[Ansteorra] Courtesy challenge
Marc Carlson
marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Sat Oct 14 11:30:40 PDT 2006
>Klfrench1023 at aol.com Klfrench1023 at aol.com
>>As for the Dream as it used to be, but I believe the "Machiavellian
>>attitudes, back-stabbing politics, and endless grasping for personal
>>gain" have been a part of the Current Middle Ages far longer than the
>>more than quarter century I've been aware of, and the two decades I've
>>been a member of the Society.
>Indeed they were around, as was I. I suggested nothing fallacious or
>dichotomous...
As much as I don't want to fight about this either, I am saying that your
suggestion that it's either/or for "The Dream" and "Machiavellian" politics
-is- a false dichotomy. I daresay that we could find examples in the
Society of people who are doing or have done both.
It is impossible to "re-enact" an ideal or a fantasy. That implies that
they were, in fact, ever done that way.
I don't have any problem with people wanting to be kind, chivalrous,
courteous, or for that matter, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. My point
is, and has been, that these are not (generally speaking) historically
accurate interpretations of the actual behaviors of the past. They are a
resut of a 19th century fantasy, a perfectly good fantasy to be sure, but
not medieval, and even then, not universal.
The SCA appears to idealize a fantasy, a "dream". That's great. N o one's
challenging that. It's not history though, and I'm not going to pretend it
is.
I will say that considering how predictably this discussion continues to
take place - even to the argument of if we're not going to do the fantasy,
we must be doing only those things that are really negative suggests a
suprisingly dark, and erroneous understanding of what the Middle Ages were
actually like, mostly due, I suspect to more mythology and folklore than to
anything that is actually -know- about the periods in question.
Marc/Diarmaid
More information about the Ansteorra
mailing list