5 ms·

I briefly skimmed and they started talking about manorial systems and vassalage. I think we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot with definitions and whatnot wh

I briefly skimmed and they started talking about manorial systems and vassalage. I think we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot with definitions and whatnot whenever we try to talk about Feudalism, especially when we concentrate on the dark ages and the middle ages and the lack of a functioning state. My suspicion is: Feudalism didn't start with manorialism in the dark ages. It started with the predecessor systems to vassalage in the Roman Empire, when there was a very functioning state with a system of vassalage and hierarchy already in place and roots going back to the pre-Empire times of the Republic. It was made worse by Diocletian and noone after Diocletian was either willing or able to fix things.

mistrial9 3y ago
yes and.. you are looking at the top.. nice views! but the mass of people, their entire lives, were not at the top. Serfs, peasants, vassels, indentured servants , slave markets -- look there, at the labor force, and compare the herding of cattle to no-rights people, for comparison to intelligent, able, digital serfs.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << digital serfs. There is a difference. 'No-rights' people were corralled and restrained, by force when necessary. Where is the violence today? At best, there is a threat that you will lose your job ( it is not insignificant, but it is not your life ). Can reddit put you in acid mines? No. Can they fire you? Well, the mods there are volunteers. Their status indicates how quickly they could pick up and their toys and move. There is only one thing that makes them digital serfs. Inertia. ( yes, I am aware how difficult it is to have a website these days that scales, but the only thing that is really stopping people from doing things is that doing things is hard; it is easier to do what you did yesterday )
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    the nature of the fences and punishment, have changed.. agree
  - olddustytrail 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as an "acid mine"?
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
      My secondary joke reference is asbestos factory ( also technically not existing, but the concept is the same -- highly dangerous environment ). Obviously, I exaggerated a little bit.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Based on their other comment they are just using it as an exaggeration. But it did make me interested enough to look it up. Apparently there are some inorganic solid acids, they look to mostly be oxides, I have no idea if they exist in high enough concentrations to be mined. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_acid
paganel 3y ago
> Feudalism didn't start with manorialism in the dark ages. There is a hint of that in the excellent Histoire de la France rurale (History of Rural France), in the first [1] of the three volumes. As far as I remember by the late 200s - going into the 300s present-day Île-de-France was littered with Roman villas which were, in effect, very similar to the future manors. Any one of those villas was headed by the pater familias, followed by his close relatives and by the villa's dependents, who dependants nowadays someone might call "serfs" and "oppressed" (like the author of the article does when talking about the dependants of the féodalité), but who were, most probably, neither of that (meaning they were not real serfs/slaves and they were not that oppressed). For those interested, Roger Agache [2] has done an excellent job of documenting the existence on the ground of those villas/manors based on aerial archeology. This page [3] does a good job at presenting some of Agache's work (including some photos), the French Ministry of Culture used to have a page dedicated to aerial archeology but, unfortunately, I now see that it has been taken down. [1] https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-la-france-rurale-collectif/9782757873779 https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-la-france-rurale-c... [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Agache https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Agache [3] http://sehet.andre.free.fr/dedetextes/photosrogeragache.htm http://sehet.andre.free.fr/dedetextes/photosrogeragache.htm
- cheaprentalyeti 3y ago
  In France they might have been called villas, but in most of the rest of the Roman world they were called latifundia. (But I didn't come back to do more "Um, Achtually" about Feudalism. I found the links, now where should I put them?)
  - shakow 3y ago
    They were called villa in latin. The latifundium was the whole domain, whereas the villa was the owning family main living building.
karpierz 3y ago
It's worth reading in a little more detail. One of the core points is that "Feudalism" as used outside of academic discussion loses its semantic meaning beyond being a synonym for "oppressive". And so trying to discuss when feudalism starts inevitably falls into a discussion of "when did Europe get oppressive".
- superkuh 3y ago
  I don't think so. In the context of tech feudalism maps really well. People cannot protect their own forums/communities running on their own hardware from attack and/or futureshock from rapid change in underlying libs. So everyone depends on single entities with enough resources to keep community software running.
  - cheaprentalyeti 3y ago
    My suggestion: use the term "Patron/Client" instead of feudalism and you'll be able to see/show all the cruddy political effects without having to map everything in Techbroland to the legalities of grazing sheep.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    The argument isn't that "feudalism" maps poorly onto modern concepts, it's that "feudalism" is a modern concept that doesn't exist as such historically. It seems to map well onto modern forms of oppression because the word is essentially synonymous with oppressive behavior.
- lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  It's a lazy pejorative, like "fascist".
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
I would avoid the use of the term "Dark Ages". It has always been a loaded term (popular with those who had or have an ax to grind against the Church, like Protestants and Enlightenment propagandists) and characterizes our own ignorance better than the time period itself. The Renaissance itself is better understood as a development of the Middle Ages. The continuity and interplay of cultural currents during the Middle Ages/Renaissance are far more interesting than the simplistic, boring, and tendentious presentation we're often taught in school (Middle Ages = bad, backwards, ignorant; Renaissance = good, progressive, enlightened). For example, while empirical science saw a development during the Renaissance, it depended on prior intellectual of the Scholastic period, itself marked by a good deal of philosophical rigor, for lack of a better term (a rigor unjustly mocked by Protestants, surviving to this day in expressions involving the number of angels on the head of a pin). Whatever the merits of the Renaissance and faults of the Middle Ages, philosophically, the Renaissance falls short of the Middle Ages.
- MrStonedOne 3y ago
  [dead]
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  The Dark Ages is called that because it refers to the power vacuum left behind in the wake of the Western Roman Empire's fall. The regional power that maintained law and order was no more and it was now every man for himself. Economies and cultures can't flourish and will recede when everyone is busy murdering and backstabbing each other, thus called the Dark Ages. It wasn't until Charlemagne united most of Gaul and created the Frankish Kingdom that some semblance of peace was restored, ushering in the Middle Ages and the return of economic growth and cultural development. As an aside, everything I read and was taught about the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and the Renaissance back in my day was deeply intriguing and rich in wisdom and knowledge. It saddens me greatly if it's all been whitewashed down to "Dark Ages wrongspeak, Early Middle Ages rightspeak" and "Middle Ages backwards, Renaissance forwards" today because that is so grossly worthless.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

yes and.. you are looking at the top.. nice views! but the mass of people, their entire lives, were not at the top. Serfs, peasants, vassels, indentured servants , slave markets -- look there, at the labor force, and compare the herding of cattle to no-rights people, for comparison to intelligent, able, digital serfs.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< digital serfs. There is a difference. 'No-rights' people were corralled and restrained, by force when necessary. Where is the violence today? At best, there is a threat that you will lose your job ( it is not insignificant, but it is not your life ). Can reddit put you in acid mines? No. Can they fire you? Well, the mods there are volunteers. Their status indicates how quickly they could pick up and their toys and move. There is only one thing that makes them digital serfs. Inertia. ( yes, I am aware how difficult it is to have a website these days that scales, but the only thing that is really stopping people from doing things is that doing things is hard; it is easier to do what you did yesterday )
- mistrial9 3y ago
  the nature of the fences and punishment, have changed.. agree
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as an "acid mine"?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    My secondary joke reference is asbestos factory ( also technically not existing, but the concept is the same -- highly dangerous environment ). Obviously, I exaggerated a little bit.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Based on their other comment they are just using it as an exaggeration. But it did make me interested enough to look it up. Apparently there are some inorganic solid acids, they look to mostly be oxides, I have no idea if they exist in high enough concentrations to be mined. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_acid

paganel 3y ago

> Feudalism didn't start with manorialism in the dark ages. There is a hint of that in the excellent Histoire de la France rurale (History of Rural France), in the first [1] of the three volumes. As far as I remember by the late 200s - going into the 300s present-day Île-de-France was littered with Roman villas which were, in effect, very similar to the future manors. Any one of those villas was headed by the pater familias, followed by his close relatives and by the villa's dependents, who dependants nowadays someone might call "serfs" and "oppressed" (like the author of the article does when talking about the dependants of the féodalité), but who were, most probably, neither of that (meaning they were not real serfs/slaves and they were not that oppressed). For those interested, Roger Agache [2] has done an excellent job of documenting the existence on the ground of those villas/manors based on aerial archeology. This page [3] does a good job at presenting some of Agache's work (including some photos), the French Ministry of Culture used to have a page dedicated to aerial archeology but, unfortunately, I now see that it has been taken down. [1] https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-la-france-rurale-collectif/9782757873779 https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-la-france-rurale-c... [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Agache https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Agache [3] http://sehet.andre.free.fr/dedetextes/photosrogeragache.htm http://sehet.andre.free.fr/dedetextes/photosrogeragache.htm

cheaprentalyeti 3y ago
In France they might have been called villas, but in most of the rest of the Roman world they were called latifundia. (But I didn't come back to do more "Um, Achtually" about Feudalism. I found the links, now where should I put them?)
- shakow 3y ago
  They were called villa in latin. The latifundium was the whole domain, whereas the villa was the owning family main living building.

karpierz 3y ago

It's worth reading in a little more detail. One of the core points is that "Feudalism" as used outside of academic discussion loses its semantic meaning beyond being a synonym for "oppressive". And so trying to discuss when feudalism starts inevitably falls into a discussion of "when did Europe get oppressive".

superkuh 3y ago
I don't think so. In the context of tech feudalism maps really well. People cannot protect their own forums/communities running on their own hardware from attack and/or futureshock from rapid change in underlying libs. So everyone depends on single entities with enough resources to keep community software running.
- cheaprentalyeti 3y ago
  My suggestion: use the term "Patron/Client" instead of feudalism and you'll be able to see/show all the cruddy political effects without having to map everything in Techbroland to the legalities of grazing sheep.
- lolinder 3y ago
  The argument isn't that "feudalism" maps poorly onto modern concepts, it's that "feudalism" is a modern concept that doesn't exist as such historically. It seems to map well onto modern forms of oppression because the word is essentially synonymous with oppressive behavior.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
It's a lazy pejorative, like "fascist".

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

I would avoid the use of the term "Dark Ages". It has always been a loaded term (popular with those who had or have an ax to grind against the Church, like Protestants and Enlightenment propagandists) and characterizes our own ignorance better than the time period itself. The Renaissance itself is better understood as a development of the Middle Ages. The continuity and interplay of cultural currents during the Middle Ages/Renaissance are far more interesting than the simplistic, boring, and tendentious presentation we're often taught in school (Middle Ages = bad, backwards, ignorant; Renaissance = good, progressive, enlightened). For example, while empirical science saw a development during the Renaissance, it depended on prior intellectual of the Scholastic period, itself marked by a good deal of philosophical rigor, for lack of a better term (a rigor unjustly mocked by Protestants, surviving to this day in expressions involving the number of angels on the head of a pin). Whatever the merits of the Renaissance and faults of the Middle Ages, philosophically, the Renaissance falls short of the Middle Ages.

MrStonedOne 3y ago
[dead]
Dalewyn 3y ago
The Dark Ages is called that because it refers to the power vacuum left behind in the wake of the Western Roman Empire's fall. The regional power that maintained law and order was no more and it was now every man for himself. Economies and cultures can't flourish and will recede when everyone is busy murdering and backstabbing each other, thus called the Dark Ages. It wasn't until Charlemagne united most of Gaul and created the Frankish Kingdom that some semblance of peace was restored, ushering in the Middle Ages and the return of economic growth and cultural development. As an aside, everything I read and was taught about the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and the Renaissance back in my day was deeply intriguing and rich in wisdom and knowledge. It saddens me greatly if it's all been whitewashed down to "Dark Ages wrongspeak, Early Middle Ages rightspeak" and "Middle Ages backwards, Renaissance forwards" today because that is so grossly worthless.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago