11-22-2021, 11:24 AM
The architecture of the cathedrals is of course magnificent (expressions of piety, architectural innovation, civic pride), and there are some fine paintings. Let's not forget the illustrated books and the stained-glass windows (intended to teach as a visual aid to the overwhelming majority of illiterate people. I associate the Middle Ages with juvenile incompetence, barbarous cruelty, mass ignorance, and grinding poverty with few people seeing anything wrong. Ro be sure there was some isolated intellectual life and capitalist commerce was taking root.
It is not until Gutenberg invented the printing press that people could pass down expertise easily and without a personal connection. With printed books, scholars in Krakow could more easily discover what was going on in Cambridge or Cremona. The printing press may have been the one invention that changed everything as nothing else could. Other technologies have since made things more efficient or allowed people to do what they had been doing before to do more of it. Electric lights, for example, allowed people to do work when natural lighting or even candles were inadequate. Radio allows people to disseminate sound instantly instead of relying upon the dissemination of sound recordings by land or sea transport.
It is not until Gutenberg invented the printing press that people could pass down expertise easily and without a personal connection. With printed books, scholars in Krakow could more easily discover what was going on in Cambridge or Cremona. The printing press may have been the one invention that changed everything as nothing else could. Other technologies have since made things more efficient or allowed people to do what they had been doing before to do more of it. Electric lights, for example, allowed people to do work when natural lighting or even candles were inadequate. Radio allows people to disseminate sound instantly instead of relying upon the dissemination of sound recordings by land or sea transport.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
