The Essence of the Left

[gay_Aleks]

He'd be too busy spreading the bubonic plague.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

There's a part of me that feels like if I brought a medieval peasant to the modern era instead of being wow'd they'd be like "you flipping idiots, you fell for the aristocratic lies? You're destroying everything, you morons! We had a perfect system. Now you're trapped in this endless cycle of making the powerful more powerful at the expense of your earth, families, and wellbeing." And then proceeding to explain how everyone used to understand that speech was all in metaphor and discourse was often used for effect rather than for explanation, and the moment people starting taking words literally rather than motivationally, everything went to poop.

But probably not.

I think the peasant would in deed be too busy with envying people's living standard rather than to bother with abstract criticism
I mean this guy comes from a time where simply managing to stay alive and not have your daughters raped was a pretty good deal. Where the church found laughter quit unnecessary and even sinful, reserved for a the life after, which could only begin to sound reasonable because life sucked so much.

sorry...
but thankyou for replying anyway.

I raise my hat to your humble response.

 

[Hygro]

I think the peasant would in deed be to busy to envy people's living standard rather than to bother with abstract criticism

That's like, what my entire post was about.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It was?

 

[Hygro]

Yeah. The peasant's reacting to our unnecessary technology and our insatiable quest for truth in place of religious-superstitious-animist fillers that free them to live their lives in the moment, touching the earth by day and, erm, each other by night.

Like rather than getting excited by each bit of technology, the peasant immediately recognizes a whole overwhelming regime of tech that has him or her going "no no no no you're doing it all wrong".

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It is an interesting thought that the peasant would immediately recognize the superfluous nature of many modern quests or comforts. And I suppose that means that the peasant will think more practically and less abstractly.
However, my point was that life still is pretty sweet compared to the average medieval peasant life and that this simple practical sweetness will be such a forceful impression for the peasant that it may give little room for being critical of our modern world.

 

[Borachio]

I think your medieval peasant would be astounded by hot and cold running water. And flushing toilets. Electric lights and motor cars. Television and mobile phones. Airplanes and bicycles.

So astounded I doubt he'd have time for anything else.

 

[timtofly]

Would "the response" not depend on the political persuasion of the peasant?

 

[luiz]

Would "the response" not depend on the political persuasion of the peasant?

I don't think they had one.

And every now and then an even more extreme version of time travel happens in Brazil, when a Stone Age uncontacted Indian comes forth and they take him to a tour of the cities. They're always pretty impressed.

 

[Hygro]

It is an interesting thought that the peasant would immediately recognize the superfluous nature of many modern quests or comforts. And I suppose that means that the peasant will think more practically and less abstractly.
However, my point was that life still is pretty sweet compared to the average medieval peasant life and that this simple practical sweetness will be such a forceful impression for the peasant that it may give little room for being critical of our modern world.

Well yeah, I'd be surprised if my musing would bear out. I just sometimes wonder if the cult of private property accumulation for its own sake took so long before it pretty well spontaneously emerged in Italy was in part because people had a positive idea that was bad for [reasons].

I think your medieval peasant would be astounded by hot and cold running water. And flushing toilets. Electric lights and motor cars. Television and mobile phones. Airplanes and bicycles.

So astounded I doubt he'd have time for anything else.

Most likely.

Would "the response" not depend on the political persuasion of the peasant?

Assuming my imagined scenario, yeah maybe.

I don't think they had one.

And every now and then an even more extreme version of time travel happens in Brazil, when a Stone Age uncontacted Indian comes forth and they take him to a tour of the cities. They're always pretty impressed.

Probably a good indicator, even if in some ways its a totally different example. i.e. two radically different forms of settled western culture verses an Amerindian hunter gatherer culture meets a settled western culture.

 

[Traitorfish]

It is an interesting thought that the peasant would immediately recognize the superfluous nature of many modern quests or comforts. And I suppose that means that the peasant will think more practically and less abstractly.
However, my point was that life still is pretty sweet compared to the average medieval peasant life and that this simple practical sweetness will be such a forceful impression for the peasant that it may give little room for being critical of our modern world.

It doesn't such much about your social order, though, if it can only respond to criticism by bludgeoning people over the head with sheer luxury.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Well there is always 'human nature'

@Hygro
You mean people had an idea of what life was about which was incompatible with that 'cult'?
My general rule of thumb is that most people have no real idea about what life is about. For the reason that people have always been just thrown into whatever social and physical situation existed at their time and place and then have to try to somehow arrange themselves with that world. The point being that with so little control over the circumstances of your life there is not much point in having an idea about 'the' good life which transcends circumstances.
Put differently, I think people mostly just muddle through

Some individuals like for instance Traitorfish or you may not be contempt with that and may wonder about 'the' good life and how it relates to the world we got. But as long as this is not a mass phenomena, such thoughts will not change the general circumstances, so people rightfully think it is a waist of time, and it keeps not being a mass phenomena. The circle closes and humanity continues to not actually take charge of its destiny but instead muddles through as its individuals do.

 

[Hygro]

Well there is always 'human nature'

@Hygro
You mean people had an idea of what life was about which was incompatible with that 'cult'?
My general rule of thumb is that most people have no real idea about what life is about. For the reason that people have always been just thrown into whatever social and physical situation existed at their time and place and then have to try to somehow arrange themselves with that world. The point being that with so little control over the circumstances of your life there is not much point in having an idea about 'the' good life which transcends circumstances.
Put differently, I think people mostly just muddle through

Some individuals like for instance Traitorfish or you may not be contempt with that and may wonder about 'the' good life and how it relates to the world we got. But as long as this is not a mass phenomena, such thoughts will not change the general circumstances, so people rightfully think it is a waist of time, and it keeps not being a mass phenomena. The circle closes and humanity continues to not actually take charge of its destiny but instead muddles through as its individuals do.

I guess what I'm saying is, we assume this because in our system the folks that are in the same strata as peasants in the old system are often the way you describe. But what if it wasn't that way? What if it was totally the opposite? What if before the great capital accumulation process, when Malthusian logic governed, it was in part because people knew to live that way for their mental and environmental health, spoken in religious/animist/etc. code mostly idea-worm deep into peoples' brains and to throw off the educated, book-minded classes. What if to the peasant the rigid social structures were preferred, and our notion of freedom was a horrible aberration? And that it took a materialistic-capitalistic mentality to change it? Capitalism did proceed liberalism...

 

[John Walker]

I think your medieval peasant would be astounded by hot and cold running water. And flushing toilets. Electric lights and motor cars. Television and mobile phones. Airplanes and bicycles.

So astounded I doubt he'd have time for anything else.

Link to video.

 

[gay_Aleks]

So.. he'll enter murderous fanatic rage and if he ever sees a black man he'll mistake him for a Moor?

 

[Old Hippy]

I guess what I'm saying is, we assume this because in our system the folks that are in the same strata as peasants in the old system are often the way you describe. But what if it wasn't that way? What if it was totally the opposite? What if before the great capital accumulation process, when Malthusian logic governed, it was in part because people knew to live that way for their mental and environmental health, spoken in religious/animist/etc. code mostly idea-worm deep into peoples' brains and to throw off the educated, book-minded classes. What if to the peasant the rigid social structures were preferred, and our notion of freedom was a horrible aberration? And that it took a materialistic-capitalistic mentality to change it? Capitalism did proceed liberalism...

there is alot of truth to that monty python sketch about the king and the very unhappy lefty serf he meets...

as the first peasant revoult shows in 1381

The effect of the Black Death on the Peasants' Revolt cannot be dismissed. With the resulting labor shortage and wage increase, the peasants began to realize that they were important in society. Many serfs either bought their freedom or ran away in order to work for higher wages. He used these wages to evade overseas military service which gradually helped free villeins from this additional obligation. The 1349 Statute of Laborers attempted to push wages back to pre-plague levels, buy it was hard to enforce even with the threatened punishment:

Item, If any reaper, mower, or other workman or servant, of whatever estate or condition that he be, retained in any man's service, do depart from the said service without reasonable cause or license before the term agreed, he shall have the penalty of imprisonment. And that none, under the same penalty, presume to receive or retain any such person in his service. <3#3>

Men were starting to resent the restrictions they were forced to endure. The years after the Statute of Laborers were filled with military defeats, financial crises, and governmental corruptions which increased the peasants' growing antagonism.

http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1986-7/milone.htm

and how did the overlords deal with it (written from their bias at the time)

Afterwards the King sent out his messengers into divers parts, to capture the malefactors and put them to death. And many were taken and hanged at London, and they set up many gallows around the City of London, and in other cities and boroughs of the south country. At last, as it pleased God, the King seeing that too many of his liege subjects would be undone, and too much blood split, took pity in his heart, and granted them all pardon, on condition that they should never rise again, under pain of losing life or members, and that each of them should get his charter of pardon, and pay the King as fee for his seal twenty shillings, to make him rich. And so finished this wicked war.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/anon1381.asp

so to boil it down labour/overlord relations are basicly the same in the old system as they are today...

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Yes I am very much inclined see things as the gist of your example suggests.
If peasants were content with the 'rigid social structures' then only because they saw no alternative and instead sought the comfort of justifications as that God wanted it that way or that in some other way things had to be that way.
@Hygro I simply see no reason to assume otherwise, but plenty to not do so.
Moreover, what I described does IMO not only apply to present lower classes. But to the majority of any class. Few take the time and/or effort to challenge how societies function, no matter what class or time period, and if some do reflect on society, most are mostly engaged in justifying it one way or the other. Be it the church in medieval times who praised the will of God or academics in modern times who praise the will of the free market.
I guess this is what Marx in the end was all about. That this stopped and people actually started to build the society they actually wanted. But that never happened.

And thinking about it - beyond the lines drawn by political antagonism - what I personally see as the essence of the left is to want that to happen. To see that as the utmost political goal.

 

[John Walker]

A Medieval peasant had at least 2 months and up to 6 months of holidays each year!:

"A medieval peasant got more vacation time than you":

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-deba...eval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/

No surprise that Medieval economies were not shining!

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I read the article. Interesting.

 

[Tahuti]

It are things like these that convinced me to become a reactionary.