorry. The way back went through THE MERRY GLADE. And we came back to our own world safe. All the glittery things we picked up, uh gemstones and emaralds, we left there in that GLADE. Why should we care now?
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Back in our world
The Toppeling of the feudal system was not anticipated, (and we might shrug this off since it is merely history 101) because the system was built so that structures evolved — structures prone to fail as feudalism did fail. (cite from part three)
As with the Athenians (Solon), which we after all may like a little, every power builds on myth. As Diocletian (cf. Gibbon 1:13) built Milan on the ideas and promises of Rome, like Solon he tried to reinvent history. That is the often forgotten flip-side of government. Remember Heinberg; “this book will argue that global economic growth is over because of a convergence of three factors — resource depletion (end of peasant society), environmental impacts (a more concerted wood-clearing and expansion overseas), and systemic financial and monetary failures (think Spain in the 16th century)”. End of quote (cf. Heinberg p.15, 2011, words in parentheses are mine). If history rhymes any, the decline in temperature is comparable to us in that we have increases of temperature, only our problem is political (at first). In the short run that is. In the long run we are all… liquid. Separatio is the principle of constitution. But why? Our day and age is more like Byzance than Rome. Hold that thought. What I am getting at is all of the ideas of the 1775/1789 revolt revolve around freedom. If we are fond of grime the création of the fanciful Solon was also the fanciful creation of civilised life, as Walter J. Ong has shown a written version of Homer is not Homer. You see there is the rub, once you have the universe, it inflates… Ong is not tying together this string with civilisation (if only in a passive sense), McLuhan has more of this strain of loathing civilian life/ the citizen. The point is an important one, as Homer is used (by decree) in Solon´s new creation he is already obsolete. Stealing history is always a slippery slope, killing it is also impossible. History is a fickle muse.
Cybernetic symbols — Wrath
I believe the idea present in Erasmus of soldiers as part of the earth-element is collected from Plato, but I have not checked on it. The Earth, our home. About this time the weather suddenly became colder (and wetter) obliterating in some sense the benefit of the agricultural increases (shifting from the 1/2 fallow system to the 1/3 fallow system plus intoducing horses, plus consistent geographic expansion) — we call these fixes (technological dependencies).
This is Big Science´s problem, you see…
Mediaeval society was now dependent on horses to sustain itself, the horse was no longer a benefit, but a dependency. Finance in this era was non-existant, marriage did not involve papers either, nor did land-rights exist. In the 13th century land was not bought and sold, it was either acquired by means of political machinations (your brother the Bishop) and add to that alliance amongst nobles. The other route was taking land through warfare. Marriage is almost a quixotic third category hovering somewhere between active maneuvering to achieve family importance, and an offensive take-over. This system inflated by leaps and bounds over the 17th century, Holland single-handedly invented a new law system, a fledgling democracy (federacy) and an organised trade empire on the back of these inventions, including a new place for man, an inflated kind of man we should add. In terms of Italy´s demise in the 15th century, the Dutch came out on top and replaced it, much as Byzance had been the coffer of Italy, the transition and fight over it is the Renaissance. That England wins is in some ways an after-thought. Think America and China in present-day economics. The question is; why did Holland peter out? The hidden is ARE WE PETERING OUT TOO?
Choking on the same bone twice — the Medium is the message
A series of fortunes were made by destroying the trees. The trees we talked about, and this series has had one consistent message; follow the money! or rather the logging, follow Greece the final stage of which was the fleet built by Themistocles, follow Alexander (the Great tree destroyer), look at the Romans, then shift the focus to France during the Middle Ages (Sweden and Norway were the fixers for all the junkies of Europe in the 1820s, only after France and then Lithuania/Poland had been finished off (cf. Schama)). Oh, and yes I make the analogy of the Church and Government, in a sense Huxley did that too (cf. Huxley, e.g. 1958). The thinker Aldous Huxley is contemporary of Claude Lévy-Strauss and of Braudel. So my thinking ties back to ideas about language, and to ideas about big history. Gibbon writes in fact about a downfall. When the end comes closer, expansion is one solution. The East of the Roman empire is a way of saving a sinking ship. The Imperial Rome that once was, had one safety-valve, and that was Byzance. The creator was Diocletian, as chance has it his plan saved one part of Rome. The Syrian adventures of our day have a parallel in Rome. Even as Caesar died Syria was that valve, and the story of the Jews is a small story in this bigger one (as Elisabeth the first is since England is not really active yet). What am I on about? Well the thing we are onto is how the Middle Ages can be like our own time. The bubble then was France, and the Super bubble was Spain (it started in the 1500s as a last-ditch effort to unite France and Spain). Trajan still could walk through Syria and marvel at it, but change was round that corner we call history. Ok, so yes if there is a Prince for Erasmus, his prince is Octavian, but then Erasmus is not an agent of change… But as we said colonies are mere indicators, blisters not tears (as in tension and tear). After-the-fact thingies.
THE GOD OF POWER — Erasmus and Terminus
Allusion is all well, but if the Knight was not really replaced and the Church not really fell down — how can we make a case for change? The god of power is Terminus, but the tale is a long one. In a sense this is the tale of two tea-pots, one gas and the other electric. Does it matter? I might make a statement about my tea-pot in relation to water-heating. I made it believable Natural Gas is superior — more fairly stated electric or gas both are DEPENDENCIES — although in a world of bad choices I will suggest gas is slightly better (see also previous instalment). More fairly stated there are very small differences. One being that electric seems better in that it is quick and easy. These are the kinds of trade-offs we have to deal with, since we made TECHNOLOGY the ruler of the realm. The refridgerator and the gas-station these are the true TEMPLES. In our real world the Middle Ages stepped on some landmine in 1450, and it was solved remember, by the god Terminus. The god was also active in Rome the Romans said because it was an ever-expanding empire. Talk about not hearing the church bells. I will explain in time about Terminus, suffice it to say everything has — limits. Perhaps in terms of not hearing the bells, oil is our terminus, our end-station. For Erasmus, the god made him realise there was an internal world without limits — the intellect. What Polisensky does is he studies in detail the region of Bohemia at the turn of the century 1600, but his notion that there are two kinds of humanism, one catholic and ond protestant is interesting and a helpful aide, it becomes clearer how Calvinism and Catholicism inter-mingle, and additionally how both are opposed to humanisms of any sort shape or form. The focus of my investigation focuses on the centre (France-Spain), but as we saw the importance of Italy-Brabant as an exception is brought up too. The age of Brahe was a kind of calm before the storm, we even see a change in architecture as this short period of “enlightenment” dies. Tycho Brahe dies in Praha in 1601, Descartes in Stockholm in 1650. In 1618 the war erupts.
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SYSIPHOS — what´s his message?
I am thinking about developing a mythic tale in which Sherwood and the centaurs play out, but jump to the next heading. Here if you will is a small summary: The Tower was not built, you see it had no escalator, and no elevator, we had to build stairs all the way up. A big ramp of earth and rock — after those many months, at last Sysiphos would now speak to us. All this for some words from Sysiphos, what a joke! On the one hand the world (our world) on the other Sysiphos´world, Siberius´world. But as we now percieve, a breach was made, a moth perhaps who had been on all too many apples, flew high towards the sun, and landed in a bush, where Robin sat, now a greying man. The bush must have been the hidden door…
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Defining moments — an old ring (my precious)
A magical ring, a mystical ring of stones…
As we saw the knight did no go extinct, nor did the Church yet they went their separate ways — any student of Mediaeval history will say as much. This separation is easily either 1415 or some time in and around that date. The semi-colon was invented in the printing shops in Venice at about this time; but that was an aside pointing only to this era as an era of innovation and rupture (not rapture). We must come back to Terminus, Alexander Stuart who had had Erasmus as his teacher in Italy (and was to die in the fight for Scottish independence somewhat later) had given Erasmus a parting gift — he had in fact given to Erasmus an ancient Roman ring — on it the wry face of this lesser god had been etched/ incised. But Terminus plays a part in our world too. The defining moments for all of us are different, mine is having too many things, eating too much, as well as reading Heinberg´s masterpiece. The defining moment of Richard Heinberg is retold in his book as the events of 2008/9 as he hatched the ideas of the book — in relation to this he cites Fernand Braudel just once in the entire book (p.31). And to me this relation between Braudel, Heinberg and myself is in a sense what we have witnessed, in the prevoius instalments and as we will see in this one. The reason as I pointed out (Braudel cite) is the realisation that the peasantry did not want a monetisation/financialisation of the world. This can even be said to be what kicks off the peasant wars. Seen this way; A FIGHT OVER LAND. Sherwood is the ecology playing out, in Braudel´s case geography. For Braudel (cf. Heinberg IBID, p.31) focuses in on the transition that peasants were subjects to, i.e. at about the time we are here considering (Braudels book covers 1400 onwards). To unsparingly use the French, my main concern in this piece stems from this endroit.
The question underlying all of this is any of this relevant to us? Is oil becoming peasants once again? That´s my guess, and Heinberg´s guess too.
Oh, golly. The ecological factor as you know is Sherwood. My contribution, I hope, is entertaining. Much of Heinberg´s writing is in the style of Sherwood, in that he spends much of his time explaining how oil works in the “real world” of economics (cf. The party´s over, 2003 (2005)). We are now coming to the end of all of this.
Erasmus is not coupled with a Caesar
Desiderius Erasmus can impossibly stand-in for an age, yet as we saw with Cicero and Caesar we sometimes get these pairs — I will contend though how Erasmus is not part of any pair in this sense, as we saw with Thomas Paine and Napoleon. Just stay with me, and you will see why. Erasmus at least had skin in the game. The choice of pairs is arbitrary, so is idealist history.
Everything has a Groot
Attica as Tom Holland describes it (cf. Persian Fire, 2005) in chapter four is also entering a kind of Renaissance, if we are to trust Holland. If so Holland shares my round-about ideas about history as repetitive. This is that same point in Renaissance history, the tie-up, or undoing or last phase. A false image of Athens is produced by Athens to boast about itself (Athens had commerce and no colonies), even though it sucked up ideas those ideas were not colonies. Athenian power resided on financial might ( gradual process involving Pireus as a key; think New York). The tension i similar to the one between Jefferson and Hamilton. So what did Erasmus have? Ideas, and he had a lot of´em… Martin Luther reads Erasmus, hell everyone reads Erasmus´ In the praise, and so Luther get´s his cue from him, everything has a start. The God Terminus went against Jupiter says Livy (a Roman historian), so that even a smaller entity such as Terminus the god of limits and corner-stones has a BIG say. A play on this factual god is playing also on the fact that some epochs are more edified on ideas than on actions (remember Hegelian ‘logic’) I like to think. So no Napoleon, but a Naples instead, and a Florence and what have you. Brabant and some Italian cities were successful if only for a while, on top of the riches of Byzance. Remember it fell in 1453. But this was the beginning of the end for Italy, as Holland took over sea-lanes and colluded with the English, economic might moved north by north-west. This trade led to a war (a trade war) between England and Holland during the 16th century.
In and around the joyous days of the Black Death
Yes, but it get´s worse. The bubble was blown by France back in the 1250s. France the fromage of all ages. Two thirds of all people in Mediaeval Europe lived there (cf. Cipolla), they had huge quantities of wood, as much as England wool… Now in punishment for Men´s sins, the foul smell of change came. And the Bigbird just showed up, this was a black kind of bigbird not the yellow kind — the Black you-know-what. It is related to economics (the weirdo Martin Armstrong thinks that too). So look, here we have a Heinberg story, from a Robin a bit middle-aged and a bit blighted, more like Joe Silver than Rob Crusoe… So what is Jevons´ paradox? And how does it tie in with the peasant wars (1300–1500 circa)? The difference between myself and most of the crowd is I follow the MONEY, France was trees, until it was not (1700s). Which easily explains the “symmetry” of 1300 to 1600. So this analysis is interested in the “collateral” of history — the expected income. The fight between Spain and Holland (Dutchies), was ALL about ships, and ship-building. Cybernetics do not care about pretentions, it´s true or not is all.
Yes, there is a sort of trick going on, as I mentioned the adding of new data and new stories on top the Robin one, makes for a marvelous hall of mirrors. Is that not the hall that King David had created for himself as he spoke to the prophet (if I remember correctly it was Jesaiah), or that I have created for you; can we escape the world of our own marvels? Why was Cicero kind to Tiro? By now you can write the essay yourself — the top of a curve is always flaky.
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The essay that suddenly stopped — ethnic wirings
Hey, wait, why the four? Cybernetic connections. Systems that have bad wiring. Penny-silvania, Virgina, New England — different boxes of computerised connectivity. The Dutch undocked from cyber-bay, yet remember this; the English had taken much of the contractual law from the Dutch, they took the Dachshund too. The mathematical heaven that supported the contract was bequeathed. ERROR these digital imprints are incorrect
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Foucault (chap. 2, part 2) in Punish declares how special circumstance creates control. Facts about our history matter even if they point to oppression and control (a grid-system imposed on the city and a police force imposing ‘order’) and the paradox is thisone; the Middle Ages destroys cultures, the Roman culture destroyed cultures — the famous mycologist Paul Stamets points to the strange omission of recepie in 1516 — this is explanatory as pertains to the witches (local wisewomen). The 1516 standard in brewmaking was an industry standard, yet we fail to see from what context it emerges. This is the notion that systems cannot come out of nothing, the Mediaeval Machine ate some of our older culture alive. Cybernetics is cropping up in the ecology of blue-tits (cf.Rose Thorogood, issue of signalling), and as we can see it does in the histories of men, we all are cyber I am afraid. Cool!
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Compressor NORMALISING -Zing, Sing-sing, sang, sung, Tang. STOP
So did the Dutch change everything? Post-modernity should teach us that Greek culture was harmonised and bloated by 19th century thinkers (e.g. Nietzsche, take yer pick). We must disentangle the inherited traditions of New Yorkers to their bloated Dutch past. The Dutch past was great, a policy of accomodation, sure, all swell. We must disentangle the fact that the Britts in essence stole the Dutch model, remodelling it (transplacing it culturally). Freddy Mercury might say;..whatever happens… I leave it all to chance.. BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO. The Dutch are some rosy dream, a lost relative. The transition object that was Calvinism did it´s magic in ‘Holland’ (merely one of the Dutch confederates). The Dutch it seems were a transition object of the New York myth, to accomodate a new oppression, that of the English. Sweden has, much as the US, brushed shoulders with these Dutch ideas, D. Hammarskjold even died for them it seems. Seeing as he dies in the relations of time-space. The lost empire of the Dutch. At this rate it is best to cite one famous cybernetic thinker; Gertrud Stein (there is no there, there). The Dutch did not lose anything, they just cut their cord, is all. The Dutch empire was not lost really, it was eclipsed, which is another thing entire. Cybernetic glitch. Ideas are dangerous. Romantic man. The Dutch model what a scam. Ask the Dutch. We must stop deluding ourselves. Study history. This is the last four. The four to bind them all…
see also this story at medium
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Allow me a cybernetic myth then. The peasant was killed by the theories of the European Renaissance using the transition object of Calvin, and yet it survived in the colonies, USA was one of them. Here the peasant stepped back out of his symbolic shell and was made into matter again. Enter tool-thinking and the luxury of oil-economics, the peasant was once again symbolised and destroyed/ subsumed. Re-packaged.
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Jevons´paradox — the frogpond
Aristotle tried to define everything in his mania. He even tried in vain to define the slave — he defined “it” as an instrument, or implement. To Aristotle slaves were the order of the day. My silly search comes close second in sillyness, for I define peasantry as slaves, and as equivalent to oil (cf. J.H. Kunstler). What is so silly about it? Now all of a sudden the sillyness goes away. You see our map is our landscape, and as the peasant dissolves in history´s big moment (the end of the Middle Ages is the death of the landed serf/village peasant)-how is this pertinent to oil? But what about that paradox, for we know now, that although Erasmus was seeing no terminus in terms of his intellectual abilities, the reason we know is he wrote about the story of Terminus and the Ring (the one he got from Alexander Stuart). He wrote about Augustine who mocked the Romans over their boastful idea about Terminus (the Roman´s of course knew what the story meant, that nature has limits even in face of Jupiter´s ambitions of war), and Augustine saw in this man´s sinful nature. So far this pinpoints limits to growth (remember the fridge and the gas-station as our temples). As the peasantry demanded rights, all was up for grabs. Religion played its part, but the paradox plays out in reverse; it became more difficult to improve quality of life — money was being introduced — the serf, all but disappears. This I think must be seen as the back-drop of the General Crisis (the name historians, including Hobsbawm gave the Renaissance period). The ROI (return on investment) of the peasant dropped, the Black Death was the catalyst in the end, creating vast discrepancy between prices and labour-demand (DEFLATION). Better still is to describe this as a backwards move; the free peasant was destroyed and bigger scale farming introduced (seen from the agricultural point of view). Deflation in a monetary system is a back-move, the opposite of inflation in a sense is not deflation at all, rather a draw-down or absorption-phase, a quinch in the curve. The study of deflation itself might need more study in fact (!). I think of it as a stick that you are trying to break, but it does not snap, it holds back — this is deflation. On the whole we are at that juncture in time.
The peasant wars, much like Sherwood is a creeping process, starting in the 13th century and resolving, first in skirmishes over local conditions, then into religion, finally we may say it led to the American and French revolutions, but that is taking it far beyond our concerns. A famous dialogue between Turgot (the finance minister of France) and the Nobility, was unchanged in principle as well as letter for a hundred years plus.
Unchanged in terms of few changes to the statement that the nobles MUST have there priveliges unedited. The events of 1613 were similar, but at that moment the position of the nobles was atleast weak, the situation a new one. Comparing Heinberg´s concerns to my own is also seeing how our world is in a paradoxical choice between impossibles. Looking at the scheme below you will notice how ours is a temperature improvement (ironically speaking, yet our world is not dependent on human labour), yet the Renaissance saw temperature declines (1400 to 1600). Unless we grasp these issues (and fast) ours is slowly becoming a world of gnomes, centaurs and mountains of madness. In my continued search for the truth, Milton paradoxically is a twin of Descartes as well as Richelieu — I warned you I was mad. The idea here is a bold one, 1300 to 1600 is a process with similar processes going on as in a completely closed tub (a fractal-system).
Necessary to maginalisation of da Vinci is the notion, inherited by the Renaissance from Athens, of the four elements. Earth was lowly, da Vinci was akin to a peasant, a worker. But we are not dealing with alienation proper, the peasant is undergoing shift, as evidenced by Erasumus´ ideas (and others) of how some men (cf. The praise of folly) belong to the earth. A cultural trait to this shifting age related to Aristotle´s ideas, and handed down e.g. Thomas Aquinas. These ideas shine through in De officiis by Cicero but have a slightly different story (diffraction by refraction), as I have laid out.
See chart below.
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Conclusions (note the Straussian/ structural slant here)
Renaissance -R, Modern society -M
Weather R (cold), M (hot, increasing temperatures)
Ideology R (backwards-looking), M (forwards-looking)
Concern R (land, farming, coal, wood), M (economic stagnation)
Ideology R (religious freedom), M (post-modernism*)
-speculative conclusions
ENERGY — R (Land to Sea), M (Financials to Agri-business)
ECOLOGY — R (demographic decline deflation), M (ecol. deflation)
ECONOMY — R (wood for ship-building), M (financial wizardry)
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For the researchers out there follow Conway, and follow the *
Post Script — A funnily historic ministry of walks
Also note how the modal fallacy lies at the heart of much confusion in times of shift (cf. Fuller), or even more generally as a fallacy leading to catastophe. I have speculated about law previously, where justice due is not the same as due justice, and clearly we understand this concept. My guess is as feudal society shifted from church law to Dutch commercial law some of these modal properties were incorporated, and my guess is advances in law will involve propositions on modal consideration (of interpretation of law). This is a silly religion of comparable unimportance, less silly is the Beefeater century, including Tycho Brahe, Erasmus, Hobbes, de Montaigne, our musical note-system, and Jean Bodin the lovely witch-hunter of France, also of Marlowe and Shakespeare. These gentlemen all wore tinfoil hats, had canes and a collar, remember none of these were accessories, Brahe due to a brawl in his youth had a silver-tipped nose. These are less silly considering, what we see in terms of a struggle over symbols was the bread and butter of all of these-we live in that century right now! Hobbes for one thought geometry informed morals, yet his views are equilibristically monarchical where we might think he is not. Think. Think about eating with one of those collars on, phuii! Think about it, if we all are Beefeaters, don´t forget the beard. Silly.
Going back to Merton. Calvinism in as much as it is heretical can in the eyes of the world seem also to be one of many — this would make the entirity of Protestantism an organism made up of many parts — where Lollardy is merely one essential ingredient, a comparison is the ban on decaffeinated coffee. We must to study history, LOVE complexity and embrace panoply, yet hate destruction of NATURE (ecology). Religious men have the historic keys to this story, not we of the laymenry. Or rather in seeing those details we might avoid disputing them (obsessing over these instead of reality)on the back-drop of ethnic or of other power-relations. The hatred of Jesuits is a fallacy, as we can see how “We” adopted Cartesian ideas in the same proportions the Catholics did (cf. Toulmin), there is not ideology here there is our common infatuation with universal ideals, and as far as I am concerned Cosmopolis has made bankrupcy a long time ago, the notion that we can save it is poor road-map for the future.
The big elephant(s) in the sky — a Russian doll
The other known unknowns of 16th century culture, are Ronsard and Nostradamus. Tommaso Campanella, Giardano Bruno, yet René Descartes too. Funnily as in a double-turn Conway was there flashing HER panties, for is not Nostradamus and Conway a superpair? This period in a history (hitching a ride on Herodotus´ definition of history) is the period of the Tyrants. There is little doubt in my mind Descartes is being downthrown as we speak. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Post-modernity is an attack on rationality. We should embrace change. If you do not understand the difference between tyrant and tyrants, please go back to GO — tyrants are ALWAYS many not one.
Thank you for reading!
Happiness HQ
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A CRITICAL AFTERWORD
We are not predicated on doomsday boklets, yet a host of thinkers, not of the Spenglerian slant (i.e. not fearmongering and morose)are all saying energy has consequences to history. The further notion of this, which is much more far-fetched is the peasant (not pheasant) is oil. Or more closely, because both are energy. Wood used to play that part. And also, quite unsurprisingly George Orwell had precedent in Felgenhauer (in some ways also these are inspired by Erasmus, more on him in the following pages). I expect it will be possible for someone with modest knowledge of philosophy to be able to grapple with the following ideas. No man is out of depth, and certainly no woman. More complex is the slight difference between Erasmus (Kuhnian) with that of Luther (Popperian) as they exchange letters, visible to a few and quite important in terms of a history of science, but as I said a bit of a headache (one these fine gentlemen could not themselves discern I am sure).
It is my contention however that universal values of equality carried out on the back of Descartes have certain distinct drawbacks (cf. Stephen Toulmin). Equality here is not gender-equality, rather a more subtle kind, namely the idea that things are knowable. I would be the last person to not agree to that, yet once again the notion that a toast-fryer is a marvellous feat should be estranged from this equation. Hence the title of this piece. Big (Big) Science.
HOSTAGE — We are hoping for a shift, a change of mind. In our topsy-turvy world ecology matters, as does economics, bringing them together is a number of tools humanity has developed, but how do we bring´em all together? Economics. To my credit is I think outside of the box, yet will people accept that if we have a kind of inflation, we might have ecological deflation? Read on to find out. Pheasants… running around. Deflation, even to economics is a strange beast. Since I am not an economist my concerns are over history instead. Not true I will have a try at economics, but my words are as good as any man´s, also China seems in real terms the flip-coin (the obverse) of our economy, and THE ENVIRONMENT. Should we accept this hostage-taking? Bretton Woods not Sherwood, hostage is what we are. The metaphysical problem starts here, to my mind (cf. S.Toulmin).
…or rather oil is the metaphysics.. simple at least, and very straightforward
The notion will be pursued here, and understood is that this is scientifically plausible. Hubbert (and his black mountain peak) is a noticeable gadfly, yet in relation to a whole host of experts fraternising with energy in economics and (for our purposes) historiography.
A critical afterword in order for it to be critical must live up to criteria of various sorts. Firstly it cannot omit some things, in doing so it will have been uncritical through omission. 2nd it must mention the fantasy segments I have inserted surreptitiously. I pinpoint e.g. Thomas Paine as pivotal ([he]opened that door), but we should blame society and politics, not Paine. This first is beyond any man to cater to, but in self-denial and self-doubt lies atleast a willingness. Catering to the details, fantasied or otherwise is much more doable as it were. Allow me to adress T.Paine; could it be like this(?): Paine it seems used Galilei to infer that many creations had been accomplished before, thus like Dante making elbow-room in Hell. Well I tried at least…
On TREES — It is NOT fanciful to assume like Marx, that in history there is a quintessence. Ricardo gave work to Marx as a gift and as his working miracle and more than likely Marx forgets the trees. Ricardo to carry this metaphor to a logical conclusion was half-blind, for he saw the trees but not the individual specimens, i.e. he saw the forest and not the trees. My observation about the Baltic (as a miniature of history), that it is in some sense a miniature of the 1600s (300 yrs hence), has another logic to it, namely that of trees. Here we move from cybernetics to the ‘material’ geography of Spain. It is a similar miniature to the Baltics of the 14th century. Aragonia in the 1300s (14th cen) had a brief spurt of luck in the 1300s, creating a rather huge empire in the Mediterranean which petered out in the 1390s. In the case of the Baltic the logic of curves is my only mainstay, but when it comes to Aragonia methinks there is a logic of trees going on instead. Allow me to infer (even though Karl Popper might dislike it, i.e. flagrant misuse of inference) that Aragonia had the trees and timber and Katalonia the right trade-connections. Trees is timber, and timber is ships. The eventual conclusion is that the fight over the Pyrenees was a fight over timber (peace in 1659). Knock on wood.
Discussing history critically can take many forms, the cities were to Spengler the start of history in the West, and he accords cities a very prominent place as an opposite to the peasant, so in essence the PEASANT is the map and the cities are the opposite, a binary opposition. I will contend Spengler is right, only we do not have to “side” (take sides) in this story of the Mediaeval town, only take note of this force field. As Mark Lilla notes, history is a strange beast (The shipwrecked mind) and in times of war or crisis it shows… Actually BBCs new series on the terracotta army, suggests what I choose to call modernity (in history), why? -how else do we explain the ex-nihil creation of the large tomb, a sort of MEGA factory á la Ford? In this story the Middle-Ages is seen (deep down) as a period of modernity (cf. Gimpel, who is not responsible for this interpretation, it is all my own), this discussion is a discussion of modernity. But I will not delve into it here, in fact you can read all of this without ever thinking about it, but my reading of Edward Saíd and Foucault made me think modernity is not confined to a period. Spurts of modernity as Kondratieff and others found out, are everywhere. But it is a story for another day. The periods in history have issues, or rather aspects of similarity. Hegel is more categorical, we never learn, says he. Even here Hegel points to a situation where Heisenberg would have perched, and scraped his beak.
On ROME. We know Cicero´s Rome was so much more volatile and juxtaposed than my simple Sherwood scheme. Rome has a period that is transitory, sure, but what does it contain? It is easy to see, e.g. how the knightly class (Tullius Cicero was a knight) was part and parcel of a process of plebians as against senatorial interests. The Rome we think we know, had a political makeup that was polished and orderly, for as long as you stayed in the course of within the senatorial political machine, your progress was slow but ascertained. On the outside of this world of senatorial political etiquette, were two avenues, two ways of having a say in politics outside of politics so to speak. Montaigne reflects of the struggle between Caesar and Pompey and depicts it as honourable. Going back to the two avenues (they were); the military and the plebian committee or COMITIA TRIBUTA, i.e. the plebian tribune or organisation. An organ of politics subsumed and usurped by Augustus in 23 B.C. Plebian politicians were less influencial than senators, the equivalent today would spell a democratic institution with legislative powers (INTERCESSIO) — a sort of in-between of a Judicial and a Parliment. This group was powerful yet dependent. The Army necessarily changed over time. The comitia necessarily changed over time. Land use as we have seen (part three of Big Science) was the real reason for the scramble and rise of Sylla, Gracchus and including the final straw man of Augustus himself. For an economic account (cf. Brown 2013). Augustus who dug up Alexander´s body, and when asked if he would steal a glance at any of the other ones (presumably Phillip) replied that he wanted only to see the one Emperor — folly begets folly they say. So what is incessantly true is many people see many things in Rome. Also much of high culture occurs (as in the case of the Renaissance) on the steep hill running down into a trench. The thing is that trench is often called the Middle Ages. Only as I portray it the Middle Ages is the HIGH POINT, the Renaissance Age is the ebb, the chaos or the cookie-jar falling and spilling its contents — most revealing is that history loves the Renaissance because it is a war on the people. But those who say it is great are morons, because it is not.
ON SCIENCE. The artillery Steve Fuller has put up on the hill points at sociology, and says that there should be a difference between “on the money” science and “in the money” science — and also of how the agressor is sociology and not Steve Fuller.
My thinking goes, how can we track down rationalism? I find rationalism everywhere, indeed we need rationality to live, but these days it seems rationality has put us in the Iron Cage as Max Weber said. At some point in history we latched onto this idea. Descartes is an all-in rationalism. We are just about now throwing off the shackles of Descartes, and smelling the foul air of convenience. Too much of anything is a bad thing, too much of everything is worse. The combined influence of Plato on Augustine and Descartes is curious — for Descartes in many ways is the FIRST modern philosopher. The relation between them is unscientific. Lovejoy laughs at it and so does everyone else, yet as I said there is a curious relation — suffice it to say Stephen Toulmin sees this CURIOUS LINK, and the link is the economic down-turn of Augustine, is parallelled by an economic down-turn in Descates´day — the most common denominator (and all I do here is use deduction) is neoplatonic thought. This will not be developed further to any serious ends. But I hope to have unsleeked your curiosity. The famous book by Arthur. O. Lovejoy, has more on the subject (The Great chain of Being). Rousseau had read or understood Newton´s principles via Voltaire, this is the birth of all of our problems, science cannot be history, history not science.
Going back to the religious issues debated in the foreword, the carthinigians destroyed a lot of wood, Xerxes and Cyrus destroyed what was left of the forests in Lebanon. Alexander made the long spear, requiring new-growth forest, but all of these heroes of history were destroyers on a massive scale. Not to tell that story is INFAMY or at least obnoxious. The West grew out of its environment (cf. Sprout and Sprout for an application in the sciences, here we are dealing with cybernetics, not time-dependent history such as that produced by the cyber-thinker McLuhan) so that resources came from combustion and ships, the other side of the coin is culture. Heinberg´s notion is that of Tainter of how empires replace one another in history — my view is different. It is more a process similar to how the Chinese copy things, and that is why Islam and the Eastern side of the Empire that was Rome (Byzance was what was still extant of Rome) had to die as the West thrived. What I am saying is do not forget culture, that eternal intangible. Cultures are never separate, that is a fantasy. That is as far as I am willing to go once it comes to Huntington. The origins of Islam (including Mecka in Petra, I confer you to Dan Gibson), as the origins of Christianity (semitic interpretation of a pantheistic graeco-roman reality by Paul/ Saul — simplification/ interpretation), as well as the origins of Jewry in Babylonian sources of captivity as both a watershed and a moment of the creation of dogma — these are all of them messy business, life is messy. The most useful historic idea is how T.R.Glover describes Christianity´s roots as indeed messy (cf. Glover 1925, Paul of Tarsus). To me there is no doubt all religions, indeed all biological processes follow this “creation” pattern of messiness. That is why the “standing wave” of 1300 to 1600 seem destruction (church schism) and creation at work (the birth of pre-enlightenment and Darwin and Kant).
A name for this new science of mine might be; Anthropomorphism. Heck invent one yourself. Structures are not structures, they are structural.
The proliferation of ideas about the faith in the Renaissance are part of a whole, defending one of them is possible. Much like the two-slit experiment it leads us astray into historicism. The big picture instead is that all of these various “solutions” make up a WHOLE. In times of shift history is scrambled, yet this is not all. But what matters more, people or process? With Plechanov (cf. Georgij Plechanov, K voprosu o roli litjnosti v istorii) the attitude of anybody, inclusive of religious movements such as Quietism of the late 16th and early 17th century is not worth consideration. Personage does not make the stuff of history, personality is nothing. With Engels we find how the Peasant wars were prominent during this same period. I can see how the history here is wrong. I want to argue that ideas are IMPORTANT and that the peasant wars were much earlier than Engels says (1525 is his starting date) — it may even prove to be the case that we need a new definition of the concept (i.e. of the peasant wars) based on energy. Also I share ideas with both relativist notions of post-modernism and with BIG history notions of marxism — the middle road is to promote (cf. Egon Friedell, 1936 and 1937, Kulturgeschichte) the ideas not merely as relevant but as all-important in history, and thus we solve the riddle. In some sense I share Friedell´s notion (Hegelian relativism) of all history (Schopenhauer also finds History unwiley) as slippery. For any history-buffs out there, the views of Big History here go logger-heads with micro-history. Friedell is IN THE MIND so to speak. The approaches I use are decidedly BIG, yet I speak about Friedell and psychology and stuff — how so? Here are my conclusions about energy. My kind of science is a science looking back to the systems-approaches of the 50’s and 60´s — impossible histories of EVERYTHING. I think half of the Frankfurt school is right, I also think half of what Gorz says about capitalism is right, none of these (to the exception of André Gorz) understood energy. This is not a story promoting solutions, and it is not a story promoting any s-word or m-word that is the golden key, in that sense I side with Scruton. On the whole philosophy is more prone than many other ideas to mismatch with a changing world — is Kant still valid? hardly. Is Marx still valid, yes parts, and parts are not. I know of only one Marxist who understands energy, his name is André Gorz. Some of his books are classics, but to say Gorzian ideas about basic income play a role in this piece is a guilt by association rationality, and as I side with Scruton I side with ideas careful not to embrace on-bottle solutions, in fact my whole endeavour is opposite to rationalism, it makes me on the whole rather disliked in all quarters, because there is no special kind of rationality I particularly like, including marxian rationality. My emphasis is psychological more than anything else. And my emphasis is NOT taking sides. In fact all millenarianism is rationalist, saying I am a pragmatist is true, but it has a very specialised meaning, saying I am a biologist of man is true, but it sounds mad. The very critique I level at science can easily be levelled at me. But my reply is simple; the language of science has to be universialistic, being aware of the consequences is accepting that culture and nature are one.
The rock-bottom problem is the fountain of youth stopped, and we are meddling with the plumbing, as if this would help.
It is sad that in these days of change you have to choose sides, sides of what? Could someone please tell my, why then capitalism and marxism alike are falling down. The fall, if this word is appropriate at all will come to Sweden in a heartbeat, only with some delay. Jean Gimpel sees back in 1975 no way out for western civilisation, so stand and deliver. I live in Sweden, think up a socialist country, then there it is. The economic system will not touch Sweden of course, because we have magic tin-foil hats on, yup. No the rub is deeper, this crisis is not political, it is in fact not a human problem, it is a problem of ecology, André Gorz half-understood that. Tell me, do badgers wear a badge, stop silly dilly n´get real. My neighbours are Yehova´s witnesses, I like them, and yet I do not share their views, on the whole a scientist and philosopher will face this every day for the rest of his life, which is why most people do not become philosophers.
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Destroying the real message of Kuhn which is much more conservative than we like to think was the result of too much media-contact. So think of me like that. Stick to science is all I say, be dispassionate, and you will pervail. The explanation that Stephen Toulmin makes of Descartes is that Descartes sees the world as a formula, included in that formula is EGO. It shines through how this very formula belittles other things outside of EGO, as EGO must appear on the right side if it appears on the left side. In Walter J. Ong and in McLuhan too we have this notion of text as a fiend and an enemy. Indeed if Heinberg is right the move from quantity to quality is the problem of over-conceptualising the world. A paradigm-shift is overdue, but in terms of EGO it is much more than a re-conceptualisation. Jonathan Swift´s modest proposal is a visual picture of this dilemma, and some of Monty Python´s sketches where a rational concern overrides the concerns of being humane and human. The reason why we make these cognitive (rationalist) miscalculations have historic roots. But Crusoe and Jules Verne have given us the keys to Heaven literally. The Divine intervention in these stories is the key, guard it close to your heart — there is no Divine intervention. Hold that key, for it is the key to heaven. Bummer. I didn´t think I had it in me.
To escape the marbeled cave we set ourselves in (Plato´s cave only in reverse) the two forces play out, that of Steven Pinker of a world inhabited by knowledge, yet a closed room, or the very critisised idea of Stephen Jay Gould that we are educable (combine Lamarck and Popper). In the world to come we are better off if we choose Kuhn and Popper. Yes both, all at once.
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Next up, is the continuation of the story of a lost poet, centaurs in never-never land, gnomes with bad attitudes, occasional other animals such as squirrel and a bat and so on, fill in the wish-list. Love you!
A word from the film editor
The break-outs, fake-outs and sillyness, nor the uneven quality is the fault of the author, the see further, and “we will talk about this later”-inpromptus, are too much of a burden, but…
We are thankful for your support of This series, but we have reached the end as far as money is concerned — barring a miracle it will not be possible to pursue a production involving a big forest, digital arts such as fantasy animals, stone temples, fighting scenes, cameras. We sold all rights to some other guy. The result is this will continue under a different name. The new name including a four-parter we decided to call BIG FICTION, now as we had already filmed the so-called flower scene in which Siberius shows off his skills of oratory, and in compensation we now own 30 per cent of the new franchise, and in doing so the people I owe money will be warded off. We find this to be a trade-off between ditching a good idea or ditching a good team.
HOPELESS UNDERTAKINGS INC.
generel dir. Dirk H. Turstig
Thank you for reading! Expect the Big Fiction series in future near you — so stay alert! I will also direct you to the article POWER POLITICS for the now. As usual too many undertakings.
Happiness HQ
footnote
is the mirror of our current wave 1987? i.e. the symbol-shift?
cite Chicago Tribune
But the October 1989 session at the Loews Anatole Hotel in Dallas was something else. As Jim Edwards, the newly minted head of Andersen’s U.S. audit division, stood to rally his normally staid partners, the rock anthem “Eye of the Tiger” pounded from speakers. Then a Texas stagehand strode onto the stage with a live tiger on the end of a chain, snarling at the astonished audience.
Andersen’s audit division had dramatically boosted its profit in the past year, Edwards told his partners. Doing even better, he said in a rising voice, would “require the eyes of a tiger, eyes that seize opportunities, eyes that are focused on the kill.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the tiger is loose in the Americas,” Edwards roared to those assembled in the ballroom, which had been converted into a makeshift sports arena.
“It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight,” the speakers blared, as hundreds of partners rose to their feet. “Risin’ up to the challenge of our rival.”
To an outsider, the gimmicky stunt at this Dallas meeting might seem more appropriate for car salesmen or fast-food franchisees, not partners at one of America’s premier accounting firms.
you vid
