This is a severe case of proportional loading the scope of individual western wellness onto a global scale. And Mr Pinker, we’re all going to die from whatever, diseased or not.

 

"By many measures of human flourishing the state of humanity has been improving," renowned cognitive scientist Steven Pinker says, a view often in contrast to the highlights of the 24-hour news cycle and the recent "counter-enlightenment" movement of Donald Trump.

"Fewer of us are dying of disease, fewer of us are dying of hunger, more of us are living in democracies, we’re more affluent, better educated … these are trends that you CAN’T easily appreciate from the news because they never happen all at once," he says.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-23/steven-pinker-says-the-world-is-be...

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Two-third of the world population, despite having mobile phones, lacks clean running water and there are still some people killed by wars which are often waged on our “Western” behalf, on someone else’s patch. The human population has grown faster in recent times, and this is because we can deal with more of us by twiddling the knobs of food production with mechanisation and tampering of genetic material — genetic selection or genetic manipulation — as well by managing a longer life span than humans in the past due to medical care that include vaccination, care for the “aged", less infant mortality and better hygiene, and by constantly starring “enemies" down the barrels of nuclear confrontation. 

As fewer of us die of hunger, it is possibly in proportion with the rest of us — we, westerners, often suffering from being too well fed — not in the intrinsic number of people who suffer hunger, a number which could be higher now than in the past due the large increase in the human world population. 

I appreciate Pinker’s optimistic position in regard of our better lot which, nonetheless, demands vigilance. Many Baby Boomers count their lucky stars while worrying about the future, the uncertain legacy they have left for their kids and descendants. I would argue that with, say, a nuclear war of some sort, Pinker's point would be out of the window in a nanosecond. The threat of such nuclear war is not “esoteric”, but in the unfortunate realm of possibility. Pinker’s views strongly relies on our improved ability to dodge bullets while maintaining peace and improved health… As well, as our lot "improved", nature declined fast and now the planetary carbon equation is getting out of balance in ways which will upset many people. 

Sure the news cycle is about showing disasters and “bad news”. That is the inherent construct of “news” and of “history". The “all’s well” does not sell papers nor advertising space on TV. News is about commerce. The women’s mags have to find scandals, marriages on the rock, “mysterious” dietary indulgences from this royal or that movie star. They will relent on the “bad news” with pictures of “the happy couple”, especially princesses, to make us dream while keeping us at our happy toiling station. “News” is a distraction — a new religion that keeps us away from asking the questions about the real dynamics of our systems. "News” has dulled our relationship with our democracies by massaging the moral hubris and values of our actions — and by often telling lies with biased interpretation of events.

The recent "counter-enlightenment" movement of Donald Trump is not the first manifestation of this modern unease… It is one of the symptoms, not the core problem. Our politics have shockingly been inept for a long time. That we never had it so good, is mostly due to our sciences that have helped in improving our lot. Yet sciences are still under the gun of mad religious mobs, despite these mad religious mobs profiting from the improvements. And we still could be in the wrong place at the wrong time when strife, independently of us, strikes. See happiness as defined by Rousseau as good food, good health and a good cook.

Between 400 and 1400 AD, a dark period of European history took place. This period has often been ignored by modern elitist people, and misunderstood by most of us, even as we enjoy playing humming-and-erring tourists while visiting cathedrals. It’s called the “Middle Ages”, sometimes called the Dark Ages. The Middle Ages had a very distinctive complex dynamic of parallel kingdoms, from which Europe eventually shook the Roman Empire and, in some ways, regressed in philosophical invention and understanding of things until the surge of the Renaissance — and later on, with the advent of the Enlightenment. During this 1000 years, theatre had been decreed illegal, as most theatre before that, had been satirical, enlightened and provocatively anti-establishment. The arts became under the control of the church and kings. But this period of “dark” unenlightement — despite a few brief moments of humanistic lucidity since the Enlightenment — seems like it never quit the human species. “Dark” misunderstanding is still ingrained in our present power struggle and our illogical beliefs. Enlightenment never fully came to most of us despite our sciences. We are happy being flotsam in the jetsam...

It appears that the Western world, led by the US empire is crumbling. Under its own belief in itself and its belief in its godly right to be the most powerful nation on the planet, the US empire seems to be intent in taking the entire world down with its precipitous downfall. There is this bad moribund smell about it. So, we are placed at the crossroad of uncertainty, where idiots can rule over massive destructive powers — unfortunately provided by enlightened sciences. Sciences and arts are the only powers of sanity left to lead us peacefully into the future, though many people, especially believers of godly rights, try hard to ignore sciences of try to corrupt them for dubious purposes. Arts, meanwhile, have become less politically engaged than they were in the first part of the 20th century. There is a lot of personal self-indulgent navel gazing going on. Arts have blown the brief time of freedom that challenged the institutions, by becoming insular and fragmented.

I thus see parallels between the dark aspect of this Middle Ages period laced with plagues, wars, bunfights, limited philosophical scope and pestilence, and our modern era in which we could get into trouble, especially with anthropogenic global warming and the predicted end of antibiotics. One of the contradictory dynamics that lead to this downfall is also our false concept of freedom, which is confused, abused and mixed with a decent bleeding heart generosity that leads to the dilution of our secular values and badly protected by our military expeditions based on deceit —  bombing adventures that encourage resentment amongst other nations whether they are “free” or not.

Meanwhile, Russia and China have emerged— they’d never left —, as well as other kingdoms to deal with, not to be eradicated but to be accepted as they are — though presently, they have to work harder to maintain their own hubris in the face of successive loony Hollywoodian US Presidents...

Yet, during the dark ages, say 1000 years ago, skilled people managed to build churches taller than one and a half football field in length to use the Olympic swimming pool analog system of measurement. Of course some of these taller and taller buildings collapsed under their own weight. Engineering was poor until the Renaissance. Il Duomo di Firenze, begun in 1296 in the Gothic style of the Middle Ages, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio, was only completed structurally in 1436, at the beginning of the Renaissance, with the dome brilliantly engineered without scaffolds by Filippo Brunelleschi. So these days a lot of what we do is based on “engineering”, except our moral behaviour...

What is engineering? Engineering is the ability to calculate and predict the behaviour of materials before constructing anything. Musk's rockets need to be engineered. Here, materials will be tested for their resilience and combustion output, before construction begins. And this does not mean the thingster is not going to explode. A small error in construction can be and will be catastrophic.

Human history does not really repeat itself, as rockets like those of USA and of the Russians did not exist during the Middle Ages. But in recent human evolution, there are historical similarity of cyclic behaviour. Though, as humans, we have advanced our technologies mostly beyond repeat of basket weaving, our philosophical respondency is still lagging behind, as too many of us are still believing morons, due to Hollywood (Star Whores, Horrid Potter, etc) and other witchcrafted artifices like the Churchian theatre — and our democratic right to be the lowest educated denominator possible. 

Here are some key moments of the dark ages in a loosely exposed chronology. I say loose because many events were concurrent, while not strongly related:


The crumbling of the Roman Empire nearly came when a couple of Germanic tribes in the second century defeated the Roman armies, until, on the cusp of destroying Rome, they were defeated by the excellent strategy of Caius Marius. The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the East Germanic tribe known as "Goths" (the other tribe was the Ostrogoths). The Goths were among the Germanic peoples who disturbed the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period, following a Visigothic army led by Alaric-the-First that managed the sacking of Rome in 410. The Roman Empire barely survived a few extra decades, till September 476 AD, when the last Roman emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Germanic prince Odovacar, who had won control of the remnants of the Roman army of Italy. He sent the western imperial regalia to Constantinople. 

In parallel with the Visigoths, the Vandals, a large East Germanic tribe or group of tribes, first appear in history inhabiting present-day southern Poland, but some time later moved in large numbers, including most notably the group which successively established small kingdoms in Spain and then North Africa, in the province of Numidia and Mauritania in the 5th century.

The Vandal Kingdom (Regnum Vandalum) had been established by the Germanic Vandalsunder Gaiseric in 435 AD and lasted till 534 AD. Apparently, it was originally created by the Roman government as a vassal state and then extended by conquest further into North Africa and the Mediterranean. The Kingdom was re-conquered by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, in the Vandalic War.

The Vandals persecuted the orthodox Nicene Christians, but contrary to the Europeans in Europe, they also encouraged “secular” learning. Schools flourished and North Africa fostered many of the most innovative writers and natural scientists of the Latin West.

Meanwhile, the Visigoth empire thereafter extended from the south of Spain to the south of the Loire River and to Lombardy. The Visigoths rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis-the-First, who defeated them at the Battle of Vouillé, in 507. After that, the Visigoth kingdom was limited to Hispania, and they never held territory north of the Pyrenees other than Septimania, the region of Narbonensis. A small, elite group of Visigoths came to dominate the governance of Spain, particularly in the Byzantine province of Spania and the Kingdom of the Suebi.

By 589, under Reccared-the-First, the Visigoths converted to Catholicism, from Arianism — Arianism being a Christian concept which asserts that Jesus Christ is only the Son of God — distinct from the Father, therefore subordinate to the Father. This Arianism belief was in opposition to the theological views held by the Homoousian Christians (including the Catholics) regarding the Trinity. 

The Visigoth soon adopted the culture of their Hispano-Roman subjects and the Visigothic legal Code, in 654, abolished the practice of applying different laws for Romans and Visigoths. With no legal distinctions being made between Romani and Gothi, they became known collectively as Hispani. In the century that followed, the region was dominated by the Councils of Toledo and the episcopacy — the bishops who were often in dispute with the secular laws and the Arian religious beliefs. 

Little is known about the Visigoths' history during the 7th century. By early 8th century, invading Moors from Africa defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Guadalete. The Visigoth king and members of the governing elite were killed, and the kingdom collapsed. Gothic identity survived, however, in Marca Hispanica and the Kingdom of Asturias, which had been founded by the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius of Asturias after a victory over the Moors at the Battle of Covadonga.

The main drivers of people’s life during the Middle Ages was submission to power and to beliefs. Nothing much has changed, except due to the exchange concept of capitalism we have more leeway to manipulate debt, work and pleasure, without understanding that our activities could endanger the source of life on this planet, because of our beliefs. 

Power was the king, the lord or emperor — and most other people, called “subjects” or serfs were living in poor conditions, like slaves subdued by beliefs in god. The Catholic church was finding its feet after its synods that had streamlined the narrative of the creed. It had refined the spiel to make sure all “Christians” were telling the same story. The common people, mostly uneducated, were like pawns, the life of which never really mattered as long as there were enough of them to provide resources like food and construct tall buildings, and fight for despots when needed. Few could object to this enslaving system of servitude, unless one was deluded enough to raise an army and challenge. The changing kingdom dynamics showed that this actually occurred often enough. Europe was often at war within and outside against invaders, such as the Muslims (see the Visigoths). People on the east, such as the Russians, did not count much, yet.

With the flux within European power changing from kings to kings, from town to town, beliefs in the Catholic religion, using the story of Christ as a narrative, became the central core of power, an integral part of the anointment of kings and emperors. While Christ had preached humility, peace and humanism, the Church was very much into control, waging wars and creating hell for those who did not ascribe to the belief — like fighting the witchcraft practitioners and eventually the Cathars. 

Ignorance of reality, maintained through the stiff belief in god, was a major setback in regard to the philosophy of human nature that had flourished during the Greek and Roman antiquity. 


Yet some stylistic inventions of the Middle Ages grew from the Roman technology into the Romanesque art and then the Gothic expression, mostly in religious buildings and royal jewellery. Until the Renaissance, most rulers’ castles were designed like fortresses to protect against “usurpers” who had as much right to be a king as the next sitting psychos. At every turn of this muddled history, the Catholic Church, as a major player of intrigue, even fought itself for a few years as to which pope would rule over the kingdom of god. Meanwhile the kings and emperors were carving their domains, despite the vast distances, relying on alliances, gifts of gold, marriages and glorious treachery, plus the ubiquitously recurring wars to maintain power. 

After establishing the unity of Gaul under Frankish rule, Charles Martel dealt with the Islamic advance into Western Europe. Islamic forces had conquered Spain (711), crossed the Pyrenees (720), seized a major dependency of the Visigoths (721–725), and after intermittent challenges, under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, the Arab Governor of al-Andalus, advanced toward Tours, "the holy town of Gaul”. In October 732, the army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Al Ghafiqi met Frankish and Burgundian forces under Charles Martel in an area between the cities of Tours and Poitiers, leading to a decisive, important Frankish victory known as the Battle of Tours (or ma'arakat Balâṭ ash-Shuhadâ, Battle of the Palace of Martyrs), ending the "last of the great Arab invasions of France”. This military victory by Charles Martel defined the course of European history.

Charles then took the offensive, destroying Muslim fortresses at Agde, Béziers and Maguelonne, and engaged Islamic forces at Nimes, though ultimately failing to fully reclaim the Visigoth's Narbonensis. He thereafter made significant gains against fellow Christian realms, establishing Frankish control over Bavaria, Alemannia, and Frisia, and compelling some of the Saxon tribes to submit.

It is of note that Narbonensis eventually became Cathar country. Catharism - meaning purity (as in catharsis) was an early proto-Protestantism that promoted values of equality (sexual, gender, political and commercial), neighbourliness and charity. The Cathars turned their back on the pomp, hierarchy and worldly wealth of the Catholic church. Cathars believed that Earth had been created by a malevolent God, and that Heaven was the world of the good God. This was sufficient cause for the Catholic church of the time to brand Catharism as a heresy. The Catholics and the French king, himself eager to acquire more territory, destroyed the Cathar “democracy” in the 13th century.

Earlier on, Charles Martel was thus an important founding figure of the European Middle Ages. Skilled as an administrator as well as a warrior, he is credited with a major role in creating responsibilities of the knights of courts, and in the development of the Frankish system of feudalism. Pope Gregory III, whose realm was being menaced by the Lombards, and who could no longer rely on help from Constantinople, asked Charles to defend the Holy See and offered him the Roman consulship, though Charles declined (the latter?).

Charles Martel divided Francia between his sons Carloman and Pepin. The latter became the first of the Carolingians. Charles' grandson, Charlemagne, extended the Frankish realms to include much of the West, and became the first Emperor in the West since the fall of Rome. The Arabs retreated to Spain, below the Asturias, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia region. They stayed there until the 15th century when they were kicked out, along with the Jews by the kingdom of Castille, led by Isabel and Ferdinand. 

By some twist of power struggle, the Roman invasion of the British Isles had been arrested by the people of Scotland and the Roman had to build the Antonine Wall after the Hadrian Wall to contain the “northern hordes” of Caledonians. 

Most of the German tribal lands never were incorporated into the Roman Empire despite later on being called the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was often at odds with the Catholic Church’s own control. The very different cultures clashed, though the Germans learned and adapted techniques from the Romans. Even in France, the Roman influence did not leave any impact north of Tours, though the Romans left a strong impression in most of England.


One of the most impressive Roman building still standing east of the Rhine though is the Aula Regia, in Trier, built in the fourth century. It is said that this building inspired the Cathedrals in Europe, build in the "middle ages".... 
More to come. Picture at top by Gus Leonisky : Strasbourg Cathedral (note the tall fine stone masonry of the pillars in front of the solid stone facade...)