to be nobody but yourself -
in a world which is doing its best,
night and day,
to make you everybody else -
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight .
never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings
It is really just in the last generation that we've become aware of how diverse was the world of Christianity in the 3 to 4 centuries after Christ's death. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Library, among other finds, have revealed various gospels and epistles that never made it into what we know as the Bible. Most of these were obviously not written by any of Christ's original disciples or by Paul and for this reason alone were omitted from inclusion in the approved canon. (But it is worth noting that most serious scholars today think that other forgeries did make it in. For instance, 2 Timothy seems to have been written in the second century after Christ and most certainly not by Paul.)
In the fourth century, the canon was defined and various and competing ideas about Christ were consolidated into a (mostly and sort of) uniform view in the form of the Bible. Soon, the church that owned this "true" view even used torture and death to enforce this pure view. Most people look at the Inquisition as evil but I think that the evil originated when the church decided that God could not tolerate diversity of thought and sought to make uniform the theology and teachings that professed to represent his views. Surely God loves uniformity. This might seem reasonable. It does not seem to be backed up by evidence.
This notion that God's will obviously tends towards the uniform does, I think, miss an important suggestion from nature. (I say suggestion because it may or may not be a "lesson.") Nature suggests that the creator loves diversity. There are about 1.75 million species on the planet. Some have bones and some do not. Some breath under water and some drown in water. Some walk around and some are rooted. Some are really cute and some are hideous. Some are peaceful and some are dangerous. Some are huge and some are too small to see. It's not obvious that you can draw many conclusions from nature other than the fact that nature loves diversity. The life form that works depends on so many things that one would be at a loss to predict them all in advance. Diversity, it seems to me, is the lesson of nature.
As communities become more developed and free, a similar thing seems to happen with the human population. That is, diversity seems to spring up. We have goths and hippies, the driven and the laid back, the flirtatious and the prudes, the athletic and the slothful, the intellectuals and the disinterested. The list goes on. It may well be that we have something akin to 1.75 million species of humans.
Ultimately, the Church was forced to use force to try to squelch this great diversity of people. To this day, Protestant churches reject Catholicism but tend to accept the central claim that diversity is wrong (although the diversity of ways that they reject the notion of allowing diversity does, itself, create a fair bit of diversity, from Mormons to Baptists to Presbyterians to Anglicans to Jehovah's Witnesses, to ...). It could be that they are right. It could be. But then how to explain the motives of the creative force behind the massive diversity of nature? And how to explain how attempts to make human life all one way led to one of the Darkest and most violent periods of history when the Church largely ruled the West between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of the modern, secular nation-state?
The more I look across time and communities, the more convinced I am that one of the simplest measures of advancement is how many kinds of people can make their place in the world. It seems to me that diversity is not just a wonderful thing in nature - it works in communities too. And that suggests to me that the Church's attempt to go against this trend meant it was destined to become evil. Next time someone says that they know what is best, ask for who. Some things that make people feel alive really are universal: oxygen, for instance. Other things that make people feel alive really are true for just a minority of folks: live jazz, for instance. Reality is diverse. Any explanation of it ought to accommodate rather than deny this, it seems to me.
R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Showing posts with label medieval church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medieval church. Show all posts
21 June 2010
30 September 2009
Modern Corporation: modeled on the medieval church
In two earlier posts, I concluded that the medieval church became evil. This matters because the medieval church is still a model for institutions who could follow it down the same path. It is difficult to overcome a blueprint at the foundation of Western Civilization, a blueprint referenced in the design of the modern corporation. The medieval church had popes and priests who discerned the will of God and directed the congregants; the modern corporation has CEOs and mangers who discern the will of the market and direct the employees.
The US represents for many the apex of progress yet 84% of people here are unhappy in their jobs.
Job dissatisfaction hardly compares with burning at the stake. In the grand scheme of history, it is a fairly petty and pathetic complaint to be unhappy at work. Yet if one can’t enjoy what one does all day – what defines one’s life – it makes one question the progress up to this point. Is this really the culmination of thousands of generations of genetic and social evolution? Or could it be that the transformation of work and what it means to create value and to be valued is the next personal frontier, the domain for the next revolution?
About a decade ago, I went into GM to do some training and consulting work. I left appalled. The managers were conscientious and the employees seemingly sincere and yet they seemed more like parents and children than consenting adults. The distribution of power constrains employees from acting like adults.
The corporation – GM and nearly every business – could learn something about needed change by looking at the huge transformation of the church over the last half millennia.
Two big changes to come out of the Protestant Revolution were the entrepreneurial approach to religion and the shift in authority to the individual. These two are inextricably linked.
Post- Protestant Revolution religion is wildly entrepreneurial. Luther claimed that we are all priests and the germ of this idea – the notion that individual revelation and conviction ought to be the root of religious belief – continues to spark new denominations. The World Christian Database tracks 9,000 denominations.
In terms of freedoms granted, the church may be the most evolved and modern of our institutions. Churches either meet the need of their congregants or the congregants go elsewhere – or nowhere. It is not just freedom across religions but within. Even people who call themselves Catholic can profess and practice very different things from each other.
If the medieval church is the model for the current corporation, we can hope that the post-Protestant Revolution church is the model for the future corporation.
There is a great deal that will be different in the next version of the corporation, but most of these changes will begin with a shift in the notion about where authority ought to lie: in central authorities or in the individual. It means trusting the individual with true freedom. All the needed design changes for the corporation can follow from this profound shift.
The US represents for many the apex of progress yet 84% of people here are unhappy in their jobs.
Job dissatisfaction hardly compares with burning at the stake. In the grand scheme of history, it is a fairly petty and pathetic complaint to be unhappy at work. Yet if one can’t enjoy what one does all day – what defines one’s life – it makes one question the progress up to this point. Is this really the culmination of thousands of generations of genetic and social evolution? Or could it be that the transformation of work and what it means to create value and to be valued is the next personal frontier, the domain for the next revolution?
About a decade ago, I went into GM to do some training and consulting work. I left appalled. The managers were conscientious and the employees seemingly sincere and yet they seemed more like parents and children than consenting adults. The distribution of power constrains employees from acting like adults.
The corporation – GM and nearly every business – could learn something about needed change by looking at the huge transformation of the church over the last half millennia.
Two big changes to come out of the Protestant Revolution were the entrepreneurial approach to religion and the shift in authority to the individual. These two are inextricably linked.
Post- Protestant Revolution religion is wildly entrepreneurial. Luther claimed that we are all priests and the germ of this idea – the notion that individual revelation and conviction ought to be the root of religious belief – continues to spark new denominations. The World Christian Database tracks 9,000 denominations.
In terms of freedoms granted, the church may be the most evolved and modern of our institutions. Churches either meet the need of their congregants or the congregants go elsewhere – or nowhere. It is not just freedom across religions but within. Even people who call themselves Catholic can profess and practice very different things from each other.
If the medieval church is the model for the current corporation, we can hope that the post-Protestant Revolution church is the model for the future corporation.
There is a great deal that will be different in the next version of the corporation, but most of these changes will begin with a shift in the notion about where authority ought to lie: in central authorities or in the individual. It means trusting the individual with true freedom. All the needed design changes for the corporation can follow from this profound shift.
23 September 2009
Why the Medieval Church Became Evil
The medieval church may have been a necessary evil in the progress of the West, but it was still evil. It’s worth reviewing how that happened, because it represents a pattern. Quite simply, when individuals are forced to conform to the institution, rather than the institution to the individual, the institution starts down the path toward evil.
The Roman Empire was formed atop of many nations and the Romans often just incorporated the local god into their pantheon of gods. Religious tolerance was a given and variation expected.
We now know that in the centuries after Christ, a great number of gospels and letters emerged. Some of these, like the Gospels of Thomas and Judas, had disappeared completely until discoveries just last century.
But this variation that was a part of the ancient world was squelched. Forcefully. The Inquisition was instituted in 1233 and by 1252 the church had authorized the use of torture to impose conformity of thought. As late as 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned alive for sharing his beliefs about moving atoms, an infinite cosmos, memory, and imagination. The goal was to crush heresy, defined as any dissent or deviation from Church teachings, and the Church was not squeamish about the use of force to protect its dogma. Over the centuries, the treatment of heretics included the rack (being stretched until every joint in the body had dislocated), burning at the stake, and being skinned alive.
Torture was consistent with the teachings of St. Augustine, who felt that the “main point was ‘not whether anyone is being forced to do something, but what sort of thing he is being forced to do, whether it is good or bad.’” Punishment was justified “because ‘the unrighteous man’s grief in his punishment is more appropriate than his rejoicing in sin.’” Torture was of little consequence in comparison to an eternity in hell: if pain caused one to recant from heresy, it was a gift. Once a community accepts the notion of one truth about eternal salvation and one authority entrusted with its revelation, every kind of coercion and evil naturally follow.
How did the church become evil? By suppressing variation and oppressing the individual. This is always the surest route to evil, no matter how petty the path. It is possible that it was a necessary evil but it bears repeating that it was, in any case, an evil. Any institution able to seize one's property or children and torture or kill to coerce thought and belief can hardly be given any other label.
The evil crept into the church in small steps. It wasn't evil for individuals to say, "I believe the gospel of Matthew but not the gospel of Thomas." It didn't seem particularly evil for a group of individuals to get together in a council to reach an agreement about which books to include and which to exclude to promote a "right" way. And once that was in place, it did not seem so evil to urge conformity on the congregation, or to resort to expulsion or even violence to spare the congregation from the influence of a heretic (simply someone whose beliefs are not orthodox). Over centuries, though, the cumulative effect of these little steps became clear.
And this meant that before real progress could begin in the West, the church had to be radically changed. The revolution that overturned its monopoly on thought and action would prove even bloodier than its oppression. Encompassed in the Protestant Revolution and Reformation, this challenge to the medieval church gave birth to a new world with new rules, one that offered the individual opportunities never before given to the common man.
The Roman Empire was formed atop of many nations and the Romans often just incorporated the local god into their pantheon of gods. Religious tolerance was a given and variation expected.
We now know that in the centuries after Christ, a great number of gospels and letters emerged. Some of these, like the Gospels of Thomas and Judas, had disappeared completely until discoveries just last century.
But this variation that was a part of the ancient world was squelched. Forcefully. The Inquisition was instituted in 1233 and by 1252 the church had authorized the use of torture to impose conformity of thought. As late as 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned alive for sharing his beliefs about moving atoms, an infinite cosmos, memory, and imagination. The goal was to crush heresy, defined as any dissent or deviation from Church teachings, and the Church was not squeamish about the use of force to protect its dogma. Over the centuries, the treatment of heretics included the rack (being stretched until every joint in the body had dislocated), burning at the stake, and being skinned alive.
Torture was consistent with the teachings of St. Augustine, who felt that the “main point was ‘not whether anyone is being forced to do something, but what sort of thing he is being forced to do, whether it is good or bad.’” Punishment was justified “because ‘the unrighteous man’s grief in his punishment is more appropriate than his rejoicing in sin.’” Torture was of little consequence in comparison to an eternity in hell: if pain caused one to recant from heresy, it was a gift. Once a community accepts the notion of one truth about eternal salvation and one authority entrusted with its revelation, every kind of coercion and evil naturally follow.
How did the church become evil? By suppressing variation and oppressing the individual. This is always the surest route to evil, no matter how petty the path. It is possible that it was a necessary evil but it bears repeating that it was, in any case, an evil. Any institution able to seize one's property or children and torture or kill to coerce thought and belief can hardly be given any other label.
The evil crept into the church in small steps. It wasn't evil for individuals to say, "I believe the gospel of Matthew but not the gospel of Thomas." It didn't seem particularly evil for a group of individuals to get together in a council to reach an agreement about which books to include and which to exclude to promote a "right" way. And once that was in place, it did not seem so evil to urge conformity on the congregation, or to resort to expulsion or even violence to spare the congregation from the influence of a heretic (simply someone whose beliefs are not orthodox). Over centuries, though, the cumulative effect of these little steps became clear.
And this meant that before real progress could begin in the West, the church had to be radically changed. The revolution that overturned its monopoly on thought and action would prove even bloodier than its oppression. Encompassed in the Protestant Revolution and Reformation, this challenge to the medieval church gave birth to a new world with new rules, one that offered the individual opportunities never before given to the common man.
22 September 2009
The Medieval Church: a necessary evil
I’ve taken my shots at the medieval church. Anyone who knows history has read of the atrocities. Heretics were burned at the stake, scientists were muzzled, and suspected witches were stretched out on the rack, forced to confess to the impossible. Where the church had a firmer grip on the community – in places like Spain and Italy – business and science fell behind the places – like the Netherlands and England – where there was more religious freedom. It was a wonderful thing to emerge from the control of the church. This is, however, a very different statement than saying that it was an awful thing for the West to come under the control of the church.
It’s worth remembering the condition of the West when Christianity became ascendant. I would argue that the church, however evil we now consider it, was an improvement on what came before.
The Roman Empire was powerful and made life comfortable – for a few. The economy and quality of life depended on slaves, conquest, and exploitation. Whatever one might say of the animating beliefs, it is not obvious that one could ascribe the golden rule to Rome: slave holders and colonizers hardly did onto others what they wanted done to themselves. (And this disinterest in the other is a major obstacle to the emergence of markets.)
Tribes like the Huns, Visigoths, and Vandals who gradually dismantled and conquered the Western part of the Roman Empire knew more about conquest than creating and sustaining a society as complex as the Roman Empire. Europe descended into the Dark Ages as Rome disappeared.
So this is the world as it was found by a medieval church with growing authority and influence. This world was awful. It is one thing for armies to know how to raid a village to take the food and women – it is another to know how to raise crops and children. Life was brutal and short and reliant on force. By our standards, the medieval church may have seemed oppressive, but its emphasis on caring for the weak and its insistence on order in thought and deed must have saved many a life.
It was from this starting point that freedom of thought slowly emerged. Order was created by the authority of the church. (In medieval times, the majority of the issues that the pope had to address involved property rights.) Imagine that each landlord or land owner was his own little government and you can begin to imagine the confusion surrounding even the disputation of the smallest conflicts. The church’s generally accepted authority saved many conflicts from becoming violent.
Obviously the religious wars fought in Europe to wrest control from the medieval church (and, initially, put it in the hands of a Protestant church that was typically just as dogmatic and violent) were atrocious. But again, the baseline of comparison was not the level of violence in Berlin or Paris today.
Was the medieval church evil? Only if it was compared to the community that evolved after its rule. But looking at it in the context of what preceded it, it might well be that the West had no better path to progress.
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The golden rule might be at the heart of a market economy. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” puts one in the frame of mind of the other. It encourages a kind of empathy that can also be used for commercial gain. “People want a cheaper or better …” involves thinking about the perspective of the other, the consumer, and is the first step in developing a business plan. Concern with – and response to - the other is essential to markets.
It’s worth remembering the condition of the West when Christianity became ascendant. I would argue that the church, however evil we now consider it, was an improvement on what came before.
The Roman Empire was powerful and made life comfortable – for a few. The economy and quality of life depended on slaves, conquest, and exploitation. Whatever one might say of the animating beliefs, it is not obvious that one could ascribe the golden rule to Rome: slave holders and colonizers hardly did onto others what they wanted done to themselves. (And this disinterest in the other is a major obstacle to the emergence of markets.)
Tribes like the Huns, Visigoths, and Vandals who gradually dismantled and conquered the Western part of the Roman Empire knew more about conquest than creating and sustaining a society as complex as the Roman Empire. Europe descended into the Dark Ages as Rome disappeared.
So this is the world as it was found by a medieval church with growing authority and influence. This world was awful. It is one thing for armies to know how to raid a village to take the food and women – it is another to know how to raise crops and children. Life was brutal and short and reliant on force. By our standards, the medieval church may have seemed oppressive, but its emphasis on caring for the weak and its insistence on order in thought and deed must have saved many a life.
It was from this starting point that freedom of thought slowly emerged. Order was created by the authority of the church. (In medieval times, the majority of the issues that the pope had to address involved property rights.) Imagine that each landlord or land owner was his own little government and you can begin to imagine the confusion surrounding even the disputation of the smallest conflicts. The church’s generally accepted authority saved many conflicts from becoming violent.
Obviously the religious wars fought in Europe to wrest control from the medieval church (and, initially, put it in the hands of a Protestant church that was typically just as dogmatic and violent) were atrocious. But again, the baseline of comparison was not the level of violence in Berlin or Paris today.
Was the medieval church evil? Only if it was compared to the community that evolved after its rule. But looking at it in the context of what preceded it, it might well be that the West had no better path to progress.
-----------
The golden rule might be at the heart of a market economy. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” puts one in the frame of mind of the other. It encourages a kind of empathy that can also be used for commercial gain. “People want a cheaper or better …” involves thinking about the perspective of the other, the consumer, and is the first step in developing a business plan. Concern with – and response to - the other is essential to markets.
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