Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Project Willow » Sat Mar 05, 2011 6:53 pm

Stephen Morgan wrote:I don't know what denying your reality means,


That is obvious, and obviously intentional on your behalf in my view, which was my point.

Stephen Morgan wrote:I am not a violent man.


I experience your hatred of the female sex as expressed through your warped, ill-informed, and blinkered views as a form of psychological violence. You are, essentially, a troll who believes in the material he is trolling.
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:49 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:Given he is/was some sort of avatar of Nyarlotep thats hardly a ringing endorsement.


Well not so much him as the real life cops of his era. Probably not that bad, in fact, as there was no organised police force in the witch era.

Just so everyone here is clear - Stevo you are talking about what happened in England wrt witch trials yeah, not anywhere else in the world.


That is the heart of the issue, not just because I'm more familiar with it but because Britain is where capitalism started, and this thread was about the alleged use of witch-burning as a psychological ploy the subjugate women to home-based working in a proto-capitalist economy.

So what you are saying may not apply to Europe cos you haven't done the same levels of research/aren't as familiar?


Different parts of Europe had different legal systems, as continues to be the case. The Dutch don't have juries even now.

Had it been allowed to go so wrong? Specific sources, preferably Primary ones would help clear that up.


I refer you to the confessions of the monk-knights themselves, specifically the English ones who were suppressed five years after the French ones and were tried completely without any form of torture or coercion, and rather than being executed were sent to do penance in other monasteries. There's a place in the town centre, under the castle, where they were imprisoned for trial at Lincoln.

5 years before de Molay was burned the Papacy moved to Southern France, it was the Pope who moved that burned him, and at the time there were all sorts of political machinations between the French Crown and the pope over who had control of secular matters in the HRE. The pope who moved the Curia was the same one who burned Templers and he (Clement v)was basically a puppet of the French King Phillip the intraveneus. Given all that there are still no charges against de Molay and his order of child rape or child sacrifice to the devil that I have ever heard of.


No, not of child murder or rape. Those aren't the only kinds of serious crime a devil-worshipper can commit. I have heard such allegations against the Hospitallers, though.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:56 am

Project Willow wrote:
Stephen Morgan wrote:I am not a violent man.


I experience your hatred of the female sex as expressed through your warped, ill-informed, and blinkered views as a form of psychological violence. You are, essentially, a troll who believes in the material he is trolling.


Well, your accusation that I'm ill-informed would be more biting if I wasn't the only one to post any facts in the thread. You're just a bully Willow.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:25 am

Stevo - Gene Hunt is actually a great male character to examine the concept of misogyny. I saw the last ep of the final series of Ashes to Ashes the other day, hence my ref to Nyarlhotep.

There used to be a crowd chant that was very popular in Australia:
"All coppers are cunts."

Speaking of misogyny.

Hunt would be a Bastard to deal with tho. I'm glad coppers aren't like that anymore.
I refer you to the confessions of the monk-knights themselves, specifically the English ones who were suppressed five years after the French ones and were tried completely without any form of torture or coercion, and rather than being executed were sent to do penance in other monasteries. There's a place in the town centre, under the castle, where they were imprisoned for trial at Lincoln.


Where could I find some of those confessions online? Are they even online?

Those aren't the only kinds of serious crime a devil-worshipper can commit.


Yeah but what serious crimes was he charged with? None AFAIK. Murder? Rape? Kidnapping? Didn't Phil IV also make the same accusations against the previous pope? Ones that even Dante didn't consider credible?
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:59 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:Stevo - Gene Hunt is actually a great male character to examine the concept of misogyny. I saw the last ep of the final series of Ashes to Ashes the other day, hence my ref to Nyarlhotep.


Image

There used to be a crowd chant that was very popular in Australia:
"All coppers are cunts."

Speaking of misogyny.

Hunt would be a Bastard to deal with tho. I'm glad coppers aren't like that anymore.


I'm not entirely sure they aren't, I certainly here about enough miscarriages of justice. Mind you, around these parts the coppers are all pretty women. PCSOs, though, not proper constables. They don't like it when you appear in the middle of a crime scene, though, I'll tell you. Still, all the women ought at least to dilute the ranks of freemasons in the force.

Where could I find some of those confessions online? Are they even online?


I don't know, I'll look on google. I read them in books. Local history guru. I could show you the exact shopping centre which now sits on the site of the ancient Templar hospital. Or the farm which now stands on the site of the Templar preceptory where the last Grand Master of the Templars in England was both ordained and arrested and where the confessions claimed one of the four idols of Baphomet kept by the English Templars was located.

Those aren't the only kinds of serious crime a devil-worshipper can commit.


Yeah but what serious crimes was he charged with? None AFAIK. Murder? Rape? Kidnapping?


The Templars? They were crusaders, none of that would even be worth mentioning.

Didn't Phil IV also make the same accusations against the previous pope? Ones that even Dante didn't consider credible?


One pope toasted the devil before the high altar in the vatican. Northing compared ot what the more recent ones have got up to, but the fact that Phil's pope made accusations against his predeccessor doesn't neccessarily discredit themm.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Mar 06, 2011 6:26 am

Stephen Morgan wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:Stevo - Gene Hunt is actually a great male character to examine the concept of misogyny. I saw the last ep of the final series of Ashes to Ashes the other day, hence my ref to Nyarlhotep.


Image


I'm not entirely sure they aren't, I certainly here about enough miscarriages of justice. Mind you, around these parts the coppers are all pretty women. PCSOs, though, not proper constables. They don't like it when you appear in the middle of a crime scene, though, I'll tell you. Still, all the women ought at least to dilute the ranks of freemasons in the force.


I blame the Bill for that.
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Mar 06, 2011 6:32 am

Stephen Morgan wrote:
Where could I find some of those confessions online? Are they even online?


I don't know, I'll look on google. I read them in books. Local history guru. I could show you the exact shopping centre which now sits on the site of the ancient Templar hospital. Or the farm which now stands on the site of the Templar preceptory where the last Grand Master of the Templars in England was both ordained and arrested and where the confessions claimed one of the four idols of Baphomet kept by the English Templars was located.

Those aren't the only kinds of serious crime a devil-worshipper can commit.


Yeah but what serious crimes was he charged with? None AFAIK. Murder? Rape? Kidnapping?


The Templars? They were crusaders, none of that would even be worth mentioning.

Didn't Phil IV also make the same accusations against the previous pope? Ones that even Dante didn't consider credible?


One pope toasted the devil before the high altar in the vatican. Northing compared ot what the more recent ones have got up to, but the fact that Phil's pope made accusations against his predeccessor doesn't neccessarily discredit themm.


I'll be in England one day. I'll look you up and you can give me a tour.
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby compared2what? » Sun Mar 06, 2011 6:56 am

From the second review on the thread:

These analogies are chosen with care, for Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries bears a striking similarity to fascist and fundamentalist societies in our own time. Repression and control were the watchwords of the day, in fact modern medicine, psychology, demographics and the social sciences all developed at this time in a grand effort to learn how to make people “fit” into the straitjacket of capitalist relations.


Oh, ffs. It would be far more accurate to say:

These analogies are chosen with care, for they can be exploited to create the insupportable and ludicrous illusion that Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries bears a striking similarity to fascist and fundamentalist societies in our own time for the blatantly commercial purposes of attracting a popular contemporary readership to this bogus historical account.


Which is by way of saying:

You guys wanna know something? If that book does indeed make the arguments described in the OP and the second review, it's a very shallow and overdetermined reading of history that focuses on the academically chic topic areas of gender and capitalism to the exclusion of real scholarship.

The feudal system wasn't a single, stable dominant economic model that functioned in the same way all over Europe that it did in (easiest and most obvious but not the only example) England. Pagan rites (first review) were not a culturally characteristic and widespread phenomenon among the peasant classes on a continental basis by the late middle ages. They'd survived, in whole or in part, in a quasi-syncretized form in some far-flung nooks and crannies of it. As they still do, I suppose, there and elsewhere. But there's no question that by then it was a fully post-Christian culture, definitively and decidedly, as it still is and as it had been for centuries.

And blah, blah, blah, blah.

The major huge glaring and gaping flaw in the witches-'n'-populism-led-to-capitalism-in-the-late-middle-ages hypothesis is that there's a much, much more clearly traceable and tangible line of totally straightforward economic, sociocultural and -- for lack of a better word -- "technological" advances leading to capitalism in that period. So you don't really need to look for one in the highways and hedgerows. It's right there. In plain sight.

For example, that colonization-of-the-new-world thing to which the OP glancingly refers? Kind of a landmark moment in the history of global trade. Very, very instrumental in the transformation of what had been a primarily agrarian economy (which did keep the serfs down on the farm quite effectively for quite some time) into a trade-based, goods-and-services economy. With, I don't know, in no particular order: gentry, guilds, merchants, urbanization, the whole proto-industrial and proto-bourgeois nine yards. Before you knew it, literacy was breaking out here and there.

I mean, it's not that clean-cut, wrt timing. History never is. Obviously. It's not like a bell rings and suddenly it's the Renaissance. There was already something of a proto- proto-middle class by the 11th century, basically due to (again) "technological" advances that facilitated travel and communication between and among places that wouldn't have been accessible to one another prior to the rise of the town, the creation and expansion of roads, the cultural attitude adjustments wrt perceptions of what constituted "home" and "abroad" and so on and so forth. And....That's just always a very easy one to remember (where things were at in the 11th century in England) because the signposts of it are all over The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath is proto-proto bourgeois, for instance.

Witch-hunts were witch-hunts, same as they are now. Just like Jews were Jews, same as they are now. If the Christian era didn't require both, both would have died out a long, long time ago. Along with serfs.

Therefore, sorry to say: Those days don't have striking analogies to the modern era. The modern era has striking analogies to those days. And that's the sad but plain truth of the matter.

Don't let any pointy-headed book-writer tell you any different without checking it out very carefully yourself. They make their living telling stories. Never forget it. Don't trust me, either, btw. Study history. If there's a greater repository of understanding waiting to happen anywhere on earth, I've sure never come across it. There's nothing like it. Accept no substitute.
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Mar 06, 2011 7:36 am

compared2what? wrote:Which is by way of saying:

You guys wanna know something? If that book does indeed make the arguments described in the OP and the second review, it's a very shallow and overdetermined reading of history that focuses on the academically chic topic areas of gender and capitalism to the exclusion of real scholarship.


The major huge glaring and gaping flaw in the witches-'n'-populism-led-to-capitalism-in-the-late-middle-ages hypothesis is that there's a much, much more clearly traceable and tangible line of totally straightforward economic, sociocultural and -- for lack of a better word -- "technological" advances leading to capitalism in that period. So you don't really need to look for one in the highways and hedgerows. It's right there. In plain sight.


Thats why the use of the word Luddite in its modern form really is a slur. And totally inaccurate.
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:50 am

compared2what? wrote:Don't let any pointy-headed book-writer tell you any different without checking it out very carefully yourself. They make their living telling stories. Never forget it. Don't trust me, either, btw. Study history. If there's a greater repository of understanding waiting to happen anywhere on earth, I've sure never come across it. There's nothing like it. Accept no substitute.


Don't do it at university, though. I'm stuck studying witness statements from a massacre in the Bight of Benin. I tell you, if I was bothering to read the course material instead of just scrawling rubbish for the essays I'd have given up on this rubbish long ago.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby Canadian_watcher » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:43 am

compared2what? wrote:Don't let any pointy-headed book-writer tell you any different without checking it out very carefully yourself.


For most of the population this means checking it out in other books - so where do you ascertain whether or not you can trust a writer? It's very subjective.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.-- Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby compared2what? » Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:04 am

Canadian_watcher wrote:
compared2what? wrote:Don't let any pointy-headed book-writer tell you any different without checking it out very carefully yourself.


For most of the population this means checking it out in other books - so where do you ascertain whether or not you can trust a writer? It's very subjective.


It is. And that advice was not very felicitously phrased for that reason. In fact, it was an incredibly stupid fucking thing to say. Now that you bring it to my attention. And counterproductive, too.

Thanks, C_w, for prompting me to think my way to a minor enhancement of understanding. Which is actually a much better (and more achievable) goal to shoot for when reading anything, including history, than the careful checking out of its truth and accuracy is. Because it is subjective. And anyway, who knows? It was kind of a long time ago. You're never looking at the complete picture.

I amend my exhortation to: Read whatever you feel like reading, thoughtfully, and with the honest aim of adding a little new capital to the sum total of your treasury of understanding should you happen to stumble across any. Because at the absolute worst -- ie, even if you don't -- that's still a pleasant (and in its way, profitable) state of mind to be in.

On a somewhat more practical note, wrt history, when I read stuff that's largely outside the boundaries of my general knowledge (which is most history), I kind of informally keep an eye out for points of cross-reference to some and/or any material I am familiar with -- ie, a literary work from roughly the same period or whatever. Which hardly ever yields anything except briefly diverting questions to self along the lines of: "Really? Hmm. I don't know. Does Proust ever mention any waitresses?" To be honest.

But if it's Western European history that's later than the 12th century or so, you can also pretty much just use common sense. Because very, very broadly speaking, the foundations of society then are still the foundations of society today. Assuming a predominantly Christian culture. And people were, are, and probably always will be people. (Newsflash!)

So if it seems more or less plausible to you that a person with power would do [whatever] or it strikes you as totally out of the question that an unorganized mob of economic dependents would ever, of their own accord, suddenly up and [whatever else], go with your instinct. It's as good as anyone else's. And almost everybody's just guessing, anyway. Most of the time.

Sorry to have said something so dumb. Again. (Double entendre intentional.)
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby kool maudit » Mon Mar 07, 2011 4:40 pm

on culture-war-y issues, or issues that could reasonably be made to appear as antecedents to culture-war-y issues, r.i. is doctrinaire 1989-at-a-canadian-university-ism, complete with unbounded declamations of patriarchy, capitalism, traditionalism etc., and unbounded praise for anything which could made to seem as oppositional to, or oppressed by, the aforementioned order.

this means:

witches: good
men who posit that the above may not have been true: hateful bigots, among many other such things.

this view is sometimes right, i.m.o., and sometimes not-right -- but we must always remember we are in its home court, and one of the last remaining ones too (it's almost quaint).
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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Mar 07, 2011 5:10 pm

kool maudit wrote:on culture-war-y issues, or issues that could reasonably be made to appear as antecedents to culture-war-y issues, r.i. is doctrinaire 1989-at-a-canadian-university-ism, complete with unbounded declamations of patriarchy, capitalism, traditionalism etc., and unbounded praise for anything which could made to seem as oppositional to, or oppressed by, the aforementioned order.

this means:

witches: good
men who posit that the above may not have been true: hateful bigots, among many other such things.

this view is sometimes right, i.m.o., and sometimes not-right -- but we must always remember we are in its home court, and one of the last remaining ones too (it's almost quaint).


That, sir/madam, is your strawman to beat upon, a convenient substitute for thought and inoculation against engagement. The same caricature would have been used already in 1989, in the same way: as a subtle, dismissive defense against perceived critique of that particular form of conservatism (the one you regularly express) that believes itself to be open-minded mainstream liberalism beset by the pagan haters of "Western civilization" and its unparalleled accomplishments, all of which are attributable to its "Western"-ness. In 1989, of course, this caricature of yours would have consigned the critique of "patriarchy, capitalism, traditionalism etc." to a declining "university-ism" from the 1960s.

(Don't know why you should include capitalism but it is of course in particular the philosophical belief in capitalism that is in decline, like never before, the system itself having failed globally and in spectacular fashion just three years ago, causing an ongoing economic disaster for billions and existing still only thanks to a massive wealth-redistributing (bottom to top) rescue action by the state.)

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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Re: Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

Postby kool maudit » Mon Mar 07, 2011 5:21 pm

if you don't believe the above is true, i am not going to argue it. my position is that this board tends to hold the aforementioned sympathies.

i am certainly not going to get into an argument regarding the comparative merits of this general worldview. i think you are aware that my personal positions, in many areas, lie to the right of the board's overall average. i'm fine with that.
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