Things everybody knows that are actually wrong

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Freedom is something related to government intervention.

Now this isn't wrong so much as not the whole story, actually there are greater threats to freedom than the government. This obsession with government size is a purely American fabrication; probably something to do with the abscene of European Class-based politics (no, race-based politics isn't quite the same thing, though similiar obviously).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Pretty much Everything I've ever heard Americans say about Irish history.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

That Fascists descend on economics from the right wing.

This is something most [american] conservatives belief.... but is utterly, utterly wrong.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Thinking of Jmfsct here...

All original Christian thinkers (including it seems, Paul) denied the existence of demons and of the Roman gods. Actually no, they believed they existed but that they were inferior to the Christian God.

Romans were Polytheists and the Roman Aristocracy believed that their gods existed and that the stories of the Greek Myths and the Illad actually happened. Actually Roman Religion - in its more intellectual forms anyway - was more similiar to Hindu Monism than its popular image (or Christianity).

Also everything you read about the sex lives of the Romans (except the occasional mad emperor) and their eating habits is a myth. The vomitorium simply didn't exist.

Going back to politics slightly... Same-Sex unions are a recent phenomenon. Actually similiar types of unions were recognized in Roman and in Early Christian Times.

Most of "western morality" comes from Christianity.

People worked harder in the past.

Most people in Europe from about c5th Century AD till the Post-WWII era were Christians.

The Druids built Stonehenge.

Irish people are "celts".

There is a direct correlation between the rise of Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism.

People throughout history and culture have had the same level of sexual drive and desire to procreate.

"Homosexuality" has been with human beings since the beginning. Actually the concept of there being homosexuals - that is, a form of identity based around the sex of the people you slept with is entirely a 19th Century invention. The term "homosexual" was first invented in iirc 1863 (or some time around then) by a German writer wanted to escape persecution by making that he was male or female but rather "a third sex". Thanks in part to Kraft-Ebing and Freud the idea caught on.

Nations are primordial entities stretching back throughout history.

Social engineering by Governments is an invention of modern society.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Oh yeah.. Karl Marx was the first person to use class as way of analyzing historical events. There was long tradition of associating the French Revolution with the Bourgeoise classes long before 1848 and the Manifesto, but he was the first to use class as the engine of history.

Robespeirre was a Socialist.

Until very recently people did not realize the debt Westerners owed to Medieval Arab science. Actually Auguste Comte mentions this in his writings, which are now nearly 200 years old.

Shakespeare was widely considered the greatest playwright in the English language since his death. Actually his reputation was mostly built by 19th Century romantic writers and their predecessors (like Hamann).

Artists have traditionally (by-and-large) leaned to the Left in political matters.

The majority of Italians supported Italian Unification in the 1860s. Actually it was a tiny minority and long, long guerrila war took place in the South which at one point involved 100,000 Italian troops in the field. When the Papal States were captured in 1871 there was very little support by the populace.

The majority of Italians speak Italian and Spoke Italian during this period. Actually only at the very most 10% did. Perhaps as low as 2.5%

Oh to really throw the cat among the pigeons... All governments deny the existence of extraterrestial beings on UFOs. Actually the French defense department in a 1996 report claimed otherwise - that hoaxes were easy to spot and the rate of sightings too rate to claim anything other than Extra terrestial contact. Read into that what one wants.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

No problemo.

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Yeah something like that. But far more complicated - Roman males were allowed to have concubines (occasionally in place of a wife - but with lower legal status) and Slave girls (and boys) were pretty much fair game for all, especially adolescents. Yet in saying that there was a great of emphasis especially in the early period of the empire - when stoic morality grew more and more important - on the idea of the couple and the husband and the wife type family, not the same as modern nuclear family, how many nuclear families own slaves? but the ideal was there and was increasingly followed. Paedophilia was very much illegal and as the empire went on and morals began to grow more and more rigid, this even before the conversion to Christianity, homosexuality was less and less tolerated. Orgies were unheard of - actually only the Greeks ever held orgies (at rare occasions). Only the Greeks idealized homosexuality, actually the Greeks believed that homosexual relations were a sign of manliness and virility as one then did spend one's time then with weak women - who were often seen as just for procreation (in official writings).

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Well "Classical Paganism" (to put a simple term on it) was still present in Europe up until the conversion of Kingdom of Lithuania in the 15th Kingdom. However very few people among the population of Europe at the time could genuinely understand Christian doctrine in any time. Rather, and this has survived much more in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones, christian shrines were just built over previous existing polytheistic ones. In Ireland for example there is a direct continuity between the cult of the saints and holy wells (two very traditional features of Irish catholicism) and pre-existing pagan cults. St. Brigid was almost certainly a christian gloss onto a pagan myth-goddess who was believed to reside in the same area (Kildare). The story of St. Patrick is probably the conflation of the story of a real person with pre-existing legends. This is true throughout Europe (and later, Latin America). Practice thus was a continuation in many ways of went before - instead of worshipping trees one worshipped the cross; Christianity as we commonly understand it was mostly a movement of intellectuals and aristocrats (usually the same thing in pre-industrial societies) and was often strongly elitist in temperament. Among common folk, anything we would recognize as Christian morality did not exist - including obviously sexual morals.

This long continued - during the period of the Spanish inquisition priests regularly called for the money diverted to convert native Americans to convert Spaniards instead. Knowledge - as in Theological knowledge - was very poor as to call them "Christians" in the extent we would understand them would be wrong. One of the aims of the reformers of the reformation was to spread Christianity more among the masses, as previous attempts were obviously unsuccessful. Christianity was also linked to governments (or what passed for government in the middle ages) as it often provided the bureaucracy and was nearly always a large landowner - this often led to popular anti-clericalism which would stretch well into the nineteenth and even Twentieth century in countries like Ireland, France and Spain. In the eighteenth century the Church fell basically into irrelevance except as a marker of tribal distinction and government control (ie. Protestants vs Catholics or Louis XIV's France use of Catholic bureaucracy). As these practices were local in origin as religious worship and practice varied a great deal across the continent - so it could easily be argued that there was no popular religion across Europe. The image we have of Christianity is mostly due to nineteenth century revivalism/medieval romanticism.

Of course I should be clear I'm only referring to the countryside. (Yes I know rambled a bit there but it's a favoured topic of mine).

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The Pre-Indo European inhabitants of Britain who are unknown to us except by their archaeology and remains like Stonehenge. The religion of the druids was a "celtic" import to Britain - this began some time in the 8th Century BC as migrants known as the celts moved further westwards. Stonehenge was built in c2300BC - or roughly fifteen centuries before the arrival of the Celts. By the time of the Romans all the Pre-Indo European languages and cultures have seem to have been wiped out - conquered probably and so almost nothing is known of them and their purpose for building stonehenge. The exception may be the Picts who were speaking a non-Indo European language up until their assimiliation by the Scots (originally a tribe of invaders of Modern day Northern Ireland - Scot comes from the latin Scoti meaning Irish) from the 5th-10th Centuries AD.

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"Celts" is a word to describe a group of varying peoples who lived in Iron Age Europe who had shared similiar "Celtic" languages and supposedly styles of art, pottery and religion. The earliest known evidence of Celtic settlement is in what is now modern-day Austria. They were like therefore all those earlier Indo-European tribes including the later Germanic invaders who destroyed Rome in that they were Eastern Migrants moved ever Westwards from varying reasons. Celtic cultures on the continent were wiped out (or rather, assimilated over a very long period of time) by the Roman Conquests. Before the Romans Modern day France (Gaul) and alot of Spain spoke Celtic languages - Gaullish and Celtiberian. Thanks to the Romans a whole substrain of Celtic languages - Continental Celtic was wiped out.

However Britain and Ireland - the most remote parts of Western Europe - were either not conquered or only very superficially conquered and their status as islands allowed alternative cultures and languages to develop seperately. Thus the association between the Celts and the British Isles. Due to the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England the British (celtic) language was wiped out and Celtic languages moved even more to periphery - Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. Breton is a celtic language which came to the North of France thanks to migrants from Britain in this period. The surviving areas where Celtic languages survived were seen as "Celtic". But mostly modern Celtic imagery and ideas surrounding "Celticism" are due, yet again, to Romantic revivalism and nationalism in the 19th Century. Also, ignoring the problematic relationship between language and Culture, of the relationship between the people termed the Celts (how unified were they exactly? Not at all seems the answer. Certainly the idea of a "Celtic Empire" is complete Pseudo-history) and the inhabitants of the "Celtic" lands is problematic. Recent evidence from genetics for example has shown that Irish people are mostly closely related to - out of all people in Europe - Basques. Very much a non-Celtic group - probably the only surviving Pre-Indo European group in Europe (back about 10,000 years or so). Also Celts were of Germanic stock mostly... Irish people are not. It seems best to think of the Celts as more of a spreading culture and language which often assimilated other groups around it but not as conquerers or as mass settlers.

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Rates of Marriage, Illegimate Births, Infanticide, Use of Contraception, Abortion, etc change throughout history and are never stable. Britain in the Eighteenth Century for example had a very high marriage age - late 20s and very, very low illegitimacy rates yet contraception and birth control use varied and of course should never be considered like today (modern devices are much more reliable for a start). Ireland in the (post-famine) Nineteenth Century men - first born sons - often didn't marry until their 30s, sex outside of marriage was a massive no-no in a very, very conformist society and illegitimacy was also low. On the other hand sexual precocious is sometimes found in other cultures, most Australian Aborginial tribes practicised widespread paedophilia (as young as two year olds) yet this was seen as normal and not a block on the child's development or disturbing. Our concept of "sexual frustration" comes mostly from a Freudian Lexicon. Fundamentally one's sex habits are based in large part by one's culture - one can go into further detail if one likes.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a bore.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Ireland in the (post-famine) Nineteenth Century men - first born sons - often didn't marry until their 30s, sex outside of marriage was a massive no-no in a very, very conformist society and illegitimacy was also low.

Really? I find this interesting because it's so different from Wales.

I don't know the situation in Wales. So can't comment.

But the important word is post-famine. The west of Ireland had hardly heard of Middle Class Civilization and its joys and repression in the Eighteenth Century - and controlling the sex lives of peasants (slightly less glamorous than the sex lives of aristocrats, if they had any) proved impossible, even for the Catholic Clergy. This began to change slowly in the 19th Century then the Famine changed everything and then Ireland transformed ridiculously rapidly into the conservative country we know today (ish). In most cases I should add the first born son who was to inherit the land was often the only one who didn't emigrate - thus our 19th Century population collapse. (Before the famine land was divided equally among the sons especially in the most traditional districts which happened to have the worst agricultural land... leading to a predictable result.)

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Gully, I demand you post more.

I try to.

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Umm.. large parts of Africa today are hardly a beacon of sexual conservatism. Ditto with many peasant societies in Pre-Industrial Europe; actually traditionally it was the aristocracy that was the most conservative and refined. So while a good theory, it's clearly wrong.

I admit though my original claim was badly written... I should have said "People's sexual behaviour has changed rapidly throughout history with no known cause or reasoning". Btw another myth is that the so-called "Sexual Revolution" was caused by the pill, actually most historians consider that the wrong way round - sexual behaviour was already changing with led to further demand for the pill.

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Okay it depends on how one defines "Christianity". The movements of the reformation are ambigious; the Peasants war was clearly driven largely economic development especially the rise of commercial agriculture and agricultural centralization which was eroded the traditional rights and responsibilities of the self-lord relationship. In saying that across Europe in the Early Modern Europe there was a much greater drive towards religious conformity - Cuius regio, eius religio, the great witchcraft trials in Central Germany which ended alot of traditional magic practices, The Inquistions and greater state powers to enforce conformity of behavior due to the expansion of bureaucracies. In all cases though magic practices and beliefs still continued - the countryside is much harder to control than the cities. And the role of priest was hardly different from that of a magic man though this also faded away (slightly) during the Early Modern period. My point is really that Christianity can't really be seen as popular historical entity - or "the basis of western civilization" (whatever that is) that has stretched over the past 2,000 years. That is a complete lie.

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#1: You would be surprised.

#2: The invention of identity is what matters. The Greek soldiers who had sex with fifteen year boys were not considered homosexuals or bisexuals (by modern standards, a large majority of Roman and Greek males would be considered bisexuals - far more than today). What I was commenting on was that the idea that there are certain types of people defined by who they sleep with is a very new thing. The Greeks and most other pre-modern societies would have seen a division - one is a "homosexual" therefore not a "heterosexual" or a "bisexual" - as very, very strange and counter-intutive. 

[Tetro Kornbluth]

The word wasn't there yet, but the concept of a homosexual in the sense you describe as a 19th century invention was certainly fully formed by the time John Cleland wrote Fanny Hill.

Interesting. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven't read Fanny Hill (though have read a bit about it) are you referring to the idea of gay men being effeminate and thus separate - or just that gay men were considered a separate branch of person (which is what I'm aiming at)?

Also on Italy: I bow to your superior knowledge.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Another one:

Irish-Americans are overwhelming Catholic. Actually the majority of Irish-Americans are actually Protestants, due to the larger protestant emigration from Ireland before 1847, which stretched back generations really. And this I will add is not just due to the so-called Ulster Scots.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

gay men considered a separate branch of person (which is what I'm aiming at)?

I wouldn't exactly consider gay men "a separate branch of person" today either. Transsexuals, maybe.

Ugh.. Language. I mean an identity based around one's sexuality.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Levels of poverty (in the Eurospheric world) have been decreasing linearly since the Middle Ages.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Levels of poverty (in the Eurospheric world) have been decreasing linearly since the Middle Ages.

Do people really think that? Christ.

Again. You'd be surprised.

EDIT: There is still a tendency towards Whiggish or Nationalist intrepretations of history here. Mostly because what everyone over the age of 40 or so was taught at school and seaps in here and there sometimes.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

There is still a tendency towards Whiggish or Nationalist intrepretations of history here. Mostly because what everyone over the age of 40 or so was taught at school and seaps in here and there sometimes.

Now this I did know; the Irish historical profession is something of a stock joke over here.

AS AN IRISH HISTORY STUDENT I DEMAND YOU STOP DEMEANING TEH PROFESSION!1111

No, it isn't as bad as it once was. But it is still ridiculously parochial (Northern Ireland is worse btw).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Economic and Cultural History (apart from in connection to romantic nationalist ideas) didn't exist until the 60s. Marxism* wasn't discovered until the 1970s (where it was partly greatly taken up by the IRA)... So yeah we tend to be behind the times.

At least it was better (of course it was) than at school level, Christian Brothers were legendary for hate-the-Brits school of thought. A mature student who is now in my class recalled these days when he said to me "[In that Class] Even when it rained the English were responsible".

But it's not surprising. At secondary school level there is so much emphasis on teaching the Irish language (Because OMG THAT'S REAL IRISH CULTURE!!11) and Mathematics that the humanities are shoved aside.... *cue autorant*.

* - Peader O'Donnell excepted.

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That reminds me while idiocy from Irish/Ulster historians is common place, it is nothing compared to some of the idiocy I've seen from Irish-American historians on this country. Which is a pity, because they often get America right.

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Ah yes, Whataboutery.

As a note I have a special interest in this topic. I'm actually going to be doing my final year thesis on it. So there.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

That Classical Liberalism and modern-day US libertarianism are actually the same thing.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This is not a "thing everyone knows" but rather an addendum to my last point:

Contrary to what everyone today thinks, it was the Protestants who had this strange obsession with codifying, regulating, and normalizing sexual behaviors.

Yes - well it was always there within Medieval Catholicism, but they never particularly successful. Prostitution was legal throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. To give one example. It would however be wrong to claim that Protestantism is what brought about modern day prudery, that has a long tradition with all branches of Christianity (Just think of the Skoptsys) but gradually got more prounceded in Protestant regions and teachings. Which isn't very surprising given that Protestantism was considered at that time (by its followers) to be a reversion to the teachings of the church fathers - especially Augustine.

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Opinions of witchcraft changed over time in Rome. Though for most of the middle ages witchcraft was considered superstition by Rome - however this changed with a proclaimation by John XXII in the 1320s. The witch hunts of the Early Modern Period were though unusually intense, though regions where prosecutions were strongest varied - Protestant England and Catholic Spain were both skeptical - prosecutions were by far the strongest in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire.

I will also note when the witchcraft craze died down in the late 17th Century it wasn't due to religious factors.

As for the lack of belief in miracles in Late Antiquity, that's simply lol (and point of why one should not try and find out about Christianity in any period by studying the ideas of certain popes). It was not by subtle Theological arguments that the populace of Europe were over to their priest - if they were.

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It wasn't during the Black Death but about a century and a half when the mass witchcraft trails emerged, and two Rome and more accurately, the Roman Inquistion in many regions were the driving force behind the trials.

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I think you'll find the vast majority of Irish people speak English.

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Yes, but earlier. Actually iirc the French are more 'celtic' than the Irish.

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Ummm.. No, what nations are you referring to in pre-Roman times. While one may argue for the Greeks that it is highly controversial. There was, after all, no Greek State and the Greeks fought each other more than any outsider. What there was was a cultural and linguistic awareness (which of course stretched over areas far, far greater than the modern terriority of Greece) of being 'Greek'. Which isn't the same thing as the modern concept.

Not to mention that this awareness was probably shared by a minority of the population - including those that were literate.

I will also add another one: Ireland had a golden age of culture in the 6th-8th Centuries which was mainly due to Christianity and missionary activity. This is simply wrong - the Irish church in this period was de facto completely separated from Rome and many practices remained different for longer in the Celtic Churches than in mainland Europe - including the date for Easter. It was effectively heretical (though heresy would not be a huge issue in the church until the 11th Century or so - or at least not as crucial) and was so for a long time. When the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland in the 1160s they actually had backing from - ironies of ironies this - the Pope, Adrian IV - as to make the Irish church conform more with mainstream western christianity. Though admittely by this point it was a very different church and Adrian IV was English.

As for the golden age of missionary activity; utterly false. There were men who travelled to ascestic centres across Europe from Ireland but this was not for missionary reason, this was rather to get out of an Ireland which was hardly christian or the most superficially christian and where the vast majority of population were considered by the aristocratic clergy to be sinners and condemned to hell. The purpose of going abroad to Europe or to Scotland was to search for intense ascetic experience not souls. The Intellectuals left Ireland as it was not to their to satisification, the people too backward in their estimation. As you can see by my posts, nothing has changed in the past 1500 years.

Even by the Eighteenth Century Roman Catholicism in the west of Ireland was basically paganistic. But then again the West of Ireland in the 18th Century resembled more, say, rural India than England at the same period.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yeah okay it was slightly intellectually ambigious. It was really more of an attack on the annoying "Christian Europe is being CORRUPTED BY DECADENT LIBERALISM OMG!!11" school of thought, which actually influences our history in ways most people can't imagine. I blame the Victorians. For everything.

The CoE figures don't surprise me. Wasn't there like, no churches whatsoever in the newly industrialized cities at the start of the 19th Century?

As for the third world, interesting fact: The concept of witchcraft, which today has its stronghold in Africa (and is seen by many commentators as a sign of backwardness, stupidity, needs white people to rule them, etc) was originally imported into Africa from 16th Century European traders. While there were witch doctors and the like (white magicians) before then, the modern (mostly female) idea of witchcraft solely originated in Europe. Yet another Colonial blowback...

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Thankfully alot of people are more ignorant of folk sociology than before, but this one still sticks.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Ah yes of course. But it only got "institutionalized" (not the most perfect word but it will do) in that period. I mean romanticism (the good bits of it) was strong during the Regency and after, but public intellectual life in the Victorian period (with a few notable exceptions) was well....

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You know that sounds awfully familiar

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yes I know what you meant... but it happens to be wrong.

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Okay yes, but the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Witches should most certainly be seen as two different things.

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So then how are we Celtic then?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Hardly a good argument given these Roman activities destroyed whatever records we have of these peoples and how they viewed themselves. Also mostly the Romans assimilated peoples, not killing them and this assimilating took along time and did not seem down to the countryside. When the Romans left Britain the country was still overwhelming Celtic, Gaullish was still be spoken in France by the time of Gregory of Tours more than a century over Rome collapsed. Yet there is no real notion of a British or Gaullish-Celtic 'identity' (what British identity there was, would come later with the Anglo-Saxons). Indeed in the whole history of the Roman Empire there is only one major conflict that could be in any way considered nationalistic - the First century BC Social War; a campaign waged by some of the tribes of pennisular Italy against Rome in order that the "Italians" got the same rights as the Romans. Given how much Rome oppressed its own countryside, this is actually quite remarkable.

There was granted a sense of Roman identity by the inhabitants of the city and the Aristocracy. No denying that.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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You know, there is no evidence of Calgacus even having existed outside the pages of Tacitus.

Using Roman-Greek historians to find out how the 'natives' felt is a badddd idea...

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I never use 'brainwashing'. That wouldn't be accurate

For a start, what sociological data is this? Any sociologist worth his salt (ie. not many) would know the difficulties of labelling any concept as 'natural'.

As for the argument that the intelligentsia, the wealthy, etc have the least national feeling - this is, historically, false. Maybe true for 21st Century America but who do you think invented the modern nationalities with their flags, symbols, songs and so forth. It was people who could read and write and in many places the only two groups that could were the intelligentsia and the wealthy (the former usually being a subset of the latter). National identities in many places - especially Eastern Europe - replaced religious one some point in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Read any book on the Greek War of independence for confirmation of this (where peasants and people who commanded them were actually fighting for two separate things).

Thirdly, I'm not a Marxist. Nationalism is only an industrial phenomenon by the fact that nations and notions of community are easier to be formed in areas with large concentrates of population. If anything nationalism was originally an urban phenomenon and in many cases, predates industralism (but not by much, and urban centres were still by 1800 even in England and France where a fraction of the population lived.)

Fourthy, I can't believe you said 'organic'.

Finally, You haven't given any evidence of nationalist sentiment in the pre-modern period - that was not clearly representative of a minority. Nationalism is not new, but is relatively new as a mass phenomenon. Most places in Europe did not see any nationalist conflict before the 19th century - why do think the old pre-1939 map of Europe is so linguistically and ethnically confused? - after that, well....

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Btw, I would add that just because something is a social or cultural construct does not make it in any way 'less real'. Actually the appeal in nationalist symbology is perhaps that they show a reality which in many ways is 'more real' than real. If you catch my drift.

That was certainly true of the Celtic nations. Most of whose concepts of identity were pure nineteenth century fictions (well, Scotland and Ireland anyway, I'm not too sure about Wales, I'll leave Al to talk about that one) and were completely alien to parts of the population - who supported repealers and proto-nationalist movements as usually it was equated to an end to tithe and landlordism. Of course emigration and migration also played a major role... nothing like travel to remind one of home, as the legacy of Irish-Americans supporting the IRA in this day and age shows.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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I know, I'm using that book as part of my general thesis.

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Hahaha.. If you replace "London" with "Dublin" then the same would be the case here. Especially considering that the 'celtic' aspect was strongly associated with a strong sense of romantic ruralism and anti-modernism (though I'm guessing it is same in Wales?). Of course I don't think that ideology ever effected any sort of government policy in Wales or Scotland due to the obvious fact of their non-independence, Ireland on the other hand...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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My Parents only spoke English - one of my Parents was from Roscommon - the deep west of Ireland. My other parent was a protestant whose family originally came from Northern Ireland and eventually Scotland. I have never considered English as anything other than my native tongue. Why should a language, which died out where I live in the early 18th Century, be considered my native tongue?

And what connects to me to that tiny minority of Irish speakers other than the fact that we reside and were born on the same island which happens to be the same political entity? I have more in common with those in London or New York or even Bleedin' Belfast than I do with them (being honest - I have nothing wrong with Irish speakers for the record).