The Lord of the Bible? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Lalwendë · 09-09-2006, 02:12 AM

I wasn't talking talking about Saxons nor was I talking about Elves, I was talking about ancient Britons (and Bretons, because they built these cultures too). These are the people who did not have a pessimistic view, but looked to the future as shown by their building of remarkable structures which would last down the millennia.

Yes, the Saxons may have had a sense of pessimism as they actually left us with little physical evidence - their wealth was portable (and this is reflected in the culture of the Rohirrim, who only left one substantial, optimistic cultural landmark, Helm's Deep, and possibly their barrows). But even so I would argue against the Saxons being totally pessimistic. We can only see a small proportion of what they most likely did produce in terms of literature, and its by no means all doom and gloom, they also left books of riddles. So we can't just make the sweeping statement that they were pessimistic.

And like it or not, nostalgia is a part of life in Britain. There's a whole industry based around it from selling National trust memberships to peddling 1950s CDs to producing endless TV shows which look back to what it was like in our schooldays. The word Retro excites us, and we argue about whether to save an old building or knock it down to put up new ones. Where I work they have had to create an entire division called Change, just to deal with out reluctance to let go of the past. It's real.

mark12_30 · 09-09-2006, 05:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I wasn't talking talking about Saxons nor was I talking about Elves, I was talking about ancient Britons (and Bretons, because they built these cultures too). These are the people who did not have a pessimistic view, but looked to the future as shown by their building of remarkable structures which would last down the millennia.

Isn't this logic a bit circular? Those who left stone monuments were optimistic, those who didn't, pessimistic? How do we know, unless we also have their literature to look at?

Lalwendë · 09-09-2006, 05:36 AM

Investing valuable resources in building complex constructions, as I've already said, suggests a culture which has a sense of permanence and optimism, whereas a culture which senses it is transient does not invest its resource in fixed objects and constructions. We see the same with the builders of the great medieval cathedrals - they felt their culture would endure for ever. Likewise the builders of the monumental waterfront in Liverpool - they felt that the sun would never set on the empire.

Funnily enough, there are more things in culture than books. Older socities may not have had literature, and there are still cultures today which do not have literature. To suggest that we can't learn anything about them because they do not hold the written word in the same way we do is cultural supremacism.

In fact, even Tolkien's work bears out what I've said. Contrast the Gondorians who have a culture existing for thousands of years, they have been shapers, builders, creators of monumental architecture which is permanent, with the Rohirrim who are newly arrived, living an uncertain existence - they are not builders, they have a sense of transience. And contrast Faramir's sense of hope when he looks to the West and thinks of Numenor and remembers a cultural memory of promise and even paradise, with Theoden's words on his death. He doesn't go to a place he simply goes to his ancestors. Even so, the Rohirrim are not strictly pessimistic, more that they simply live for the now, whereas the Gondorians live for the past and for the future, not in the now. Even Tolkien knew the significance of transient versus permanent cultures.

Look at the modern world. I would only take a mortgage if I felt assured of my permanence but if I felt insecure I would instead rent, and be transient.

littlemanpoet · 09-09-2006, 10:02 AM

I can't help wondering if the assertion that cultures which build great monuments are essentially optimistic, and those that do not are essentially pessimistic, does not bear up against scrutiny. Bethberry's quotes are much to the point. Is it not just as plausible to reason that cultures that have little hope of long continuation, build monuments precisely because they expect that these will be all that's left to represent them some day? This seems to bear up when we listen to individuals in our own culture who intend to leave some kind of legacy to their own short lives. The concern for legacy seems to go hand in hand with a recognition of approaching death rather than with "lightness of being" or whatever you want to call it.

Bethberry, I think elegiac is perhaps the most useful word for the present turn of the discussion.

Lalwendë · 09-09-2006, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I can't help wondering if the assertion that cultures which build great monuments are essentially optimistic, and those that do not are essentially pessimistic, does not bear up against scrutiny. Bethberry's quotes are much to the point. Is it not just as plausible to reason that cultures that have little hope of long continuation, build monuments precisely because they expect that these will be all that's left to represent them some day? This seems to bear up when we listen to individuals in our own culture who intend to leave some kind of legacy to their own short lives. The concern for legacy seems to go hand in hand with a recognition of approaching death rather than with "lightness of being" or whatever you want to call it.

Bethberry, I think elegiac is perhaps the most useful word for the present turn of the discussion.

No, the quotes were not to the point of what I was saying, as I was not talking about either Saxons or Elves, but about ancient Britons (and other ancient civilisations). They only cast light on what Tolkien or the author of Beowulf thought. They don't cast any light on the anonymous architects of Avebury because they can't. To look at what they thought we must use our minds and interpret what we have got. Not assertion but archaeological theory.

The urge to be personally remembered is in fact more a product of modern secular society, or indeed a vain and self-centred society, witness the current Cult of Personality. That is also the ultimate in luxuries. We might create personal legacies today but then we are also a throw-away-live-for-today society. Also bear in mind how long both megalithic structures and great cathedrals took to build. Centuries. Cultures under threat of destruction simply do not have that luxury of time. You don't fiddle while Rome burns.

Elegiac might fit the sense of loss that Tolkien expresses very well, but Elegiac is definitely not the term to use to describe the nostalgic feelings that British people as a society feel. Why? Because we aren't just mourning, but remembering the good times. See the quote that Fea put on. He's also remembering the good laughs, the nights supping in the ale hall.

Anyway, arguing over a word is a familiar way to divert a discussion, but you won't wear me down that way. Pedantry is how people in my line of work earn their wages, and I can easily spend a two hour meeting arguing about one word in an entire document.

Nogrod · 09-09-2006, 06:21 PM

Making generalisations with history is always a bit dangerous...

I visited Newgrange (in Ireland) some ten years ago. It had taken the people there something like two hundred years to build it - more than four thousand years ago. They probably were not thinking that as our fleeting culture is just about to die, so let's do this in a hurry. They must have been optimists in our sense of the word used here.

The counter example.

Adolf Hitler and his visions of the eternal Germany, to be realised with the help of Mr. Speer. The eternal monumets being imagined and in some cases begun by the third Reich... Were they optimists or pessimists? Or where they more vaguely the culture that did not believe to make for any lasting mark, and thence craved for any marks to out-count the days of their makers?

Quote:

The urge to be personally remembered is in fact more a product of modern secular society, or indeed a vain and self-centred society, witness the current Cult of Personality.

Exactly. We must bear in mind that even the idea of "myself" as a self-centered notion is a new invention... The feeling of "me" today as the center of individuality was for the ancient Greeks and Romans the animality in us. Emotions and feelings happen to us and are not governed by us. They thought that a human was a human only when he (yes, he!) shut down the thrives and desires and was thinking things with the reason (differentia specifica of the humans).

In that world one couldn't think of being the center of all, but needed just to find his place in the order of the universe...

So there was no possibility of being optimistic or pessimistic on a grander scale then. Individual personality is a modern idea...

Lalaith · 09-10-2006, 04:22 AM

Just an aside on the rebirth/hope issue.
I don't pretend to be an expert on paganism in general but I do know a bit about the Norse mythical cycle. One of the problems in trying to establish just what the Vikings believed in terms of religion is that most of what we know about it today was written down during the Christian period. Snorri Sturluson, who wrote so much of what we rely on, was a 13th century historian, and a Christian (albeit unusually for that time, a secular individual rather than a cleric).

Also, Norse paganism and Christianity co-existed for several hundred years in the Viking world. Viking society had not converted as whole until around 900-1000 AD, while allowing individuals who had turned from the "old belief" to practice their new religion.
Scholars believe that some aspects of the mythological cycle - particularly the death and rebirth of Baldr - may have been injected later, as part of a Christianising influence.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing were true for other "pagan" belief systems. (I don't even know how we are defining the word pagan anyway. "Stuff our ancestors used to believe"? It seems a bit too vague, the old Norse religion has for example not much to do with the nature-based religion many people I know practice today, often called paganism)

As for eternal monuments (v. interesting points, Noggie...) Ozymandias springs to mind...

09-09-2006, 02:12 AM	#1
Lalwendë A Mere Boggart Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: under the bed Posts: 4,737	I wasn't talking talking about Saxons nor was I talking about Elves, I was talking about ancient Britons (and Bretons, because they built these cultures too). These are the people who did not have a pessimistic view, but looked to the future as shown by their building of remarkable structures which would last down the millennia. Yes, the Saxons may have had a sense of pessimism as they actually left us with little physical evidence - their wealth was portable (and this is reflected in the culture of the Rohirrim, who only left one substantial, optimistic cultural landmark, Helm's Deep, and possibly their barrows). But even so I would argue against the Saxons being totally pessimistic. We can only see a small proportion of what they most likely did produce in terms of literature, and its by no means all doom and gloom, they also left books of riddles. So we can't just make the sweeping statement that they were pessimistic. And like it or not, nostalgia is a part of life in Britain. There's a whole industry based around it from selling National trust memberships to peddling 1950s CDs to producing endless TV shows which look back to what it was like in our schooldays. The word Retro excites us, and we argue about whether to save an old building or knock it down to put up new ones. Where I work they have had to create an entire division called Change, just to deal with out reluctance to let go of the past. It's real. __________________ Gordon's alive!

09-09-2006, 05:36 AM	#3
Lalwendë A Mere Boggart Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: under the bed Posts: 4,737	Investing valuable resources in building complex constructions, as I've already said, suggests a culture which has a sense of permanence and optimism, whereas a culture which senses it is transient does not invest its resource in fixed objects and constructions. We see the same with the builders of the great medieval cathedrals - they felt their culture would endure for ever. Likewise the builders of the monumental waterfront in Liverpool - they felt that the sun would never set on the empire. Funnily enough, there are more things in culture than books. Older socities may not have had literature, and there are still cultures today which do not have literature. To suggest that we can't learn anything about them because they do not hold the written word in the same way we do is cultural supremacism. In fact, even Tolkien's work bears out what I've said. Contrast the Gondorians who have a culture existing for thousands of years, they have been shapers, builders, creators of monumental architecture which is permanent, with the Rohirrim who are newly arrived, living an uncertain existence - they are not builders, they have a sense of transience. And contrast Faramir's sense of hope when he looks to the West and thinks of Numenor and remembers a cultural memory of promise and even paradise, with Theoden's words on his death. He doesn't go to a place he simply goes to his ancestors. Even so, the Rohirrim are not strictly pessimistic, more that they simply live for the now, whereas the Gondorians live for the past and for the future, not in the now. Even Tolkien knew the significance of transient versus permanent cultures. Look at the modern world. I would only take a mortgage if I felt assured of my permanence but if I felt insecure I would instead rent, and be transient. __________________ Gordon's alive! Last edited by Lalwendë; 09-09-2006 at 05:49 AM.

09-10-2006, 04:22 AM	#7
Lalaith Blithe Spirit Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2,779	Just an aside on the rebirth/hope issue. I don't pretend to be an expert on paganism in general but I do know a bit about the Norse mythical cycle. One of the problems in trying to establish just what the Vikings believed in terms of religion is that most of what we know about it today was written down during the Christian period. Snorri Sturluson, who wrote so much of what we rely on, was a 13th century historian, and a Christian (albeit unusually for that time, a secular individual rather than a cleric). Also, Norse paganism and Christianity co-existed for several hundred years in the Viking world. Viking society had not converted as whole until around 900-1000 AD, while allowing individuals who had turned from the "old belief" to practice their new religion. Scholars believe that some aspects of the mythological cycle - particularly the death and rebirth of Baldr - may have been injected later, as part of a Christianising influence. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing were true for other "pagan" belief systems. (I don't even know how we are defining the word pagan anyway. "Stuff our ancestors used to believe"? It seems a bit too vague, the old Norse religion has for example not much to do with the nature-based religion many people I know practice today, often called paganism) As for eternal monuments (v. interesting points, Noggie...) Ozymandias springs to mind... __________________ Out went the candle, and we were left darkling Last edited by Lalaith; 09-10-2006 at 04:28 AM.

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09-09-2006, 10:02 AM	#4
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	I can't help wondering if the assertion that cultures which build great monuments are essentially optimistic, and those that do not are essentially pessimistic, does not bear up against scrutiny. Bethberry's quotes are much to the point. Is it not just as plausible to reason that cultures that have little hope of long continuation, build monuments precisely because they expect that these will be all that's left to represent them some day? This seems to bear up when we listen to individuals in our own culture who intend to leave some kind of legacy to their own short lives. The concern for legacy seems to go hand in hand with a recognition of approaching death rather than with "lightness of being" or whatever you want to call it. Bethberry, I think elegiac is perhaps the most useful word for the present turn of the discussion.