Quora
Postmodernism is an intellectual dead end; it’s central premise seems to be derived from a saying of Nietzsche’s, “There are no facts; only interpretations”, which is thought to mean that each one of us views “reality” through our individual perspective. This is true to a degree, but as with so many aphorisms, there are limits to its validity;
Today will be better than yesterday.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That
Today will be better than yesterday.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That
In 1550, Ferdinand and Isabella’s grandson, King Charles V, summoned
two prominent scholars to the country’s main university at Valladolid for a far-reaching debate about his foreign policy. The bloodshed in the Americas worried the king. Was it right to continue expanding Spain’s empire at such a cost in human lives?
On one side of the debate at Valladolid was a Dominican monk named
Bartolomé de las Casas. As a child in 1493, las Casas had attended the
victory parade in Seville that greeted Christopher Columbus after his
discovery of the Americas. In 1502, las Casas moved to America with
several relatives, part of the initial wave of Spanish settlement. In the New
World, las Casas was appalled by the cruelty of the Spanish conquistadors that he witnessed firsthand. In front of the king, las Casas pleaded for a more humane Spanish policy in the Americas.
On the other side of the debate was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), a humanist scholar who believed that the Spanish had a duty to
“Christianize” the American Indians by whatever means necessary. To
Sepúlveda, native tribes like the Aztecs were barbarians who practiced
human sacrifice and cannibalism. Not only did the Spanish have a right to
subjugate the natives, Sepúlveda said they had a positive obligation to
spread Western civilization. “The perfect should command and rule over the imperfect,” he wrote in 1547, citing Aristotle to defend what he called the “just war” against the Indians.
Within two generations, the Spanish had destroyed the great Aztec and Inca empires. The king was sympathetic to the pleadings of las Casas, but it was too late. For better or worse, the European colonization of the Americas was under way.
Spain in the New World
Carl Jung and the Shadow (Jack E. Othon)
(...) Have you ever said or done something really shitty, mostly on an impulse, that you later regretted? After the damage was done and the other person involved was hurt, you couldn’t bury your shame fast enough. “Why did I say that?” you might have asked yourself in frustration. It’s that “Why?” question that indicates the presence of a blind
A “Viking” was an “entrepreneurial” king on the warpath, on the vík. He was in search of tribute and prestige.
"Better for you to bestride steed, draw sword, fell a host. Your brothers have fine halls and better lands than you. You should go vík-ing. Let men feel your blade."
Altogether, the use of the Old Testament in the Senchas Már and other texts provided Irish lawyers with a firm middle ground in which to stand between the Christian present and traditions inherited from the past of their own land. Polygamy, for instance, was forbidden in the Christian churches, although it continued to be practiced throughout Ireland. Yet polygamy was taken for granted in the Old Testament. Who was to tell which law was the better?
From Hadrian’s Wall to the Atlantic coast of Morocco and the Horn of Africa, the idea of Rome had shrunk to ever smaller dimensions. Rome and its history were no longer central to the imagination of the inhabitants of the former periphery of the empire. A sense of the Roman past was replaced by a different past – the past of the Old Testament. This past was brought close through the Holy Scriptures. It described, vividly and appositely, the turbulent warrior kingdom of ancient Israel. It was a past better suited to the stormy present than were memories of imperial Rome.