Racism Report

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

49 minutes ago, Badger said:

If you think it is a divine revelation that's your business, you can ponder over the meaning of every sentence. To me, it's just an opinion. Sorry

I share your frustration Badger - I may not wholly agree with your politics or HFs but all I did was to throw up two very subtle yet pernicious forms of 'racism' I witnessed as examples to help elucidate what I thought was being discussed - casual unintended racist preconceptions (admittedly in earlier generations) only be vilified as 'Woke' whatever that means. Still means damn all to me but it seems to be a convenient label to others for their own form of identity politics!

[Fen Canary 811]

8 hours ago, BigFish said:

You really have disappeared down a rabbit hole of your own devising on this one. If measurable differences in outcome between personal characteristics, including race, occur only an idiot wouldn't consider examining those for the reasons. And for that matter, the solutions.

Also only an ideologue would assume that those disparities are all down to racism. As I argued earlier in the thread before Horse hijacked it with childish nonsense, I happen to believe economics are a much bigger factor. If the reason black Caribbean’s are struggling is racism, why are the Chinese or black Africans doing well in relation to the white majority? Is racism in this country that nuanced that we not only discriminate differently between different ethnicities, but also different groups of the same colour?

I think a much more likely explanation for the Caribbean community struggling is that many of their families arrived as poor unskilled labourers as part of the Windrush generation. As such they worked poor jobs, lived in poor areas with poor schools with higher rates of family breakdown, crime and drug abuse which brought them into contact with the police much more than other areas, and the cycle of poverty is extremely hard to break as witnessed by the majority white council estates that face the exact same issues.

The other immigrant groups I’ve mentioned such as the African and Chinese communities arrived later, and faced more stringent visa requirements to enter. They tended to be highly skilled and better resourced, and as such live in nicer areas with better schools and do much better in life, even better than the white majority in many areas.

To me a black child born to well off parents will have many more opportunities in life than a white child born to poor ones. The fact the pay gap between whites and non whites is non existent for those under 30 shows that race isn’t a major problem in the world of work. There is a very small gap of 3% when calculating all ages which may be a hangover from racist policies in the past but the data shows that it simply isn’t the case anymore.

Whilst I don’t doubt racism and racist people exist, and that minorities have to deal with racism from time to time, I simply don’t believe it’s institutional or systemic

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

Fen - I put this link up a day or ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56737929

I've highlighted the interesting bit below. Obviously graduates have almost by definition already 'escaped ' to a first approximation their beginnings / background. 

Those who left education just before or during the crisis - the so-called class of 2020 - have faced particular difficulties, with unemployment rising fastest among those who recently left education.

"Having a degree has not protected recent graduates from this effect."

But here too, there is a big disparity between ethnic groups. By the end of last year, unemployment among young black graduates had risen to 34%, up from 22% before the pandemic.

That was a rate almost three times that of young white graduates during the same period (13%). The unemployment rate for young Asian graduates during this period was 24%.

[Fen Canary 811]

33 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Fen - I put this link up a day or ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56737929

I've highlighted the interesting bit below. Obviously graduates have almost by definition already 'escaped ' to a first approximation their beginnings / background. 

Those who left education just before or during the crisis - the so-called class of 2020 - have faced particular difficulties, with unemployment rising fastest among those who recently left education.

"Having a degree has not protected recent graduates from this effect."

But here too, there is a big disparity between ethnic groups. By the end of last year, unemployment among young black graduates had risen to 34%, up from 22% before the pandemic.

That was a rate almost three times that of young white graduates during the same period (13%). The unemployment rate for young Asian graduates during this period was 24%.

Without knowing what industries they were employed in, and in what areas of the country and numerous other factors it’s hard to read too much into those figures. Have inner cities which have a higher proportion of ethnic minorities been harder hit by rising unemployment than other parts of the country for instance, or have certain industries been harder hit than others. Did these industries have a higher proportion of ethnic minority workers employed for them when they went under? These facts may not be relevant, or they may or may notexplain the disparity, without looking further into the reasons I don’t know the answer personally.

I think you need to look at many factors to get a true picture. As I mentioned further up the thread, simply looking at bare numbers one could argue that ice cream causes drownings, as more people drown on days more ice cream is sold. Now of course the main factor here is the weather, in that more people buy ice cream and go swimming on hot days, but if we simply took the raw data of ice cream sales and drownings then the conclusion is ice cream causes people to drown.

To me society is far too complex and nuanced for simple explanations to social problems and disparities 

[Fen Canary 811]

4 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Most of the links I've provided are by liberals trying to define a part of their own movement that has gone rogue. In order to define something you have to use words. You are then faced with the problem of whether you laboriously list every single nuance of the problem you are trying to highlight every time you refer to it, or whether you come up with a succinct term which broadly covers those ideas. That term unfortunately often becomes a blunt weapon and can be warped and misused for ideological reasons. I accept that this has happened with "Woke" but the truth is had another term been used (critical theory left, say) the same thing would have occurred and you would have been demanding that people don't use it.

What term would you prefer for the part of the Left which is curtailing free speech and no platforming people as you state?

It’s a favourite tactic of Horsefly to pedantically argue over the description of descriptions rather than the overarching points. It’s simply a distraction.

When discussing the “woke” everybody knows that we’re generally discussing those who are pushing the more extreme end of the narrative, the “anti racists” such as D’Angelo who see racism everywhere, and are responsible for the Twitter pile ons whenever anybody (such as JK Rowling) disagrees with them. Anybody who is generally conservative (small c) or wants immigration numbers more tightly controlled is a ****, anybody who thinks women only spaces should remain so is a transphobe for example, anybody who didn’t agree with BLM defacing statues and the cenotaph was a racist bigot etc. If you’re white you’re privileged, even if you’re a homeless alcoholic, if you’re black you’re oppressed, even if you went to Eton. That’s what most are describing when talking about woke, rather than those who simply lean to the left

[Fen Canary 811]

8 hours ago, Badger said:

There are some who think that we have arrived at the best possible situation and that the nation state and capitalism, both relatively recent phenomena in historical terms, will now live on forever - "the end of history" as it was named.

Some of these people are far brighter than I am, but I can't see it if we look at history through the lens of millenia and centuries rather than decades. (Of course, the advantage of this position is that I can't be proved wrong - I can just say "give it another few millennia and then you will see!" 😃)

I must admit I’ve never given much thought to the economic system a thousand years from now ha ha, I’d imagine it would have changed beyond all recognition, and the form it takes will be different from anything we know or can comprehend at present.

My predictions were more based on the coming century, based purely on guesswork and the political situations in Europe and the States

 

[Rock The Boat 1,329]

On 14/04/2021 at 08:20, Badger said:

He has asserted this, but has provided no evidence. 

I don't suppose you will either: you will merely parrot what you are told to believe.

Marxism fails for one very good reason. Marxism is based on a collectivist philosophy. But it has no mechanism for dealing with those who have no wish to be part of the collective. Someone mentioned kibbutzes. They can work because the members of a kibbutz are there voluntarily and can leave the system anytime they want. Those in communist collectives, Russia, China, Cambodia have no choice whether they want to be in or out of the collective and so very rapidly the communist system becomes totalitarian as that is the only way to keep everybody inside the collective. The spy Peter Blake had a favourite Russian joke. You can guess how the story unfolds but the punchline is 'come the revolution, Comrade, you will like strawberries'.

Eventually, all communist systems become totalitarian.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

Yet another rather inconvenient "opinion". But hey, the out of touch dinosaurs bodger and badger pontificating from their privileged leafy suburbs clearly know more than this informed young lady. 😉

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Mr.Carrow

[Rock The Boat 1,329]

7 minutes ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Yet another rather inconvenient "opinion". But hey, the out of touch dinosaurs bodger and badger clearly know more than this informed young lady. 😉

 

They will begin by attacking her character, not what she says.

[BigFish 1,986]

4 hours ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Yet another rather inconvenient "opinion". But hey, the out of touch dinosaurs bodger and badger pontificating from their privileged leafy suburbs clearly know more than this informed young lady. 😉

 

Um yes, that has persuaded me. A student who works for a thinktank foundered by Ian Duncan Smith - no surprises there then

Edited April 16, 2021 by BigFish

[PurpleCanary 5,557]

Well, at least amid all the toing and froing we now have the definitive answer to one question that has bugged us all for decades, which is why did he include Karl Marx on the cover of Sgt Pepper. Who'd have thought it - him hiding in plain sight like that. And enobled by our dear queen to boot. It's the Anthony Blunt scenario all over again. Arty people? Pah. Can't trust 'em. Commies the lot of them.

[BigFish 1,986]

11 hours ago, Fen Canary said:

Also only an ideologue would assume that those disparities are all down to racism. As I argued earlier in the thread before Horse hijacked it with childish nonsense, I happen to believe economics are a much bigger factor. If the reason black Caribbean’s are struggling is racism, why are the Chinese or black Africans doing well in relation to the white majority? Is racism in this country that nuanced that we not only discriminate differently between different ethnicities, but also different groups of the same colour?

I think a much more likely explanation for the Caribbean community struggling is that many of their families arrived as poor unskilled labourers as part of the Windrush generation. As such they worked poor jobs, lived in poor areas with poor schools with higher rates of family breakdown, crime and drug abuse which brought them into contact with the police much more than other areas, and the cycle of poverty is extremely hard to break as witnessed by the majority white council estates that face the exact same issues.

The other immigrant groups I’ve mentioned such as the African and Chinese communities arrived later, and faced more stringent visa requirements to enter. They tended to be highly skilled and better resourced, and as such live in nicer areas with better schools and do much better in life, even better than the white majority in many areas.

To me a black child born to well off parents will have many more opportunities in life than a white child born to poor ones. The fact the pay gap between whites and non whites is non existent for those under 30 shows that race isn’t a major problem in the world of work. There is a very small gap of 3% when calculating all ages which may be a hangover from racist policies in the past but the data shows that it simply isn’t the case anymore.

Whilst I don’t doubt racism and racist people exist, and that minorities have to deal with racism from time to time, I simply don’t believe it’s institutional or systemic

Interesting post, @Fen Canary and much to agree with. What you are talking about is what economist term compositional factors. However, there is research that indicates that even after taking these factors into account there remains unexplained disparities. The report does not, and can not provide explanations for these. Surely then it is wrong to discount racism in some for being a factor?

[Badger 2,405]

10 hours ago, Fen Canary said:

I must admit I’ve never given much thought to the economic system a thousand years from now ha ha, I’d imagine it would have changed beyond all recognition, and the form it takes will be different from anything we know or can comprehend at present.

My predictions were more based on the coming century, based purely on guesswork and the political situations in Europe and the States

Yes, it is imo, a common misconception when considering Marxism. It is a theory spanning millennia, yet many look at it with the perspective of today (Many Marxists are guilty of the same thing - you don't a history of "hitherto existing society" on the timescale of a few years or decades).

If you look at the huge advances in technology and knowledge before the emergence  of capitalism as the primary economic and social system, the world of the nineteenth century was just unimaginable to those of the fifteenth.

[ricardo 7,384]

7 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Marxism fails for one very good reason. Marxism is based on a collectivist philosophy. But it has no mechanism for dealing with those who have no wish to be part of the collective.

 

Calm your fears comrade, there will be re-education centres to expose the errors in your thinking. Nobody will be left out of the coming paradise.

[king canary 7,603]

1 hour ago, BigFish said:

Interesting post, @Fen Canary and much to agree with. What you are talking about is what economist term compositional factors. However, there is research that indicates that even after taking these factors into account there remains unexplained disparities. The report does not, and can not provide explanations for these. Surely then it is wrong to discount racism in some for being a factor?

Yeah I think anyone claiming race/racism isn't a factor is clearly either disengenous or in denial at this point. However this is also the issue with CRT (or its more extreme ends)- it basically makes it to be that race is the only factor (or at least overwhelmingly so over all other elements at play) which creates these odd situations like a well to do Cambridge professor claiming she was being racially discriminated against by a working class porter because he didn't call her doctor and acting as if he's the one with the power in this dynamic.

CRT is a gift to the right wing as it allows them to position themselves as being friends to the working classes (those left wing elites!) while also from a pure capitalist perspective encouraging different races to see each other as inherently separate and convincing the working classes/middle classes that their interests aren't aligned if they are from different racial background.

[TheGunnShow 5,937]

On 14/04/2021 at 16:05, ricardo said:

I expect it was your Union work that negated the prediction that we would would all progressively become poorer as the bosses squeezed the life out of us.😉

I don't mean to be facetious KG but you know very well that even in our own industry events did not mimic Marx's predictions. Our parents were better off than our grand parents, we are better off than our parents. We can't deny that we lived through those improvements and if it required any sort of revolution then it was so peaceful that we barely noticed. The truth is that events evolved in a way that Marx did not forsee.

Except this generation is the first one in history where they are worse off than their parents.

[Barbe bleu 822]

On 16/04/2021 at 08:12, Badger said:

Yes, it is imo, a common misconception when considering Marxism. It is a theory spanning millennia, yet many look at it with the perspective of today (Many Marxists are guilty of the same thing - you don't a history of "hitherto existing society" on the timescale of a few years or decades).

If you look at the huge advances in technology and knowledge before the emergence  of capitalism as the primary economic and social system, the world of the nineteenth century was just unimaginable to those of the fifteenth.

.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Barbe bleu

[Rock The Boat 1,329]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

I have no wish to pick a fight here. It is a genuine question.

What huge advances were there to technology and knowledge before capitalism? My understood definition of capital is that it is wealth made available to investment and that investment is what drove much the creation of knowledge and invention that defined what we call "progress".  Or to put it another way pre modern /pre capitalist societies didn't progress very quickly as invention and study were piecemeal and that it is more than correlation in the coincidence of the timing of the enlightenment / agricultural revolution/ industrial revolution and the emergence of 'capitalist' ideas like private property rights, national debt, joint stock companies etc.

Before you shoot me down, It's not a 'left'/'right' concept.  Eric Williams, for instance, argued that if it wasn't for slaves in the west indies we wouldn't have had these revolutions as the capital came not from Europe but from their labour.

I hope HF doesn't read this....

To backup your point BB, here is a graph showing the growth in global wealth over time. 

[Rock The Boat 1,329]

And a graph that suggests the imminent collapse of capitalism is premature. 

[Mr.Carrow 376]

7 hours ago, BigFish said:

Um yes, that has persuaded me. A student who works for a thinktank foundered by Ian Duncan Smith - no surprises there then

Rock the Boat was spot on then, how predictable. Are you denying her lived experience then? You know that is racist, right?

[horsefly 4,297]

51 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

To backup your point BB, here is a graph showing the growth in global wealth over time. 

And the relevance of this is what?

[Mr.Carrow 376]

21 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

I share your frustration Badger - I may not wholly agree with your politics or HFs but all I did was to throw up two very subtle yet pernicious forms of 'racism' I witnessed as examples to help elucidate what I thought was being discussed - casual unintended racist preconceptions (admittedly in earlier generations) only be vilified as 'Woke' whatever that means. Still means damn all to me but it seems to be a convenient label to others for their own form of identity politics!

Who called you Woke? If you want to define racism in terms so broad that it includes people's natural primal biases and caution then you have to take responsibility for the logical repercussions of that. It essentially brands humanity as fundamentally bad (ironically enough a repurposing of original sin) and sets up the situation for quasi-religious movements such as CRT to come along with expensive snake oil promising to cleanse certain groups of their inherent evil. We've already been down that path and we know where it leads.

As I posted earlier, there is a gentler, kinder, more pragmatic path which is to accept that humanity is flawed and that people's knee jerk reactions can be uncomfortable and problematic, but that education and example can gradually overcome those issues (which all statistics show has been happening in liberal democracies). Branding whole swathes of people racist whilst claiming that the system is fundamentally racist as most on the IdPol Left do is the road to division and chaos.

Also, just thinking about human reactions to other's immutable characteristics opens up an endless can of worms. Women, across cultures, prefer taller men. Does that make them prejudiced against short guys? By the same token most men wouldn't particularly want to date a woman a foot taller than them, does that make them horribly prejudiced? You could then go on into body type, complexion, hair colour etc.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Mr.Carrow

[Badger 2,405]

3 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

I have no wish to pick a fight here. It is a genuine question.

What huge advances were there to technology and knowledge before capitalism? My understood definition of capital is that it is wealth made available to investment and that investment is what drove much the creation of knowledge and invention that defined what we call "progress".  Or to put it another way pre modern /pre capitalist societies didn't progress very quickly as invention and study were piecemeal and that it is more than correlation in the coincidence of the timing of the enlightenment / agricultural revolution/ industrial revolution and the emergence of 'capitalist' ideas like private property rights, national debt, joint stock companies etc.

Before you shoot me down, It's not a 'left'/'right' concept.  Eric Williams, for instance, argued that if it wasn't for slaves in the west indies we wouldn't have had these revolutions as the capital came not from Europe but from their labour.

I hope HF doesn't read this....

Where to start?

Well at the start of the 15th Century, there was no real understanding of the world's geography and then universe. Huge swathes of the world had not been discovered - the Americas being the obvious example, but also Australia etc. (This was of, course, a precursor to the European slave trade with reference to your point above.) This was largely enabled by other inventions like lenses and navigation equipment without which such travel would have virtually impossible and improving technology in ship design. The other naval technology enabled such travel, like compasses and the astrolabe (which enabled ship's captains be aware of the ships latitude - longitude took longer - as did things like telescopes).

The 14th century when gunpowder arrived in Europe (invented in China), which gave a military advantage to European conquistadors - through the development of cannon, rifles etc. So, Europeans were able to conquer the newly discovered lands and exploit them for their resources.

The printing press was obviously also massive - before that everything was copied by hand, also a 15th century invention - it has been described as the most important invention of the millenium! This enabled the widespread sharing of ideas about science etc. before its invention and well into the 16th Century, it was quite possible that a learned person could have read just about every academic title ever published in the western world.

The 15th Century was when  we were able to accurately measure time mechanically on a widespread basis including portable clocks (although there were a few accurate clocks in the 14th Century) - before this we used sun dials and the length of shadows etc. Similarly, the mirror started to be available - people were actually able see what they looked like (except images from rivers and windows) - by 1600 they were available to most, although a luxury.

There are lots of other things that developed in this century and the following one - coach travel was almost unheard of before the 16th century. unless you were exceptionally wealthy; the move to towns had had a great effect as did the general adoption of a common calendar.

There was also the small matter of the Renaissance in the 15th Century and attempts to discover the nature of reality - before there had been a tendency to look to the bible for all meaning! This was of course a precursor to the scientif revolution of the 17th Century.

If you are interested in this, I recommend a book called Centuries of Change by Ian Mortimer which looks at the changes to life century by century from 1000 to 2000 - it is very readable and can easily be read in "chunks."

 

[PurpleCanary 5,557]

8 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

Well, at least amid all the toing and froing we now have the definitive answer to one question that has bugged us all for decades, which is why did he include Karl Marx on the cover of Sgt Pepper. Who'd have thought it - him hiding in plain sight like that. And enobled by our dear queen to boot. It's the Anthony Blunt scenario all over again. Arty people? Pah. Can't trust 'em. Commies the lot of them.

Thanks, YF. Glad someone got it, or liked it enough to indicate they'd got it...🤓

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

39 minutes ago, Mr.Carrow said:

Who called you Woke? If you want to define racism in terms so broad that it includes people's natural primal biases and caution then you have to take responsibility for the logical repercussions of that. It essentially brands humanity as fundamentally bad (ironically enough a repurposing of original sin) and sets up the situation for quasi-religious movements such as CRT to come along with expensive snake oil promising to cleanse certain groups of their inherent evil. We've already been down that path and we know where it leads.

As I posted earlier, there is a gentler, kinder, more pragmatic path which is to accept that humanity is flawed and that people's knee jerk reactions can be uncomfortable and problematic, but that education and example can gradually overcome those issues (which all statistics show has been happening in liberal democracies). Branding whole swathes of people racist whilst claiming that the system is fundamentally racist as most on the IdPol Left do is the road to division and chaos.

Also, just thinking about human reactions to other's immutable characteristics opens up an endless can of worms. Women, across cultures, prefer taller men. Does that make them prejudiced against short guys? By the same token most men wouldn't particularly want to date a woman a foot taller than them, does that make them horribly prejudiced? You could then go on into body type, complexion, hair colour etc.

Good grief. You do go on and keep jumping in feet first. I just put up a couple of very subtle examples of lets call it mild unintended racism so we all know what we were discussing and you go all nuclear again. You don't have to be 'left' or even woke to discuss and accept these subtle forms of racism exist.

Chill out in BA.

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

35 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Thanks, YF. Glad someone got it, or liked it enough to indicate they'd got it...🤓

I'm of a certain age.... sadly.

Ought to add always liked "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" (in a non LSD way). The next line was definitely written by Canary supporter (in an subtle subconscious manner) 🙂 ! Cellophane flowers 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Yellow Fever

[Mr.Carrow 376]

9 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Good grief. You do go on and keep jumping in feet first. I just put up a couple of very subtle examples of lets call it mild unintended racism so we all know what we were discussing and you go all nuclear again. You don't have to be 'left' or even woke to discuss and accept these subtle forms of racism exist.

Chill out in BA.

In that case I encounter "mild unintended racism" pretty much hourly. The point is whether it is really accurate, fair or constructive to project such a loaded "nuclear" term on to well-meaning people who misstep. I've met very few people who have hate and division in their hearts and those who have have generally been in thrall to ideological certainty.

Billy Bragg sang "I've got Socialism of the heart" and I used to believe that the Left were fundamentally Rousseaian and optimistic about humanity whilst the Right were Hobbesian, negative and dismal. Witnessing the abject misanthropic projections coming from the modern radical Left (plus the disinterest from the rest of the Left in standing up to them), I now have serious doubts.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

15 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Marxism fails for one very good reason. Marxism is based on a collectivist philosophy. But it has no mechanism for dealing with those who have no wish to be part of the collective. Someone mentioned kibbutzes. They can work because the members of a kibbutz are there voluntarily and can leave the system anytime they want. Those in communist collectives, Russia, China, Cambodia have no choice whether they want to be in or out of the collective and so very rapidly the communist system becomes totalitarian as that is the only way to keep everybody inside the collective. The spy Peter Blake had a favourite Russian joke. You can guess how the story unfolds but the punchline is 'come the revolution, Comrade, you will like strawberries'.

Eventually, all communist systems become totalitarian.

Utter tosh. It isn't about a collective. Its about society having the input and sharing in the reward.

To achieve this, other factors have to align.

But the ruling classes, frightened that their power and wealth, so long dependent on the labours and obedience of their servile workers, would diminish, never allowed anything other than their system to prevail.

[Barbe bleu 822]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

Where to start?

Well at the start of the 15th Century, there was no real understanding of the world's geography and then universe. Huge swathes of the world had not been discovered - the Americas being the obvious example, but also Australia etc. (This was of, course, a precursor to the European slave trade with reference to your point above.) This was largely enabled by other inventions like lenses and navigation equipment without which such travel would have virtually impossible and improving technology in ship design. The other naval technology enabled such travel, like compasses and the astrolabe (which enabled ship's captains be aware of the ships latitude - longitude took longer - as did things like telescopes).

The 14th century when gunpowder arrived in Europe (invented in China), which gave a military advantage to European conquistadors - through the development of cannon, rifles etc. So, Europeans were able to conquer the newly discovered lands and exploit them for their resources.

The printing press was obviously also massive - before that everything was copied by hand, also a 15th century invention - it has been described as the most important invention of the millenium! This enabled the widespread sharing of ideas about science etc. before its invention and well into the 16th Century, it was quite possible that a learned person could have read just about every academic title ever published in the western world.

The 15th Century was when  we were able to accurately measure time mechanically on a widespread basis including portable clocks (although there were a few accurate clocks in the 14th Century) - before this we used sun dials and the length of shadows etc. Similarly, the mirror started to be available - people were actually able see what they looked like (except images from rivers and windows) - by 1600 they were available to most, although a luxury.

There are lots of other things that developed in this century and the following one - coach travel was almost unheard of before the 16th century. unless you were exceptionally wealthy; the move to towns had had a great effect as did the general adoption of a common calendar.

There was also the small matter of the Renaissance in the 15th Century and attempts to discover the nature of reality - before there had been a tendency to look to the bible for all meaning! This was of course a precursor to the scientif revolution of the 17th Century.

If you are interested in this, I recommend a book called Centuries of Change by Ian Mortimer which looks at the changes to life century by century from 1000 to 2000 - it is very readable and can easily be read in "chunks."

 

That's my point.  Something  happens in 15th century Europe that means knowledge, the economy, technology etc go bang.   But this bang could have happened anywhere and at anytime in the last several thousand years.

This bang was caused by a combination of factors of which capitalist infrastructure was one, possibly the most important one. Is there anything less capitalist than a venetian merchant explorer pimping himself out across Europe with promises of a return on investment in his scheme to find a quicker way of trading with the east indies?

Completely agree with you that the other imprtant factors were empire and the scientific method.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Barbe bleu

[Yellow Fever 3,767]

41 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

That's my point.  Something  happens in 15th century Europe that means knowledge, the economy, technology etc go bang.   But this bang could have happened anywhere and at anytime in the last several thousand years.

This bang was caused by a combination of factors of which capitalist infrastructure was one, possibly the most important one.

 

 

Isn't that called the Renaissance and basically was when people started to throw off and question religion?  The age of Reason?

Edited April 16, 2021 by Yellow Fever