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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   12401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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All ideologies have failure modes like this, and a lot look like that kind of mass psychosis. Usually the long lasting ones have institutional mechanisms to prevent those failure modes from capturing people.

In the Middle Ages, it was supposedly not uncommon for rich people to spend the end of their lives in a small cell in a monastery, forgoing all Earthly pleasures for the promise of redemption.

And while there's probably not much loss to society in retiring a few old lions early, lots of young fertile people entered monasteries and convents, forgoing any chance of having a family line. These people didn't have any personal assets, but their institutions become incredibly wealthy. By the time of Henry VIII, the monasteries supposedly owned 1/3rd of the land in England. Shutting them down unlocked massive gains in prosperity.

And the priesthood likely acted as an IQ shedder as well.

The fact that Europe rose relentlessly despite a large percentage of its population being devoted to heavenly pursuits is really remarkable.

I suppose the problem with today's ascetics is they don't exist within the fabric of a vibrant, growing, pro-natal society.

An institution that collects knowledge and spurs technological growth but also hoards societal wealth and prevents all its high-IQ members from ever reproducing? We have that today, it’s called “Silicon Valley”

Monasteries seemed to take mostly younger children of the nobility which society had no good answer for anyways.

Nobles usually endowed a monastery with some land in exchange for taking in their runts. I reckon the kids would have been fine spending the cash squeezed from the starving peasantry on hookers and blow directly instead of having to re-earn it through prayer.

Who would advance civilization and pray for the salvation of humanity if they did that though?

lots of young fertile people entered monasteries and convents

How many is "lots" here? We talk about this every so often here and I've never gotten a good idea.

According to Perplexity about 2% of the population of England were under holy orders at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries.

Probably higher among the upper classes.

I think estimates for the monastic population in Europe in the period 1200 to 1500 vary wildly by country, time and methodology (a lot of extrapolation from census estimates by historic demographers coupled with estimates of average monastic population multiplied by the total number of monasteries in a province, which were often somewhat well recorded). Figures online seem to cluster around the 0.4% to 2% range for the total of all clergy.

Thanks. That range seems high, higher than I assumed, but not high enough for many of the theories about the problems caused by their absence (e.g. monasteries as release valve/containment zone for autists and other types)

The fact that Europe rose relentlessly despite a large percentage of its population being devoted to heavenly pursuits is really remarkable.

I suppose the problem with today's ascetics is they don't exist within the fabric of a vibrant, growing, pro-natal society.

Is it possible that the two are related?

Cistercian monasteries spread new technologies through high and late medieval Europe much faster than the historical norm.

Yes, and I think that aligns with the point @TitaniumButterfly was making.

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