[Ansteorra] knights in America

[Chris Zakes]

At 09:50 AM 1/28/2008, you wrote:

(snip)

>  But on the other hand what about our current civilization?
>The days when what a person said is what they meant.
>The days when it was what was on your inside not your possessions that  was
>important.
>The days when you helped your friends not screw them over.
>The days when a bussiness transaction could be sealed with a  handshake.


<shrug> I'm not sure that these days are any better or any worse than 
"the old days."  Starting around AS 2 people began complaining that 
the SCA had gone downhill from what it was when *they* joined.

And on the other hand, consider this quote:

"What is become of the gentility and inbred courtesy of ancient noble 
gentlemen? Where is the magnanimity of the honorable knights 
of  foregoing times, whose virtues as they are recorded in histories 
herein we read of them, so ought to have been left to their posterity 
that in them we might see the image (now forgotten) of ancient true 
nobility? But since all things fall to decay, it is no marvel though 
virtue (I speak with all due reverence and favor) be not found but in 
few: for surely there be many in whom nothing remaineth but the bare 
title of nobility, in that they be gentlemen born: who in their 
manners wholly degenerate from their ancestors, and make no account 
either of honor or dishonor, giving themselves to such pleasures as 
their unbridled appetite leadeth them unto."

                 -Vincentio Saviolo "Of Honor and Honorable Quarrels" 1595

Obviously, the tendency to look at the past through rose-colored 
glasses is not just a modern phenomenon.

         -Tivar Moondragon