Posts Tagged ‘History’

Golden Age, Schm-olden Age (A Series)

Posted: April 1, 2013 in "Golden Age, Schm-olden Age"
Tags: , , , , ,
0

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

On the first day of all my history courses, I attempt to dispel my students’  romanticization of the past. This may sound strange to people who assume that “kids today” don’t respect the past, but I don’t find that to be the case at all.  In fact, I think most Americans, college students included, respect the past, or at least the past that has been constructed for them by pop culture, the media, and politicians.  Most of the time, Hollywood, 24 hour news old-daysprograms, and US Senators portray history as romantic, simplified, and heroic. “The Good ol’ Days” are lionized as a simpler, more understandable time that has been lost.  Through this lens, history appears to move in a negative, regressive direction.  Though this stance is most often associated with conservatives, the idea that history is regressing touches all political sides.   Everyone can discover a past Golden Age that fits their modern ideologies.

Most of my students don’t necessarily think in these political terms when it comes to history, but  the vast majority believe that society is regressing.  To them, times are worst than they have ever been.  Social levels of violence are purportedly unique; human communication is disintegrating; Americans are lazier than ever.  Though young themselves, these students interestingly see historical regression most clearly in “kids these days”.   I have had 18 year old students tell me that their 12 year old siblings don’t know how to form relationships because of cell phones and video games.  Obviously, 30 somethings similarly complain about college kids.  60 somethings say the same about 30 somethings.  And on and on we go.

If history is regressing, then it only makes sense that the past must have been superior.  I believe this notion reached its apogee in the 1990′s, when the so-called baby-boomers lionized their own parents, dubbing them the  “Greatest Generation” in pop-culture and mass media outlets.  The narrative went like this: “The Greatest Generation” was superior to all who came after not only because they fought WWII, and survived the Depression, but that they did so with nary a complaint.   They were marked by determination, resilience, and stoicism. Of course, it became inevitable to ask, “What happened to those who came next?”  How could American society produce the WWII generation, and then spawn these “kids today”?  By painting with such a broad brush, the creators of the “Greatest Generation” ideal simplified and heroicized complex individuals who fought, died, and experienced WWII, while also smearing those who came after.

But, wait a minute!   My reader may be thinking, “the WWII generation was more stoic than people today.  They did face hardships, and endured them.  Plus, in many ways, the past is superior to the present.”  You are correct on all counts.  No one could believe that history has not regressed in some areas of life. That is indisputable.  But, the problem is that lionizing the past in order to compare it to a supposedly distasteful present spawns historical tunnel vision.  We miss two important truths when we do this: First, the complex continuity between the past and present events, ideas, and movements is censured by this tunnel vision.  Second, lionization spotlights regression, while ignoring progression (of course, this depends on how we define both terms).  To ignore one for the other is  disingenuous. “The Greatest Generation” was most definitely patriotic; perhaps more so than “kids these days”.  For many, this is regression. That being said, “The Greatest Generation” also largely accepted their society’s racial bigotry and misogyny with little critique.  It was up to their hippie children to fight these injustices. For most, this is progression.  Forgetting such complexities leads to the construction of a falsified past composed of simplified Utopian heroes.

“Golden Age, Schm-olden Age” then, will be a series of posts that I will come back to now and again to display the continuities of the past with the present, and to expose such wrongheaded romanticized history.  In doing so, I will not be judging the past so much as critiquing domineering attempts to gloss the past as something far superior than the present.  I don’t know how often I will write these posts, though I hope they will be entertaining.

(Next Monday, First Installment: Ancient Roman Graffiti)

Hollywood and Sparta; Masculinity and Sexuality. (Thoughts on the Ancient Greeks, Part 2 of 3)

Posted: March 10, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
5

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty. 

Judge me if you wish, but I love using Hollywood films to teach history courses.  You want to know why I love it? Two reasons.  First,  movies provide students with an opportunity to empathize with figures of the past.  Lecture and textbooks rarely are able to bring raw human emotion into the classroom.  Films can do that. Second, movies often get history completely wrong….Wait, what?  How is this good, you might ask?  I find that analyzing the inaccuracies of historical films clarify historical reality since this reality is often more shocking and memorable once we compare it with Hollywood falsehoods.

“This IS SPARTA” from movie and graphic novel

Films dealing with the Ancient Greeks are particularly good for this, since the filmmakers often misrepresent Hellenic culture so blatantly. Two such films  are the 2007 flick ’300′, based on the Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name, recreating with much artistic liberty the Spartans’ sacrifice at the Battle of Thermopylae, and 2004′s “Troy”, which is loosely based upon the seminal work of Western literature, Homer’s “The Iliad”.   Neither of these movies would be considered ‘great’ films.  They are not award winning; critics generally panned them; and, quite honestly, they are a bit tedious.  But, I love to use clips from these movies because of how they represent, and misrepresent, a central tenet of Ancient Greek civilization:  Masculinity and sexuality. 

When it comes to masculinity, “300″ has the most disturbing inaccuracy.  One of the most memorable scenes of the 2007 film comes when a Persian messenger arrives at Sparta to threaten the Spartan king Leonidas (actually, there were two kings in Sparta), requesting submission to the invading Persian king, Xerxes.  Leonidas turns the messenger down, explaining why he can’t submit.  Leonidas needs to worry about the Spartan reputation.  He is especially concerned about this reputation since the Athenians have already rejected the Persian offer, and Sparta can’t be shown up by Athens.  Leonidas makes this clear to the Persian messenger by deriding the Athenians as ‘philosophers and boy-lovers’.   After poking fun at the weakness and perversity of Athens, Leonidas then provided a lesson for the Persian in noble Spartan toughness by yelling “THIS IS SPARTA” while kicking the man  down a bottomless pit. 

You can hear the disdain in Leonidas’ voice when he talks about those Athenians; those boy-lovers.  For a modern audience though, there is never any further dialogue to provide an explanation as to what the Spartan king means by this insult. Do the movie-makers believe their audience understands this reference? Or, were they simply using the words of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, since that line originates with it?  Perhaps the movie-makers and Miller think it is obvious; loving boys, and the evident Athenian propensity for it, clearly separates Athenians from the uber-masculine, uber-militant Spartans.  It is implied for the movie-goer that ‘boy loving’ is something strong, laconic, Spartan warriors just don’t do.  Leonidas loves his wife; end of story. WRONG!  As Professor Paul Cartledge has written, the Spartans were a bit notorious among fellow Greeks for loving boys. Reality is that ‘boy love’ was common within all the Greek world, and Sparta was no different.

Achilles mourns for Patroclus

Achilles mourns for Patroclus

Let’s break away for just a minute  for some clarification.  The love of ‘boys’ sounds extremely disturbing to our 21st century ears. ‘Boys’ usually mean children to modern English speakers. But, we need to understand that ‘boys’ in the Ancient Greek context would be understood as young men.  Were they all consensual adults?  No, they were not, though no concept of ‘legal age’ existed for either men or women during this time period.  Furthermore, ‘love’ in the Greek context does not necessarily mean physical acts of love (though that was a possibility).  Loving a young man could mean wanting to be near him; teach him; protect him.  For the Greeks, love of young men was natural, and noble since the highest level of beauty was found in the physical body of a young, athletic male.   This was the Greek world; the Spartans were as much a part of it as the Athenians.

Perhaps not surprisingly, “300″ is not the only film to misrepresent Greek culture when it comes to “Greek Love.” In the 2004 film “Troy”, the relationship between Achilles BradTroya_N(Brad Pitt), and his young ‘nephew’ Patroclus is central to the story.  As Achilles refuses to fight the Trojans because of his petulant anger at King Agamemnon, impatient Patroclus rushes into the battle wearing Achilles’ armor.  Patroclus dies at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector, and the killing of his ‘relative’ finally gets Achilles’ blood boiling.  Achilles desire for revenge, and his inevitable defeat of Hector is one of the central moments in Western literature.  Yet, the filmmakers of “Troy” completely misrepresent Homer’s vision. In the original epic, Patroclus and Achilles were not nephew and uncle. They were men who loved each other.   Perhaps not physically (or perhaps so), but they are as close as two men can be. The loss of his male love is what drives Achilles’ blood-lust. Family relations has nothing to do with it.

Our modern interpretations and misrepresentations of the past tell us a great deal about our own culture, but an analysis of why these films differ from Ancient Greek reality would be a whole other post.  However, when discussing this glossing over of ‘Greek Love’ in class the other week, one of my students made an astute comment.  She pointed out that the audience lining up to see ’300′ and ‘Troy’ are usually composed of young men, and they may not feel comfortable with heroes being in love with other heroes.  I think she is dead-on, and her statement proves that young male masculinity in our society is similar, and at the same time, dissimilar to masculinity in Ancient Greece.  Much like the Ancients, youthful masculinity today is based upon aggression, and these films speak to that.  No need to change Sparta’s love of violence; Leonida’s love of victory; Achilles’ love of glory. But, unlike Ancient Greece, modern masculinity is based upon stoicism towards other males. Dudes don’t embrace each other, much less express the love they feel for each other in words.  It is no wonder movie-makers would be concerned that Achilles’ real relationship with Patraclus would be discomfiting for many  21st century young movie-going males. Heck, many of these ‘brahs’  won’t even sit next to each other in a crowded theater, leaving one seat in-between each wannabe Leonidas.

Parenting on President’s Day

Posted: February 18, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
0

So today is President’s Day.  I think we can all agree this is one America’s secondary holidays.  Whereas I personally have warm, nostalgia-laden feelings for Thanksgiving, or Independence Day,  President’s Day brings to mind cold February afternoons, watching television and seeing Electronic Store commercials utilizing George Washington crossing the Delaware to sell appliances and stereos. Sad, but true.

Of course, as a kid, President’s Day was also a welcome occurrence since it meant a day off of school.  As my oldest daughter began Kindergarten this year, she is now getting to enjoy a long holiday weekend in mid-February.  She goes to a great school that teaches kindergarten-ers the material I was learning in middle school (just a slight exaggeration).  For her teachers, holidays are chances to inform  the students about the history and meaning behind national celebrations. Thus, during the last week, my daughter has been jabbering about George Washington and Abe Lincoln. On Friday, she made a  ’log cabin’ out of Popsicle sticks and a shiny penny.  It’s pretty darn cute.

8dccc66e1fFebruary is also African American History month, and her school has by no means ignored that.  The same day she showed us her ‘log cabin’, I overheard her singing a song.  It sounded like a familiar folk song, and when I asked her what it was, she confidently informed me it was a tune from ‘slavery times’.  This was a bit of a shock to me, because I had not told her about American slavery yet.  As far as I know, she doesn’t even know what slavery is, much less the crucial role in plays in the American past.

And so, here we have parental challenge #5324 and 5325 (in reality, there probably have been more).  How, and more centrally, when do you explain to a child about the dark aspects of American history?  My daughter is intelligent and inquisitive, and in the near future she will be asking more and more questions about what slavery actually was all about; I don’t want to be unprepared.  Of course, the irony of this situation is that I am a history instructor, and I am constantly discussing the horrors of history in my classes. I have absolutely no qualms about that.   But, when I think of explaining to my six year old that many of the children that she plays with on the playground could have been the property of others  150 years ago, I go mute.

That is the first problem; the second is similar.  When should she learn that those we celebrate with holidays were not untainted superheroes,  but human beings who often did horrible things?  George Washington did cross the Delaware, he was our first president, he was central to the formation of the Constitution, but he was also a plantation owner and a slave driver.  As American cwPT_1082c_AE81885_Apoth_cchildren, each new generation must grasp that this duality exists in the American story; but at what age?

I guess what it all comes down to is the fact that I just want to protect my child.  I don’t want her to know the complexity and ambiguity of history and humanity just yet.   That being said, I will NEVER teach her a mythologized version of the American past, with cherry trees, wooden teeth, and angels in the shape of men forming a perfect nation.  She doesn’t need lies; but maybe I will hold off on some of the ugly truth until she is ready. Or, until I am.

Our Age of Hyperbole.

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

Saturday mornings in my house mean listening to Weekend Edition on National Public Radio.  This Saturday, my wife and I were preparing breakfast, having our coffee, when the host of the show, Scott Simon, had a quick one minute aside about the French trying to control the English language’s dominance of social media terms.  Evidently, many of the French don’t enjoy all this English terminology within their lexicon and the term ‘hashtag’ is the latest concern.  This seemed like a light little story, until Simon reported a darker twist: One group called  Avenir de la langue française (Future of the French language) ratcheted the discourse up a couple notches by recently proclaiming that this ‘English invasion’ threatens the “French language more than the Nazis did.”  I was in awe of this hyperbole.  This crap makes me really angry.

In one sense, this story makes me feel better about American culture since I was under the delusion that this type of rhetoric was exclusively a province of American politics.  On the other hand, it frustrates me to no end when anyone plays the compare-this or that-to-Nazism game, and unfortunately, it seems this practice is becoming close to the norm in the Imagepublic arena.  The most noticeable example is in the realm of political rallies. The Tea Party has taken this to an extreme in their gatherings, especially when it comes to their disdain for President Obama.  Google ‘Tea Party Rally Obama Hitler sign’ and you will see some quite radical examples of this rhetoric.  However, this attack method is not the exclusive province of the right-wing Tea Party.  On the left, anti-war protestors had a field day making Imagesigns and posters that equated President George W. Bush to Hitler.  Hitler is an equal opportunity bogey-man in America.

If this was just the work of a couple crazies that take to the streets, that would be one thing; but, of course, it’s not. The shout of “Nazi” has also been used by our politicians in Washington on the floor of the House of Representatives.  On the satirical Daily Show, John Stewart has attacked such tactics.  Stewart has also humorously illustrated that smearing the other side with the ‘Nazi’ moniker is an everyday occurrence in the world of the 24 hour news cycle programs and talk radio.  Perhaps the most disturbingly absurd media example came in 2009, when Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and President Obama were lambasted for Imagearguing that empathy was an important trait for a Supreme Court Justice. Glenn Beck, the most infamous ‘boy who cried Nazi’, somehow found a connection between Sotomayor’s and Obama’s belief in judicial empathy and Adolf Hitler’s supposed use of empathy to justify ‘putting down’ the sick and mentally challenged using the T4 euthanasia program.  Yikes!

It seems the rise of such name-calling goes hand-in-hand with the growing power of the internet.  Cyberspace is a sanctuary for all sorts of wackos to have their ideas heard, and not surprisingly, many Neo-Nazis find the internet as an indispensible tool for spewing their race hatred or strange conspiracy phobias.  Of course, such people are self-proclaimed Nazis, and hence, the term is not used as one of abuse in such forums. The obnoxious use of Nazi as an attack method is more common within purportedly rational discussion boards, blog posts, and social media. The description of others as Nazis, Gestapo, and/or modern day Hitlers is such a frequent occurrence in internet locales that twenty years ago a man named Mike Godwin formulated it into a ‘scientific law’. ‘Godwin’s Law’ states “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving  Nazis or Hitler approaches… In other words…given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.”

So, are internet users simply using logical fallacies?  Has Avenir de la langue française overstated their case?  Is Glenn Beck drawing historical corollaries to simply smear his political opponents?  Well, yes, and that is disturbing enough. But, using the Nazi affront has even more treacherous consequences. Those who equate their political, social or cultural enemies with Nazis believe that they can clearly see the present, because they have an understanding of the past.  Beck and his ilk feel their vigilance of Nazism reborn is based upon the old cliché that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.  They repeatedly proclaim that their stark grasp of history repeating itself must be appreciated.  Those who follow ‘Godwin’s Law’ are the prophets; the solitary voices in the wilderness.

Image

Justice Sotomayor

Image

Reinhard Heydrich

Ironically though, the hyperbolic commentators are doing the opposite. They do more than simply FORGET history; they expunge it.  If a radio talk-show host equates Sonya Sotomayor’s or Barack Obama’s ideals of empathy with Reinhard Heydrich’s ideals, this is more than a horrible insult to Justice Sotomayor or Obama (which, of course, it is).  This is an insult to the millions who died in the Operation Reinhard camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec); the hundreds of thousands who were worked as slave laborers by Heydrich’s SS; the millions whose homes and lives were destroyed by the Nazi war machine.  These millions of people erased from history truly experienced Nazi ‘empathy’. Beck’s particular equation of Sotomayor’s empathy to this type of ‘empathy’ should make us take serious pause in regards to his ethics, if not his sanity.

As with all clichés, there is a good bit of truth in the statement that if we forget our past, we are doomed to repeat it.  The problem is the ridiculous usage of Nazi as an attack term makes us forget what really happened in the past.  And so, a reminder: President Obama is not Hitler; President Bush is not Himmler; and the use of ‘hashtag’ in France is not the same as the creation of the Vichy puppet government.  To make such a hyperbolic analogy is a slap in the face to us all.  

You Can’t Escape It (History That Is).

Posted: January 14, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,
0

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine shared with me an amazing Flickr and Facebook page called Ghosts of History (or Ghosts of War).  A Dutch photographer named Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse is the creator of both.  Very concisely, Teeuwisse states on her Flickr account that she loves “making photos in places where people took a photo long time ago” (sic).  Often she does more than just replicate a photo from the past; instead she overlays the past photo onto the contemporary photo, making it look…well…ghostly.

The effect of old photos seemingly being absorbed by the new is fascinating, and I highly recommend spending a couple minutes (or hours) exploring what she has done. Teeuwisse focuses upon her Dutch homeland, and the period of the Second World War, so you can imagine that a great many of the photos are tragic, which just adds to their eeriness.  One photo is of a dead French soldier on a sidewalk that today is a quiet Dutch lane.  Such photos display the everyday tragedy that marks modern war.

One photo that struck me was this one:Image

Here is a beautiful street in Amsterdam, with tourists taking a stroll, not realizing that the Nazis had an SS station on the corner directly behind.  Underneath the infamous double lightning bolt SS symbol, is a word not quite as well known, but that signifies horror: Einsatzkommando.  The Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos were the ‘special task forces’ that swept into Nazi conquered lands after the Wehrmacht (regular army) knocked out enemy military resistance.  The goal of the Einsatzgruppen was nothing less than the destruction of Nazism’s political and ‘racial enemies’.  After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a couple thousand Einsatzkommando’s used small arms to methodically murder roughly 1 million Polish and Russian Jews and other ‘undesirables’.  These small groups of men were the initial actors of the Holocaust.

Teeuwisse’s photo illustrates that the Einsatzgruppen were not only active in Poland and Russia. Of course, the Einsatzgruppen did not murder their victims so openly in Holland, but they were central to the deportation of Jews and political enemies of the Nazis to ‘the East’, which in Nazi doublespeak meant an almost definite death sentence.

With such background knowledge, the happiness of the modern day tourists and day-trippers adds to the photo’s eeriness.  The dark history of this random Dutch corner is not given a second thought by those enjoying the summer sun. This photo displays the ubiquity of history, and our ignorance of it.  We have our historical shrines that we recognize as places of central importance to our historical narratives.  In America, we could point to Gettysburg with its hundreds of monuments; or Philadelphia, with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall; perhaps the Alamo, or Pearl Harbor. Such places leave visitors hushed with reverence for those who came before.  Though it is well and right to have such memorialized shrines, we should not forget that our history is all around us, always.  These photos forcefully remind us that though we may be walking our boring everyday streets, we are never alone.  The past is always with us, no matter how we often try to forget it, or obscure it.

Self-Destructive Masculinity.

Posted: January 2, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
1

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

The other day on Facebook, a friend of mine posted a gun ad that had him a bit perturbed.  He commented on the ad, “Actual ad. Speaks for itself.”  It most definitely does. The ad is obviously speaking to a certain type of bushmaster_desktop_1024x768American who equates firearms with masculinity.  Nothing new here.  Masculinity in American culture (and many others, including Western Civilization generally) has long been identified with weapons.  Guns are just the latest incarnation. For some, guns equal aggression, and aggression is a predominately male dominion in these peoples’ minds. For others, guns equal protection of oneself and others, and protection is a predominately male dominion in these peoples’ minds. And for still others, guns may represent individuality and freedom.  The ability to control one’s own life and interests is best displayed by a holstered .45.

In post-Newtown America, guns are once again in the political forefront. Though it may not seem like it so far, this post is intended to focus upon more than simply the place of guns in American society. Instead, I believe that ad from my Facebook friend points to a troubling aspect of our culture that seems to be getting more pervasive as the years pass.  America has created what I am labeling a ‘culture of self-destructive masculinity’.  What I mean is that masculinity in our society is becoming portrayed more and more often with life-threatening danger.  This ad is just an extreme example.

I realize that the fact that I have equated guns with self-destructiveness would make many people very upset.  But, I intend this statement to be as non-controversial as possible. However you look at guns, there can be no denying that they are deadly weapons. Having a gun in your pocket increases your chances of being shot in the leg in the same way having a kitchen knife in your pocket would increase the likelihood of being stabbed.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Of course, knife manufacturers would usually not campaign on the ‘man card’ platform.  The fact that gun manufacturers felt this was an effective ad says a great deal about how we view masculinity.

KetelOneGentlemen2But, let’s look beyond guns because this culture of masculine self-destruction goes much further. How about alcohol?  Alcohol companies portray certain drinks as manly.  We know what alcohol does to the human body, but this is not supposed to be a concern for the ‘manly’ man.  Of course, the type of alcohol you drink is still based upon class distinctions, but each class has its masculine identity.  A certain vodka is manly.  Cheap beer is also manly.  One is for cultured barflies, the other for tailgating bros. But both are poisons that can cause self-destruction.

Manliness is also often defined by your vehicle.  Quickness, speed and power are portrayed as manly concerns.  Safety and dependability are not masculine.  I believe you can see the cult of self-destruction in the fact that for many, fast cars are not dangerous enough anymore; instead even more dangerous ultra-fast motorcycles are the symbol of manliness.  In this culture of self-destruction, protection becomes a weakness.  Helmets and seat belts are actually a burden that must be thrown off.

This culture of self-destructive manliness is noticeable in even more common arenas.  One is fast food.  The fast food industry fights against healthy foods by making our ingestion central to our gender, as this disturbing Burger King commercial illustrates.  And if fast food has become America’s meal, then football is America’s manly passion. The game is the epitome of manly interest.  It represents war for spectators in an age when war is never real (for average Americans at least).  Of course, football has always been about aggression; but we now know that football is not just ‘other’ destructive, it is also self-destructive.  Every year, ex-NFL players in their 40’s and 50’s can no longer walk, speak, or think because of the hits they have doled out to others.  Suicide and brain injuries are becoming common for ex-pros. But the ethos of manly self-destruction will not be done away with.  Bears Linebacker Brian Urlacher said just last month he would lie to cover up a concussion so he could stay in the game, or play the next week.  Self-destructive manliness epitomized.

Now the question that many may be asking: Is this new?  Or is this an aspect of history that has been with us for centuries?  I think it is new and it is old.  It is old in the sense that Western masculinity has always had a bit of self-destructiveness about it.  Two differences should be noted however; earlier self-destructiveness had traditionally been the realm of young men.  Also, this was not destructiveness for the sake of destructiveness.  Young men did not want to die in war.  They wanted to experience life. They wanted glory, nobility and heroism that purportedly came from the supposed selflessness that communal battle created.  What is new about this is that the self-destructiveness is now not aimed only at the young, but at all men.

But why is this?  That is the tough question. One reason may be that Americans have all been trained into believing that being young is ideal, and old age should be avoided at all costs. If it is self-destructive to be young, then the middle-aged want to reach this goal as well.  Additionally, this self-destructive masculinity seems to be spreading with America’s growing deification of libertarianism.  As American culture has become more and more individualized, direction or advice from others is often seen as overbearing and paternalistic.  Hence, helmet laws are despised.  Speed limits are increased.  Concealed weapons are normalized. Such libertarianism has become an aspect of almost all political hues in modern America.

How do we end this?  I don’t know.  Is it a fad?  I hope so.  Is it dangerous?  I think so.

“The Past is Foreign Country”.

Posted: August 9, 2012 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
0

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

My specialty is modern history.  Just like anything, focusing only upon one subject, or time period, can get a bit staid.  So, I am always looking to branch out.  Recently I have had mini-obsessions with biblical history, the beginnings of civilizations, the history of science, and the history of religion.  Lately, I have taken some minor detours into life during the so-called Middle Ages.  The years 600-1300 of European history is one I could always use some brushing up on.  With this in mind, I devoured a book recently entitled The Axe and the Oath: Ordinary Life in the Middle Ages, by the French historian Robert Fossier.  As I read this book, I thought some of aspects of ordinary life in the Middle Ages was worthy of a blog post.  Here are a couple of my favorite bits of information about the time period in the words of Fossier.

Mathematical Knowledge:

  • “Worse, in all of the centuries of the Middle Ages, figures were not given their real arithmetical values….Figures had only symbolic value. One, three, seven and twelve were God, the Trinity or figures found in the Bible; and as for six and its multiple six times six, they were the sign of what cannot be counted with the fingers of one hand, thus, what surpasses immediate understanding…This disdain for figures affected measurement as well. Someone would sell ‘a wood’, bequeath ‘his land,’ and give ‘what he has.’” ( Page 28)

Early Death:

  • “As late as the fifteenth century, 42 percent of the ground space in Hungarian cemeteries was taken up by the graves of children under ten years of age…and 25 to 30 percent of babies were stillborn, a figure difficult to find today even in the most poverty-stricken lands.” (30-42)

Child Rearing:

  • “When a child reached the age of one, he was helped to walk with the aid of a walker, but anything like a playpen or crawling on all fours was systemically discouraged. The first may have been seen as a reflection of fetal enclosure, and the second as a return to animal life, condemned by God.” (48)

What they ate:

  • “….bread occupied too great a place in the diet. People consumed from 1.6 to 2 kilos of bread per day, and other foods were known as companaticum, ‘what you eat with bread.’ (61)

A time of kindness:

  • “…the house was the basic cell of life, a haven of safety, a space for sociability….Closed in and private, hence inaccessible to the Other, it was also an expression of charity – or of charity as it was conceived in those centuries, which was the alms of a loaf of bread or a bowl of soup offered at the door, for the beggar knocking at the door might be Jesus…that hospitality…was one of the natural paths to salvation. “ (109)

And of cruelty:

  • “…mockery greeted the gesticulations of the mute. As for the blind…their confusion was met with laughter, and nothing was done to aid the myopic…” (20)

The British novelist L.P. Hartley wrote  that “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”  From these short glimpses of the Middle Ages, we can see he was correct. But, by looking at the lives of these people, we can also see how life has progressed, and regressed.

How lucky we are to live in a time when graveyards are not being filled by children?  How amazing is it that our 8 year old children have more mathematical knowledge than medieval adults?  How heartwarming is it that the modern world attempts to help and be kind to its most physically disabled? But, how unfortunate that those most socially and economically disabled are now seen as being a drain on society that should be punished for laziness? How annoying is it that with all the wonderful, healthy foods at our disposal, 10% of our calories per year come from sugar and chemical filled soda? Lastly, how sad that we have such a lack of historical knowledge that we don’t appreciate how far we have come in our attitudes and knowledge?

The Evolving Map.

Posted: May 17, 2012 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
2

 

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

I have seen this amazing map/video circulating the web recently, and I was intrigued.  What strikes me as so effective about this video is it gives us a sense of the mutability of human made political geography.  Unfortunately, Americans are notoriously ignorant about geography. What’s the big deal, you may say? Well, this time lapse map illustrates why this is something to be concerned about.  Ignoring geography makes many believe that the map today is unchanged from the past. Lacking the ability to understand historical and geographic change makes people feel that what they know today will always be, giving them a sense of hubris.  This map should show how wrongheaded such lack of thought is. We can plainly see that kingdoms, empires and republics have risen and fallen at an incredibly fast pace during the last 1000 years in Europe, as in the rest of the world. There is no reason to think that this will change, though many fool themselves into believing otherwise.

One other danger of geographic ignorance: the educated man/woman needs to realize that the little quick flicks on this time lapse map represent still unhealed scars for millions of people.  Wars, ethnic cleansing, and religious tensions are being fought, planned, and escalated as a result of the events that are signified within the first seconds of this time lapse.  To think that events from millennia ago have no effect on our lives today is dangerously naïve.

 

In Response to Paul

Posted: May 2, 2012 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
3

By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

After Paul’s last post, I would like to give him another perspective on his thirty years. I am going to show him how I perceive time zooming past in my idiosyncratic, historian’s style in the hope that it will allow him to view his years from another angle.

Simply put, I ‘relativize’ the time that has passed by comparing the years I have lived to what came before. This probably doesn’t make much sense, so let me give you an example.  Last year was the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s seminal album, “Nevermind”.  Twenty years is a long time, but it feels like only yesterday that I heard the newly released songs of “Nevermind” on the radio.  How long has it really been? In order to give me a sense, I calculate what music was on the radio 20 years before “Nevermind” was released.  1971 was five years before I was born.  In that year, John Lennon released “Imagine”; Marvin Gaye put out “What’s Going On?”, and The Rolling Stones produced “Sticky Fingers.”   Those albums might as well be Mozart, in the sense that they are part of the distant past in my mind.  But, to a freshman in my Western Civilization class, this same remote, untouchable aura surrounds Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” (If they even know of the album.) In other words, I am old; my students are young; time flies.

Let me provide some other examples:

  1. I began working at RMU a decade ago. This is nothing.  But, ten years before 2002 was 1992.  Babies born in that year are already Juniors at RMU. (Yikes)
  2. I was born in 1976; 36 years ago.  I don’t feel old, but someone who was 36 in 1976 was born in 1940.  They lived through the Second World War for goodness sake!
  3. RMU was founded in 1913.  Granted, 99 years seems like a long time, but the world was recognizable then. There were cars, planes, and Chicago was a booming metropolis. 99 years before 1913 was 1814: Napoleon was yet to be defeated at Waterloo; Thomas Jefferson and John Adams still had over a decade to live; Chicago was not in existence, and the United States was fighting the War of 1812 against Great Britain.

This is how my mind works.  I have no idea when I started to do this, but it is now a habit.  This way of looking at time puts into perspective how fast history moves, and also how fleeting certain things we take as absolutes actually are.  For instance, most people think America will always be, but history proves otherwise.  America as a nation has been in existence for roughly 240 years.  Rome was a Republic for twice as long. Christianity has existed for 2000 years, but people lived on this earth for roughly 200,000 years before Christ was born.  And on, and on.

There you go Paul Gaszak; perhaps you now feel older; or younger; or, perhaps you just think I’m weird.