tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post4269268491884426188..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Knowledge of HistoryAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-74981291203501384052019-05-26T09:00:05.968-04:002019-05-26T09:00:05.968-04:00Persecution is stimulating at relatively low dosag...Persecution is stimulating at relatively low dosages, a bit like alcohol. At low dosages it keeps mere conformists out of the Church and unifies the persecuted remainder. But what stimulates in small dosages kills at full strength. We Christians like to imagine that we would stick with Christ unto martyrdom, but there is for most of us a point on the persecution dial where we are out of it.<br /><br />You make an excellent point when you observe that historical figures generally knew far less history than we do. Most of them didn't even think historically, by which I mean they did not see themselves in the context of a vast process of political, economic, and technological change. But they did know that they had ancestors, and they told themselves stories about their ancestors that gave them the courage--the heart--to carry on in the world. In this I think they were wiser than we. Our history teaches us to be proud because we are better than our ancestors. Their history taught them to be proud because they were descended from those ancestors.JMSmithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14502377102987849260noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-2009560652121728962019-05-25T12:37:49.398-04:002019-05-25T12:37:49.398-04:00@ Christopher B - yes, it would have to be non-Wes...@ Christopher B - yes, it would have to be non-Western history according to my design, not theirs. Not that all historians would do a poor job of it - not at all. But some perspectives get lost simply because those histories are often discussed in opposition to the west, not within their own frames. The Chinese still name WWII the War of Japanese Aggression. We didn't put that idea in their heads.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-8708837810320462692019-05-25T11:07:25.168-04:002019-05-25T11:07:25.168-04:00By expelling Jews who didn't convert, Spain wa...By expelling Jews who didn't convert, Spain was following in the footsteps of France and England, which had expelled Jews several centuries before.In the centuries before the 1492 Spanish expulsion of the Jews, Rome was not pleased with the tolerance the Spanish Christian kingdoms showed towards Jews. See <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43296" rel="nofollow">A History of the Inquisition in Spain Vol I by Henry Charles Lea</a>. <br /><br />I suspect that cancelling the debts incurred from the conquest of the remaining Muslim kingdom of Granada had something to do with Ferdinand and Isabella's edict on the Jews.<br /><br />Darío Fernández-Morera's The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise puts paid to just that. Muslims not as tolerant as previously believed. What a surprise.RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-74274484678216369282019-05-25T10:56:03.261-04:002019-05-25T10:56:03.261-04:00I think you're wildly optimistic thinking that...I think you're wildly optimistic thinking that non-Western history would be taught in the same fashion as Western history. I think there's quite a bit of it taught now, a large portiin of it cataloging all the things the Westerners stole.Christopher Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00396671757183163171noreply@blogger.com