Grateful Dead

and the willingness of people to fall for it is really depressing.

if you were a medieval knight interested in the spiritual rewards promised to you for going on a crusade (not to mention the possible material rewards) would you if given the choice a) go to palestine and likely die of disease, in a shipwreck or in battle with a formidable enemy b) go to the south of France, drink wine and kill bewildered peasants Not really current affairs, but it is telling that the language of the crusade (and its counterpart the jihad) is still so very much with us today. The justification of senseless violence by claiming a higher calling is .a recurring tragedy.

and the Manicheans, and dualists in general, hoo boy, that is a whole other thing. The need to go around stamping out people who disagree with you (or rather, people who are disadvantageous to you for some reason, trumping up some disagreement as a pretext, more likely) has been around for quite a while though. Let's go get those nasty dualists (and their very nice land) was kind of the flavor of the month.

wasn't part of my branch of study, though as a migraine sufferer I would have taken a lively interest. Yup, I do love that Chartres Cathedral. For the colors alone.

Great story Marye. So did those 12th century renaiisance folks make good use of ergot to inspire themselves? Chartres Cathedral is one of the most uplifting inspiring spaces I have ever been in. Albi Cathedral is one of the most oppressive places, a temple to power and subjugation.

well, the part I was studying was less about the Crusades though obviously the resulting cross-cultural influences had a lot to do with it, than the period known as the 12th Century Renaissance, which, not to be too literal about the timeline, encompassed various things including a lot of Arthurian stuff in French and German, the Carmina Burana, Chartres Cathedral, and paradigm shifts on a number of fronts. During my PhD orals (I am one of millions of people who never wrote their dissertation and never regretted it for a second because God knows I am not an academic...), the biology professor who had been put on my committee to keep everybody honest (this being the comp lit department) asked whether I thought Eleanor of Aquitaine was like fluorocarbons in the ozone layer. This being 1972, my immediate answer was along the general lines of "Buh?", but he explained that, this being 1972, they were noticing that as people in the Southern Hemisphere took to using aerosols, for the first time the ozone layer in the Southern Hemisphere were showing traces of the stuff, which had previously only appeared in the north. Was similar cultural transmission going on here? Well, duh, yeah, it was a funny way to look at it, but I love questions like that, and we had a fine old time. And yeah, between being at the court of her Albigensian, poetry-writing daddy and her history of romantic involvement with powerful dudes and her distinct mind of her own and her largeish sphere of influence, one could have fun with this notion. Innocent III was a bad man. Although there were not exactly any countries being ruled by angels in that era either. But one of those periods where a lot of cultural stuff changed really fast after not changing much for centuries.

..do tell us more Marye!!! By the way the crusades were not only against Muslims. My area of SW France still bears the scars of the Albigensian Crusades in which up to a million 'heretic' Cathars were murdered in 20 years of terror by so called Crusaders seeking a short cut to heaven at the behest of Pope Innocent (yup innocent!) III. "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history". Friedrich Hegel

that the guy sees himself as a Crusader ridding Europe of the Muslim Menace. Having specialized in that particular period in grad school and found a different aspect of it most relevant to what was even then going on in the Haight and such, I didn't expect this particular thing to be front and center again, as it were. Amplified by Twitter.

...must have got lost. In the rest of the world there is heinous crime, but it usually happens with some sane (insane) reason, like Milosevic and and his whacky Serbs. Or tribal violence like the the Hutus and Tutsis. Random, senseless violence is the specialty of the US.culture and itt's citizens. Who needs to enumerate these incidents? I just hope we are not exporting our violent psychological trash to other peaceful countries or our insane campaign against a whole culture, except for the ones we like as of present. I wanted to mention the French and their banning the burka, but alas, in time they'll understand respect or shall be taught the meaning of it by people like the Norwegian guy. Will he claim the Anti Peace Prize?

i hope those cookies are electric....