When Your (Multiple) Myth Gets Exposed

[Suranis]

Phillip also prevented the Papal Bull excommunicating Elizabeth I from being published in Spain.

Oh thanks, didn't know that.

[keith]

Joseph Campbell

What the virgin birth represents is the birth of the spiritual life in the human animal. It has nothing to do mythologically with a biological anomaly. In the Indian kuṇḍalinī system the first three cakras are our animal zeal to life, animal erotics, and animal aggression. Then at the level of the heart there is the birth of a purely human intention, a purely human realization of a possible spiritual life which then puts the others in secondary place. The symbol in the kuṇḍalinī system for this cakra is a male and female organ in conjunction—an upward facing and a downward-facing triangle. At this level the spiritual life is generated, and that is the meaning of the virgin birth.

[Suranis]

https://www.ranker.com/list/dumb-miscon ... on-cameron

Misconception: Spartans Were 'Super Soldiers'

Shaped in part by the graphic novel 300 and its film adaptation, there's a modern perception that Spartan warriors were elite soldiers of far greater martial skill and courage than their counterparts in other ancient Greek city-states. As the story goes, they were raised from childhood in a harsh educational system - the agoge - which taught them how to fight, how to survive, and how to be ruthless on the battlefield. This education, harsh though it was, made them the supreme soldiers of Ancient Greece, if not of the ancient world altogether.

In reality, the Spartans didn't perform significantly better on the battlefield than their rivals. Nor did they always fight to the bitter end, eschewing surrender. As history writer Myke Cole notes in his book The Bronze Lie:

…even a cursory examination of the historical record reveals that the Spartans lost again and again. The literary sources show us Spartan kings running from fights, failing in the heat of battle, outsmarted and outmaneuvered and just plain outfought. Spartans floundered and perished in the waters off the coast of Naxos, outsailed by the Athenians they'd so recently beaten in the Peloponnesian Wars (404 BC). At Leuctra in 371 BC, their greatest warriors were run down and killed by another 300 - the Sacred Band of Thebes (which disputed legend has as 150 pairs of homosexual lovers) - who not only crushed the Spartans, but killed their king in a battle so decisive that a Spartan relief army opted to retreat rather than take vengeance.

With regard to Spartan tactics, historian Dr. Bret Devereaux argues that

…compared to other Greek hoplite phalanxes of the fourth and early third centuries, the Spartans were, perhaps, half a step above the rest. On the other hand, compared to say, a Hellenistic Macedonian phalanx - which might, say, open ranks, admit light infantry, close ranks and then form square all while under attack - Spartan tactical flexibility and maneuver was hardly impressive (and, the Roman specialist in me must note, compared to the Roman legion, even the Macedonian sarissa-phalanx was itself rigid and unresponsive).

Surveying 38 battles fought by Spartan armies between the early fifth century BCE and the rise of Macedonia 160 years later, Devereaux notes that they achieved a win rate of 48.7% - slightly less than 50/50. (Nobody is saying the Spartans were bad fighters; just that they weren't as amazing as their reputation has made them out to be.)

I always like to ask Spartan worshipers - If the Spartans were all that, how come it took them 30 years to beat the pansy ass Athenians in the Peloponnisian War.

[johnpcapitalist]

https://www.ranker.com/list/dumb-miscon ... on-cameron

Misconception: Spartans Were 'Super Soldiers'

Shaped in part by the graphic novel 300 and its film adaptation, there's a modern perception that Spartan warriors were elite soldiers of far greater martial skill and courage than their counterparts in other ancient Greek city-states. As the story goes, they were raised from childhood in a harsh educational system - the agoge - which taught them how to fight, how to survive, and how to be ruthless on the battlefield. This education, harsh though it was, made them the supreme soldiers of Ancient Greece, if not of the ancient world altogether.

In reality, the Spartans didn't perform significantly better on the battlefield than their rivals. Nor did they always fight to the bitter end, eschewing surrender.

I always like to ask Spartan worshipers - If the Spartans were all that, how come it took them 30 years to beat the pansy ass Athenians in the Peloponnisian War.

Very cool. I had always believed the incorrect version of the stories.

In grade school in the 1960s, I think the Athens vs. Sparta myths were an unspoken cautionary tale about losing the Cold War: the uncultured Russians are seeking to extinguish Western culture and all that is creative, artistic and joyful in the world. The Athenians invented democracy and were a shining beacon of philosophy, theater and the very beginnings of science in a darkened time. The Spartans bathed infrequently, slept in their armor and mostly communicated with each other via grunts but they were a brutally efficient killing machine. The parallels didn't need to be drawn explicitly.

But now you're telling us that while the Spartans might have been sleeping in their armor, they might have also been wearing pink lace underwear and that they were not all that competent but may well have been mostly lucky. Well, that certainly seems to have parallels to Russia today...

[Suranis]

https://www.ranker.com/list/historians- ... y-thompson

What Was Medieval Hygiene Really Like?

Redditor u/KatsumotoKurier asked:

Were European medieval hygiene habits and beliefs really as terrible as we’ve been commonly led to believe, or were they, at least in some cases, better than most would think?

Redditor u/BRIStoneman answered:

This is a topic that seems to come up a lot, and you're right, it's a very common misconception. Frankly far too many people seem to have had their interpretation of the past coloured by the famous Monty Python "mud farmer" scene and apocryphal Early Modern myths about hygiene such as Elizabeth I "having four baths a year whether she needed it or no." (You can read /u/mikedash's fascinating rebuttal of that particular myth here. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... t1_fy1rovo)

I suppose we should start by saying that, by today's relatively germaphobic standards, a lot of us might indeed find the medieval period a little bit grimier than we're used to. After all, those of us lucky to live in developed countries enjoy historically unparalleled access to indoor plumbing, hot running water, and a bafflingly large array of household cleaners, detergents, shampoos for every hair type, soaps, and so on. But this shouldn't be taken to mean that past individuals were dirty, or didn't care about hygiene and cleanliness.

A frequently-seen factoid is that medieval people were dirty because they didn't bathe, and that the Church actively condemned bathing. This is, technically, true, but only due to a modern conflating of the term "bathing" to mean "washing" in any form. "To bathe" should only really be used in the strict Classical sense of visiting a bath house. Broadly speaking these did drop out of use during the medieval period for a variety of reasons: they typically required a significant urban population, extensive upkeep and a large manpower supply to keep the water hot and carry out the bathing rituals. Larger cities and those sites with natural hot springs, on the other hand, tended to keep their bath houses: King Edward's Bath, for example, is a 10th Century facility built into the previous Roman Aqua Sulis complex in modern Bath Spa. The Church did condemn bathing, but this was in itself nothing new. Many Roman physicians and even the Emperor Marcus Aurelius thought poorly of it, Aurelius finding it full of:

oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting

Bath houses, being large, warm buildings full of hot, humid air, often-stagnant water shared between potentially thousands of people while being heated, and masses of people sweating, breathing on each other and scraping, were massive infection vectors for plague and a whole variety of unpleasant disease, and it was this that the Church was condemning, as much as it was objecting to collective public nudity. That people typically didn't bathe, however, doesn't mean that they didn't wash. Nearly all medieval settlements would have had access to a running water source which was convenient for washing both personally, as well as the cleaning of laundry. A number of contemporary images depict women washing laundry in rivers, for example. Parish Rolls, a record of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths in each parish, from across medieval England, show that drowning in rivers whilst washing or doing laundry was relatively common among accidental deaths, implying that it was a commonplace activity.

It's also common for pop-historical sources to misinterpret specific examples of ascetics as representative of mainstream medieval Christian practice. It was a contemporary phenomenon for some religious figures to forgo some basic hygiene as a means of illustrating a lack of concern with earthly desires - Thomas Beckett was said to be "infested with lice" when he was [slain], for example - but these are typically remarked upon at the time because they were unusual. Your average medieval individual is likely to have been far more fastidious about their cleanliness and hygiene. Combs, for example, typically made from horn, bone or ivory depending on status, are relatively common finds across Early Medieval English and Scandinavian contexts. The ninth century medical textbook known as Bald's Leechbook contained the following remedies for lice:

For lice, grind oak bark and a little wormwood in ale, give to drink. For lice, quicksilver and old butter: a penny of the (quick-)silver and two penny weights of butter, mix all together in a brazen vessel.

Clearly, parasites were something the average person wanted well rid of. The Leechbook contains treatments for a number of parasites and worms, as well as commonly recommending the importance of cleanliness in avoiding the infection of wounds, the use of boiled water or hot wine as cleansing washes, and the use of (admittedly basic by modern standards) antiseptic or antimicrobial treatments.

Guy of Amiens, in his Carmen de Hastingæ Proelio also talks about the fastidious English. He recounts how the English spend many hours washing their long hair and beards, combing it, and take pride in annointing it with a variety of perfumes and oils. He presents in contrast to his more martial Normans whose more prosaic approach to hair hygiene - shaving it all off regularly - leaves more time for martial training.

[Suranis]

I like it when I learn something.

Like a lot of people I have had the rather simplistic idea that Christian Societywas against prostitution forever. But, I ran across this paper today and its actually rather more complex than that.

This paper is talking about Florence in Italy in particular, but its still very interesting in terms of its description of attitudes in Renascence Europe.

► Show Spoiler

Abrams ! 1
Lilah Abrams
L. Keldorf
Western Civilization: Period 1
27 February 2017
Using “Evil” to Combat “Evil”: The Regulation of Prostitution in Renaissance Florence

Over the course of human history, prostitution has faced alternating legalization and
prohibition in different regions of the world. Whether in an attempt to generate tax revenue or
promote the growth of a society, the legalization of prostitution is often a result of a
government’s rationale to “eliminate a worse evil by means of a lesser one” (Brucker). Through
the formation of an Office of Decency (known as the Florentine Onestá), the city of Florence
distinguished itself from surrounding regions during the Renaissance period, which extended
from the fifteenth to seventeenth century, by highlighting its commitment to social order. Though
in modern day, many women’s rights advocates encourage the legalization of prostitution to
promote gender equality and female empowerment, the regulations created by the Florentine
Onestá served to dehumanize the women participating in this profession. The regulations were
also reflective of the general attitude towards women at the time, in which the public largely
viewed females as less capable than their male counterparts, necessary only to cater to the needs
of society. While many argue that the Florentine Onestá was established to preserve the city’s
image, the ultimate intention of the ordinances was to use women as tools to promote decency
and regulate the behavior of men.

Prostitution remained a fundamental aspect of life during the Medieval period in
Florence, with widespread tolerance of the profession due to the belief of its necessity in
Christian society. Defended by St. Augustine and St. Thomas, the legalization of prostitution was
thought to preserve ordinary life, as it provided a “legitimate outlet for the libidinous desires of
men” (Brackett 276). St. Thomas cited Aristotle to further its defense, adding his concern “to
avoid sodomitic sexual practices reportedly common among Spartan soldiers while in the
field” (Brackett 276). It was also recognized that poverty drove many women, even those who
were married, to prostitution, and as poverty was unable to be eradicated, prostitution would
continue to accompany its existence. Though theologians attempted to persuade men to control
their sexual urges, prostitution was viewed as necessary for society’s proper functioning. This
mindset lengthened the practice of prostitution which remained an accepted profession in
Medieval Florentine society — an image that shifted with the initiation of the Renaissance.

The beginning of the Renaissance signaled a time of unrest for Florence, with the
continued spread of Protestantism and the end of a devastating plague. Beginning in 1347, the
plague, known as the “Black Death” spread quickly throughout Europe, reducing the population
of Florence by almost half — from approximately 110 thousand to fifty thousand (Frith). The
population decline was especially harmful to the city, where:

the problem was compounded by the fashion for men to marry late or not at all,
partly because of the high cost of dowries and weddings, and where, according to
contemporary commentators, young men were becoming feminized by virtue of
being raised by their mothers or within exclusively female environments.
(Richards 145)

The perceptions of women during this time remained consistent with those of the past, with
women viewed as less capable than their male counterparts, necessary only to “replenish this free
city” (Brucker 181). With the Florentine government’s promotion of this idea, a resulting shift
occurred in public opinion towards prostitution. Though permitted by law, many Florentine
citizens opposed by the practice. In numerous cases, prostitutes were approached by neighbors
and offered substance to abandon the profession, as in the case of Angela, wife of Nofri di
Francesco, who was “approached by her neighbor, Bartolo Gadini, in the name of many of her
neighbors, with an offer to supply her with a basket of bread per week if she would abandon her
prostitute’s career and live decently” (Brackett 281). However, due to the relationship of power
between the government and citizens, such opposition was ignored for centuries, allowing those
in power to further their agenda. As Europe became locked in a contest between Catholicism and
Protestantism towards the end of the sixteenth and into the seventeenth century, with each
attempting to prove its moral superiority, opposition to prostitution strengthened, with its
eventual criminalization in 1680.

The Office of Decency, known as the Florentine Onestá, was established on April 30th,
1403 by the executive bodies of the Florentine government, who claimed its creation was an
effort to “avoid vice and imitate virtue” (Brackett 280). The establishment represented
prostitution’s municipalization in Florence, with the state holding the power of regulation rather
than a religious organization or private citizens. Like other magistracies at the time, the Onestá
was composed of a board of eight rotating members. Florentine citizens were forced to serve on
the board for six-month terms if chosen, along with a subordinate group of members with
supporting positions, including a notary, treasurer, and secretary. Though board members
received no salary, they were awarded percentages of the fines and fees collected from registered
prostitutes in the city, prompting members to strictly enforce their laws. Allowing its power to
extend past that of traditional criminal courts, the Onestá was given authority to initiate
investigations of suspects without the typical procedural protections afforded to citizens, using
fines as the common form of punishment for prostitutes. Throughout the Onestá’s existence, the
severity of punishment was increased, with imprisonment, expulsion, and the death penalty
added as possibilities for defiance of the regulations. However, the effectiveness and credibility
of these threats was increasingly reduced immediately prior to the dissolution of the Onestá in
1680 (Terpstra). Centered in Florence, the Onestá’s power extended to all registered prostitutes
living within the city limits, though more than forty percent migrated from nations outside of
Italy, recruited by the Florentine government to further the agenda of the Office of Decency
(Trexler)

More at the link.

https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/ ... historians

[Volkonski]

Birthrates are tumbling worldwide, forcing hard choices on societies

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2024/0329 ... -societies

At some point in the 2060s, 2070s, or 2080s, the world population, currently 8 billion, will peak around 10 billion, according to forecasts, and then start to decline. An end to humanity’s relentless expansion is in sight.

When it comes, debates about population growth, which have been driven by beliefs that humanity is too fecund for the Earth’s carrying capacity, will acquire a different character. What goes up fast can come down just as fast, measured in decades and centuries, setting the stage for an era of population shrinkage that seems both inexorable and unfathomable.

Shrinkage is the logical result of tumbling birthrates today, not just in rich democracies like Germany and South Korea but also in most corners of the planet. “No future currently looks more likely than a long span of global depopulation,” says Dean Spears, an economist and demographer at the University of Texas at Austin.

Depopulation raises complex questions about how best to sustain a flourishing society where institutions can endure. Aging societies with declining populations are already a reality in countries like Italy and Japan, where rock-bottom fertility rates have shrunk the workforce and strained public finances. But the scale of the demographic transition in the next century or two, when every country and region would be affected, is far more challenging to imagine or fully anticipate.

Until recently, the United States had avoided what demographers call the fertility trap, in which smaller families beget smaller families. But a sustained drop in birthrates since 2008 and a period of lower net immigration have pushed its population pyramid closer to that of Europe, with fewer young people to support a growing retiree population.

One in 5 Americans will be age 65 or over by 2028, the same proportion as those under age 18, for the first time in U.S. history.

[Sam the Centipede]

Hmm. I'm generally in favor of a managed gentle decline in global population to try to restore some balance to global ecosystems. Nature is in crisis, with many species and populations under massive threat, land is despoiled, seas are soaked in poisons and full of trash, it's awful.

In some (esp. western European) countries the shortfall in young workers is made up by immigration although this is a problem for less welcoming countries, such as Japan.

So more workers will be involved in caring, why is that a huge problem? Too many things are being manufactured, used destructively, then discarded, adding to the planet's problems. Perhaps more people might return to a revised version of traditional caring in the home roles? (typically the fate of women, but we can kick out the sexist aspect).

I admit I haven't thought it through, mainly because my opinion has n no sway amongst a global population of several billions. So I'm sure there are problems with my simplistic view.

[johnpcapitalist]

Hmm. I'm generally in favor of a managed gentle decline in global population to try to restore some balance to global ecosystems. Nature is in crisis, with many species and populations under massive threat, land is despoiled, seas are soaked in poisons and full of trash, it's awful.

Yes, we are facing massive problems with environmental degradation and climate change. The idea that fewer people producing the same amount of trash per capita would mean less trash in the environment is both logical and seductive.

However, we have to look underneath that somewhat utopian idyll of a "return to nature" (which has been a romantic idea for centuries, including in time periods we think of as natural and idyllic who were themselves trying to return to an earlier, more "pure" time). When you do, you discover that there are some truly scary issues that have to be dealt with.

One of them is that many parts of human society and economic activity are built on top of fixed-cost infrastructure that can't be easily cut. When you start thinking about this, you start to see many vicious circles that lead to major declines in quality of life.

For example, if smaller towns and cities see population drops of 20%, that's nearly fatal, because infrastructure like roads and water are a function of land area rather than number of people. If 20% move out, there are 20% fewer taxpayers to fund road, water, sewer and other services, so prices of those services have to rise at least 20%. This is also true for electrical distribution, wireless phone services, cable internet, etc. Farther-out suburbs will probably empty out first and those municipalities are likely to go bankrupt and many homeowners could just abandon their homes, like so many did in Detroit until it started to be rediscovered ~20 years ago. The problems with their water company due to so many abandoned houses not paying water bills but having to maintain the same amount of piping are a good proof statement for the above.

Speaking of suburbs with streets filled with abandoned homes, the US real estate market is the principal asset class for household wealth, worth far more than the stock market. A 20% drop in buyers will likely cause a far greater collapse in house prices than the amount of population drop. So national wealth could plummet dramatically, creating bank insolvencies and disrupting other forms of credit such as business loans.

With fewer consumers, service industry employment (~70% of US GDP, IIRC) will drop and wages will stagnate at the same time that infrastructure fixed costs drive tax and price increases.

It is far from clear that automation of agriculture, self-driving trucks, and other technological miracles will be sufficient to offset the issues from a shrinking economy.

In some (esp. western European) countries the shortfall in young workers is made up by immigration although this is a problem for less welcoming countries, such as Japan.

Many European countries are moving rightward and authoritarian, even what we think of as stalwart liberal democracies like the Netherlands, because of immigration fears. Even if countries weren't racially homogeneous like Japan, South Korea, China, etc., they are still likely to be unattractive destinations because of the high cost of living and because of increasing restrictions on personal freedom, like in China. There's even starting to be some pushback against open-door immigration in Canada, because immigrant flows have driven up the cost of housing in the major metro areas, especially Vancouver and Toronto.

The US has historically been the preferred destination for immigrants because of racial diversity but also because of freedom from authoritarian repression and because of entrepreneurial opportunity. The GOP seems bound and determined to shut off all of those things and make us as unattractive to immigration as possible. Closing the borders won't get our tomatoes picked since Americans won't take those jobs at any wage.

So more workers will be involved in caring, why is that a huge problem? Too many things are being manufactured, used destructively, then discarded, adding to the planet's problems. Perhaps more people might return to a revised version of traditional caring in the home roles? (typically the fate of women, but we can kick out the sexist aspect).

Again, this is a huge problem in a declining population. As population growth is slowing or moves to outright decline, the percentage of 65+ in the population will continue to increase. The percentage of jobs as caregivers for those people will also rise, even if the oldsters are housed in group facilities where you don't have one caregiver per oldster. This tightens the labor pool elsewhere in the economy (such as maintaining the road network) and results in overall GDP declines, as care work typically pays on the lower end of the wage scale.

Population declines are something we worry about a lot at work. In some sense, it's why Russia started the Ukraine war right now -- their population collapse started when Communism fell 35 years ago, and they're running out of people to serve in the military. So if they wanted to re-establish the Soviet Union, they wouldn't be able to do it 20 years from now. Same with China, whose population collapse is likely going to be half of the population by 2050, coming faster than previous estimates: if they want to invade Taiwan, or even to subjugate other parts of the world like Africa, they have to do it now, not in 10 years. The political and military effects of population decline are leading to huge potential global instability over a very near term horizon.

[Sam the Centipede]

I don't disagree with any of your analysis, JohnP.

I'm in the last decade or so my life so I'm not the one to solve the problems but I hope today's parents and teachers are bringing up a powerful and resilient generation; when there are dragons about, the world needs dragon slayers.

Many young people impress me greatly, so I have some optimism.

[AndyinPA]

Good analysis.

I guess what the earth really needs is a nice, big asteroid hit, if it ever has a chance to get back to whatever normal would be then. Actually, that probably will happen some day, just a matter of when.

[Volkonski]

US fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as births dipped in 2023

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/24/health/u ... index.html

The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Births have increased in states with abortion bans, research finds
After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

“We’ve certainly had larger declines in the past. But decline fits the general pattern,” said Dr. Brady Hamilton, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report.

The birth rate fell among most age groups between 2022 and 2023, the new report shows.

The teen birth rate reached another record low of 13.2 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19, which is 79% lower than it was at the most recent peak from 1991. However, the rate of decline was slower than it’s been for the past decade and a half.