January 2016 – Page 2

dogs and priests: the amazing power of medieval allegory

dog savior looks to heaven

Gesta Romanorum, a thirteenth-century Latin collection of stories for preachers to use in sermons, includes a story about a parishioner’s response to a corrupt priest. When that priest was scheduled to celebrate Mass, the parishioner would skip the service. One day while so skipping Mass and walking in a meadow, the parishioner became desperately thirsty. The parishioner found a tiny stream of pure water from which he drank. Seeking to better allay his thirst, he sought for the tiny stream’s source. A wise man pointed him to a fountain:

He {the parishioner} there beheld a putrid dog with its mouth wide open and its teeth black and decayed, through which the whole fountain amazingly gushed. The man regarded the stream with great terror and confusion, ardently desiring to quench his thirst, but apprehensive of poison from the fetid and loathsome dog carcass that apparently had infected the water. [1]

The wise man explained that the parishioner had already drunk of that water and that it was indeed good. The wise man explained:

See now, as this water, gushing through the mouth of a putrid dog, is neither polluted nor loses any of its natural taste or color, likewise celebration of Mass by a worthless minister. Therefore, although the vices of such men may displease and disgust, yet you should not forego the services that they are ordained to provide.

In short, God can work through corrupt priests, and through other corrupt persons, too.

Figuring the corrupt priest as a putrid, dead dog has considerable scriptural support. Dogs in the bible are associated with vicious, worthless, foolish, and evil beings. Consider:

Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers has encompassed me.

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.

Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!

Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. [2]

The story of the pure water flowing through the putrid dog carcass makes good sense as an allegory for receiving sacraments from a corrupt priest.

The application of this story provides a far more sophisticated allegory. After wryly noting that Scripture associates priests with dogs more frequently than with any other animal, it quotes Latin poetry:

In a dog are twice two aspects; a medicinal tongue,
a keen-smelling nose, complete love, and being always ready to be roused to bark.

{ In cane bis bina sunt; et lingua medicina,
Naris odoratus, amor integer, atque latratus. }

The text then allegorized those four good canine aspects to priests:

Priests with their tongues possess the power of a physician in healing the sick of heart and probing the wounds of sin. They are careful also to avoid too rough of treatment that would exacerbate rather than cure wounds. It is likewise the nature of dogs to lick the body’s wounds.

As a dog, by keenness of scent, distinguishes a fox from a hare, so a priest, by the quickness of his perceptions in confessions to the ear, should discover what pertains to the cunning of the fox; that is, to heretical and sophistical perverseness. Also, what to internal struggles and evil or hopelessness of pardon, and what to the unbroken ferocity of the wolf or lion, originating in a haughty contempt of consequences, as well as other distinctions of like character.

The dog is of all animals the most faithful and ready in defense of his master or family. Priests should also show themselves staunch advocates for the Catholic faith and zealous for everlasting salvation, not of their parishioners alone, but of every denomination of true Christians. …

As a dog by barking betrays the approach of thieves, and doesn’t permit the property of his master to be invaded, so the faithful priest is the watch-dog of the great King. He is one who by his bark, that is his preaching and his watchfulness, doesn’t cease to defeat the schemes and machinations of the devil against our Lord’s treasury, that is the soul of his neighbor, which our Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed with the mighty ransom of His precious blood. [3]

Medieval Latin literature regarded a dog as man’s best friend.[4] Redeeming scriptural disparagement of dogs and allegorizing priests to dogs as a positive exemplum shows the amazing range and creativity of medieval Latin literature.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Gesta Romanorum, Tale 12, from Latin trans. Swan & Hooper (1876) p. 23. Subsequent quotes are from id, pp. 23-6, unless otherwise noted. I’ve made some minor, non-substantive modernization of the English.

[2] Psalm 22:16; Matthew 7:6, 15:26; Proverbs 26:11; Philippians 3:2; Revelation 22:15. The bible does, however, credit dogs with attacking a vicious, evil woman:

The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and none shall bury her.

2 Kings 9:10.

[3] Cynics, an ancient Greek school of philosophers, were etymologized with the ancient Greek word for dog-like (kynikos). A scholium on Aristotle gave a fourfold explanation of why Cynic philosophers were dog-like. Dudley (1937) p. 5, giving an obscure reference to Brandis’s edition of Aristotle’s scholia. Being a good guard and being discriminating were two components of that explanation.

[4] Writing early in the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin accounted reasons to marry and reasons not to marry. Among his reasons to marry a woman:

Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow

Evolutionary thinkers are just beginning to recognize the importance of culture. In the legal and cultural circumstances that men face today, getting a dog almost surely is more rational, at the level of the individual man, than getting married.

Women are socially dominant and have a legally privileged position in family and criminal law. Nonetheless, many women today prefer cats to men. Perhaps dogs are too similar to men to be a favored alternate companion for women.

[image] Saved. Painting of Milo, the dog of the Egg Rock Lighthouse in Massachusetts, with girl he rescued. By English painter Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 1856. Thanks to New England Lighthouse Stories.

References:

Dudley, Donald Reynolds. 1937. A history of cynicism from Diogenes to the 6th century A.D. London: Methuen.

Swan, Charles, and Wynnard Hooper, trans. 1876. Gesta romanorum: entertaining moral stories. New York: Dover Publications Inc. (reprint edition of 1969).

Arthur and Gorlagon revised John the Baptist’s beheading

tale of King Herod beheading John the Baptist

Like King Herod on his birthday, King Arthur held a magnificent banquet in the medieval Latin tale Arthur and Gorlagon. Enraptured by a girl’s dancing, King Herod made a foolish oath that caused him to order the head of John the Baptist served on a platter. No dancing girl, just abundant food was enough to make King Arthur lose his head. Arthur threw his arms around his queen, hugged her tight, and kissed her. Among the learned, what Arthur did is now called sexual assault. So what happened after that hug and kiss in the medieval Latin tale Arthur and Gorlagon?

The queen responded angrily to her husband’s action. She demanded to know why he had kissed her at an improper time and place, to say nothing of not securing her affirmative consent. Arthur tried the lovey-dovey parry. He responded:

Because nothing of my treasure delights me more, and of all my pleasures nothing is sweeter than you. [1]

The queen, ruler of her husband the king, responded that he had presumed to know her mind and will. Arthur abjectly pleaded, “your will for me is obvious.” She in turn declared that he never understood the disposition and mind of woman.[2]

Arthur then made a foolish, impious banquet oath like King Herod did. Arthur declared:

I swear by all the divine powers of the heaven, that if this be hidden from me until now, I will undertake work and sparing no labor, I will never taste food again until I obtain enlightenment about women. [3]

Arthur’s oath assumed his acceptance of his wife’s sovereignty over him. He transformed his concern to understand her mind and will into a grand quest for enlightenment about women. The childish fixations of leaders like King Herod and King Arthur reveal psychological foundations of gynocentric culture. In such culture, striving to please women captivates men.[4]

Arthur and Gorlagon then revises the beheading of John the Baptist and narrates breaking the spell of gynocentrism. Urgently seeking enlightenment about women, Arthur immediately left his guests at the banquet. He rode his horse continually for three days to reach a neighboring wise king’s court. That king, King Gorgol, was eating dinner when Arthur burst into the dining hall on his horse. Acting as if he hadn’t lost his mind, Arthur, without dismounting from his horse, inquired about the craft, disposition, and mind of woman. In the original understanding of chivalry, the uxorious knight was always ready to ride. Arthur on his horse in a neighboring king’s dining hall during dinner shows the ridiculousness of men urgently seeking wisdom about women.[5] Too much thinking about women is folly.

Arthur had sworn not to eat until he obtained enlightenment about women. King Gorgol, who knew nothing of Arthur’s oath, sensibly urged Arthur:

Dismount and eat and rest today, because I see that you are worn out from the stress of the journey, and tomorrow I will tell you what I know.

Although Arthur initially refused that request, he eventually yielded to the entreaties of the king and his guests and companions. Arthur, despite his oath, reclined at table and ate. The next day, Gorgol confessed that he had never acquired knowledge of the craft, disposition, and mind of woman. Gorgol urged Arthur to journey to inquire for such knowledge from Gorgol’s older brother, King Gorleil. Gorgol played Arthur for the fool he was. Too much thinking about women is folly.

Arthur’s interaction with King Gorgol’s older brother King Gorleil paralleled his interaction with Gorgol. Arthur’s interruption of Gorleil’s dinner thus ended with Arthur riding off to speak with King Gorleil’s older brother King Gorlagon. Arthur evidently was a slow learner. Too much thinking about women is folly.

King Gorlagon of course was dining when Arthur arrived on horseback in his dining hall. Unlike his two younger brothers, Gorlagon failed to persuade Arthur to violate his oath by eating. Gorlagon resolved to tell Arthur a tale by which the craft, disposition, and mind of woman can be understood. Yet Gorlagon declared, “what you learn will be of little use … when I have told you, you will be but little wiser.”

Gorlagon told Arthur a tale filled with vicious feminine betrayal and plaintive claims from literature of men’s sexed protest. Yet Arthur refused to dismount from his horse and eat until Gorlagon answered another question. That question was about a specific woman:

Who is this woman sitting opposite you with the grief-stricken face, who has in the dish before her a human head spattered with blood? She has wept when you smiled and she has kissed the bloody head whenever you have kissed your wife during the telling of your tale. [6]

Herod’s wife conspired to have John the Baptist beheaded and his head served on a platter. Gorlagon’s ex-wife was the woman kissing the severed head on the dish before her. Her weeping and kissing the bloody head on the dish corresponded to Gorlagon smiling and kissing his new wife. For Arthur and all other men urgently seeking to know how to please women, Gorlagon’s story is like a voice crying out in the wilderness.[7]

Gynocentrism will pass. A new dispensation, in which husbands need not ask their wives for permission to smile and kiss, will come.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Narratio de Arthuro rege Britanniae et rege Gorlagon lycanthropo (Narrative of Arthur King of Britain and King Gorlagon the Werewolf) from Latin trans. Day (2005) p. 209. Hereafter this text will be called Arthur and Gorlagon (as above). All the Latin text and English translations of Arthur and Gorlagon are from Day (2005) pp. 208-35, with my changes noted.

The queen isn’t explicitly named in Arthur and Gorlagon. King Arthur’s wife was well known to be Queen Guinevere. She probably was also known for appallingly cruel behavior.

Arthur and Gorlagon survives only copied into a single manuscript, Bodleian Library Rawlinson MS B 149. That manuscript dates to the fourteenth century. For the Latin text (available online), Kittredge (1903). Arthur and Gorlagon probably dates from the second half of the twelfth century. It’s stylistically and linguistically closely associated with Welsh literature. Echard (1998) pp. 204-14.

[2] The queen says to Arthur: agnoscas te nunquam ut ingenium mentemue femine comperisse. Day translates that as “you reveal that you have never understood the nature or mind of a woman.” Other similar phrases occur throughout the text. In order:

mentem et uoluntatem (queen speaking of herself to Arthur)
mentem…beneuolam…uoluntatem (Arthur speaking of the queen to queen)
ingenium mentemue femine (queen speaking to Arthur)
artem et ingenium mentemque femineam (Arthur speaking to Gorgol)
ars ingenium et mens femine (Gorgol speaking to Arthur)
artem et ingenium mentemque femine (Gorlagon to Arthur)
mentem et ingenium femine (Gorlagon to Arthur)

Day translates ingenium as “nature.” In English today, “nature” in reference to humans carries a biological-essential connotation. The behavioral sense of the medieval Latin ingenium seems to me better translated with “disposition.”

Day translates ars as “wiles.” In English today, “wiles” has a somewhat derogatory connotation, especially in reference to women. Ovid’s Ars amatoria was a well-known, intellectually sophisticated, widely respected work in the Middle Ages. Given the appreciation for skill associated with ars in medieval Latin, “craft” seems to me a better translation of ars.

The phrase ingenium mentemue femine raises a particularly interesting and important philological issue. Day translates that phrase identically with ingenium mentemque femine. The word mentemque seems to be a straightforward compound from mentem que; mentemue could be an associated variant form. Variant spellings of the names Gorliel and Gorlagon exist within the manuscript. Day (2005) p. 262, n. 1. However, an intriguing possibility for mentemue is a double-consonant-assimilated compound formed from mēns + mūtō. Recognition of women’s superior mental capabilities is an important strand in literature of men’s sexed protest. See also Virgil, Aeneid 4.569.

[3] The Latin text of Arthur’s oath:

Omnia celi obtestor numina, si me actenus latuere, dabo operam, nec labori indulgens nunquam cibo fruar, donec ea me nosse contingat.

Day translates that as:

I swear by all the gods of heaven that if this be hidden from me until now, I will search these out and, sparing no effort, I will never taste food until it is my chance to learn them.

I’ve adapted that translation above to be closer to the Latin and be more specifically understandable.

King Herod publicly declared to the beautiful dancing girl:

Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it. … Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.

Mark 6:22-3. That oath disregards pious limits implicit in God’s law. Underscoring Herod’s folly, his oath evokes the devil’s temptation of Jesus. Matthew 4:1-11.

[4] Feasting commonly figures in Arthurian romance. Delaying eating until he has heard a tale or seen a marvel particularly distinguishes Arthur in the feasting motif. Arthur thus delays eating in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Byrne (2011) p. 63. In Arthur and Gorlagon, Arthur will see a marvel that transforms the beheading of John the Baptist. The grotesquely unappetizing direct sense of that marvel, apart from its more abstract righteousness, underscores the parodic form of Arthur and Gorlagon.

[5] Echard aptly observes that Arthur and Gorlagon “is nothing if not funny.” Echard (1998) p. 214. Day declares, “Arthur and Gorlagon is possibly the funniest tale of Arthurian literature….” Day (2005) p. 46. The text’s obsessive concern for eating obviously makes fun. The text more subtly evokes wry self-consciousness of men’s foolish behavior.

[6] Massey (2012) insightfully describes Arthur and Gorlagon as a text for theatrical performance, in particular, as an early English interlude. De Maria Magdalena, a Latin text written about 1200, similarly has considerable theatricality.

Gesta Romanorum includes a tale of a banquet in which a prince has his family and his guests served meat from a human skull held on a silver platter. The skull was the head of a duke whom the prince beheaded for committing adultery with the prince’s wife. The prince explained:

To remind the woman {the prince’s wife} of her shame, each day I command this memento to be placed before her, in the hope that her repentance and punishment may equal her crime.

Gesta Romanorum, Tale 56, from Latin trans. Swan & Hooper (1876) p. 95.

[7] Brady (2012) describes some of the motifs in Arthur and Gorlagon that are common in literature of men’s sexed protest. Those motifs include women’s strong, independent sexuality, men’s vulnerability to women’s highly active social communication, wives’ oppressive control of their husbands’ social lives, men’s inability to comprehend women’s social ingenuity, women’s dominating curiosity, women’s drive to know everything, and the overwhelming power of women’s tears. Adhering to long-established, oppressive ideology, Brady misandristically refers to literature of men’s sexed protest as misogynistic and antifeminist.

In further work, Brady comically declares that Arthur and Gorlagon “is not wholly misogynist.” She explains:

While it has been claimed that all Arthur learns about is the evils of women, it is equally possible that his new knowledge is precisely what Guenevere has implied: the sexual desires of women should remain private. The tale’s message is Guenevere’s: a wife who does not wish to put her private desires on public display is something for which to be thankful. Arthur’s queen simply appears to understand that feminine sexual desire is properly displayed only in the private realm.

Brady (2014) p. 27. Arthur and Gorlagon begins with Arthur kissing his wife the queen with all observing at the feast {The phrase cunctis intuentibus (“all observing”) Day omitted in her translation. For its theatrical importance, Massey (2012).} Arthur and Gorlagon ends with Gorlagon kissing his new wife. The frame narrative is about men’s behavior toward women, not about women’s sexual desire. Through to the present, social control of men’s sexuality is much harsher than social control of women’s sexuality.

By failing to recognize the final tableau’s relation to the beheading of John the Baptist, scholars have failed to recognize its significance for the overturning of gynocentrism. Echard describes Arthur and Gorlagon‘s final scene as “simply bizarre” and declares that the text “refuses to offer enlightenment.” Echard (1998) pp. 212, 214. Wilson calls the ending “preposterous punishment,” yet she sees in the work possibly a ritual plot of purification. Wilson (2008). Hopkins fantastically argues that Arthur exists in the text “to palliate the heinous sin of bestiality.” Hopkins (2009) p. 95. Medieval Welsh literature tolerated much more explicit depiction of sexual sin, as did medieval Latin literature. Archibald declares that Arthur “learns that women are dangerous, but does not take action to control his queen.” Archibald (2011) p. 142. What Arthur learns through the revelation of Gorlagon is like the prophecy of John the Baptist.

[image] The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Painting by Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli, 1461-2. Samuel H. Kress Colection 1952.2.3 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

References:

Archibald, Elizabeth. 2011. “Arthurian Latin Romance.” Ch. 7 (pp. 132-45) in Echard, Siân, ed. 2011. The Arthur of medieval Latin literature: the development and dissemination of the Arthurian legend in medieval Latin. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Brady, Lindy. 2012. “Antifeminist Tradition in Arthur and Gorlagon and the Quest to Understand Women.” Notes and Queries. 59 (2): 163-166.

Brady, Lindy. 2014. “Feminine desire and conditional misogyny in Arthur and Gorlagon.” Arthuriana. 24 (3): 23-44.

Byrne, Aisling. 2011. “Arthur’s refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast.” Journal of Medieval History. 37 (1): 62-74.

Day, Mildred Leake, ed. and trans. 2005. Latin Arthurian literature. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer.

Echard, Siân. 1998. Arthurian narrative in the Latin tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hopkins, Amanda. 2009. “Why Arthur at all? The Dubious Arthuricity of Arthur and Gorlagon.” Arthurian Literature. 26: 77-96.

Kittredge, George Lyman, ed. 1903. Arthur and Gorlagon. Boston: Ginn and Co.

Massey, Jeff. 2012. “The Werewolf at the Head Table: Metatheatric ‘Subtlety’ in Arthur and Gorlagon.” Pp. 183-206 in Tracy, Larissa, and Jeff Massey, eds. 2012. Heads will roll: decapitation in the medieval and early modern imagination. Leiden: Brill.

Swan, Charles, and Wynnard Hooper, trans. 1876. Gesta romanorum: entertaining moral stories. New York: Dover Publications Inc. (reprint edition of 1969).

Wilson, Anne. 2008. “Arthur and Gorlagon the Werewolf.” Online at annewilson.co.uk

Wednesday's flowers

flower shines on winter scene

rescued Lancelot hinted at men’s resistance to love servitude

bog pony

In twelfth-century Europe, did men unquestioningly accept love servitude to women? Today, many men don’t protest men being deprived of all reproductive rights whatsoever. Men say little about acute anti-men gender discrimination in family courts and child custody decisions. Men maintain stoic indifference to being smeared as rapists and being targeted on college campuses for absurd sex regulations. Perhaps men enjoy love servitude to women, relish working as slaves, and cherish being imprisoned. Yet Chrétien de Troyes’s late-twelfth-century Arthurian romance Lancelot hints at a different answer. Men apparently resisted love servitude to women with the same tactics subordinate workers resist orders around the world today.

In Lancelot, a girl rescued the knight Lancelot from his imprisonment atop a tall tower. In popular romance, usually the white knight in shining armor rescues the damsel in distress from imprisonment atop a tall tower. The white knight Lancelot, however, was a manlet. He needed a damsel to rescue him from distress.

The manlet Lancelot passively resisted the girl. After she rescued him from the tower, she took him to her favorite retreat, a country house, safe, secluded, and well stocked with provisions. There servants removed Lancelot’s cloths, which were filthy from his languishing in prison. Then:

the girl put him to sleep
In a tall, magnificent bed,
And later gave him a bath
And such wonderful care that I couldn’t
Tell you half if I tried:
She treated him as sweetly
As if he’d been her father.
She brought him back to life,
Completely renewed and restored. [1]

An earlier Latin romance, Apollonius King of Tyre, presented a much different account of a young man-doctor reviving a beautiful young woman. If the girl in Lancelot was receptive and not ugly, a manly knight might have expressed his gratitude to her in a more exciting way. Perhaps she noticed something lacking extension. That would explain why she gave him a bath and treated him as if he were her father.

Urging the girl to rescue him, the manlet Lancelot swore to be her obedient servant. He implicitly promised to be not like other men in servitude to women. Lancelot declared:

I swear I’ll be yours to command
For all the rest of my life
…
there’ll never be a day
When I won’t do what you ask.
Whatever you ask, if it’s in
My power, will be done — and done
as quickly as I can do it. [2]

Most women who order their man-servant (husband, boyfriend, etc.) to do something resent the response “not today.” Lancelot swore that there would never be such a day. Another standard man-servant response is “later.” Lancelot swore that he would obey the woman’s orders “as quickly as I can.” Lancelot, of course, hedged and qualified with words about his potency. Those reservations about potency probably were relevant when the girl gave him a bath.

From the commanding heights of culture, influential institutions and voices teach men to be subordinate to women. But boys aren’t stupid, and men aren’t stupid, either. Overpowered in social communication, men resort to passive resistance. Such passive resistance, however, isn’t sufficient to advance men’s liberation.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot ll. 6670-8, from Old French trans. Raffel (1997) p. 210.

[2] Lancelot ll. 6597-8, 6001-5. The ideal of men’s love servitude to women has come to be widely celebrated as courtly love (amour courtois).

[image] Kerry bog pony stallion. 6 September 2008. Thanks to Heather Moreton and Wikimedia Commons.

Reference:

Raffel, Burton, trans. 1997. Chrétien de Troyes. Lancelot, the knight of the cart. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Henrich on cultural success, silence on cultural failure

Cleopatra and Caesar

Culture has made human beings who they are. Leading human evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich compellingly makes that point in his recent book, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Henrich declares:

The answer to why humans are different is that we crossed the Rubicon. Cultural evolution became cumulative, and then both this accumulating body of information and its cultural products, like fire and food-sharing norms, developed as the central driving forces in human genetic evolution. … Having crossed the Rubicon, we can’t go back. The impact of this transition is underlined by the fact that, despite our long evolutionary history as foragers, we generally can’t survive by hunting and gathering when we have been stripped of that relevant culturally acquired knowledge. … So, yes, we are smart, but not because we stand on the shoulders of giants or are giants ourselves. We stand on the shoulders of a very large pyramid of hobbits. The hobbits do get a bit taller as the pyramid ascends, but it’s still the number of hobbits, not the height of particular hobbits, that’s allowing us to see farther. [1]

Henrich’s explanation draws upon an ancient Roman rhetorical figure involving Julius Caesar, J. R. R. Tolkien’s influential fictional creation of hobbits, a reference from a twelfth-century Latin text of Bernard of Chartres, and perhaps an allusion to the Great Pyramid of Giza, a monument of bureaucracy. No other organism creates such linguistic figures. Yet that reality differs subtly from the claim that culture is domesticating us and making us smarter. Human cultural evolution doesn’t support a master narrative of inevitable progressive enlightenment. Cultural evolution can make humans more brutal and more stupid.

In Henrich’s view, humans get smart in evolutionary and development time through social learning. Human toddlers outperform chimpanzees and orangutans not in cognitive tests concerning space, quantities, and causality, but only in social learning.[2] Social learning depends on making sense of presence of another like oneself. Long duration, broad bandwidth, synchronous, ephemeral communication, e.g. in-person communication among associates, supports sense of presence and social learning more than does short, narrow bandwidth, asynchronous, stored communication, e.g. short text messaging. Cultural evolution in which communication time shifts to the latter makes persons dumber.

Henrich associates greater population size and greater interconnectedness of individuals with greater cultural development. Those mechanisms suggest the importance of concentrating persons in factories and in cities in spurring the industrial revolutions of the past two centuries. However, England and Wales (and probably other European countries as well) over the past two centuries has experienced a significant cultural change: a massive flattening of the given name distribution. In contrast, symbolic markets in which a larger number of individuals can communicate with each other more cheaply and more quickly tend to promote blockbuster economics. Blockbuster economics involves social success that undermines objective justification for status and exacerbates wealth inequalities. Blockbuster economics also favors cultural homogenization and concentration of symbolic power. Masses who are more easily manipulated are less likely to advance collective intelligence. If the secret to our success is acting like sheep, crossing the Rubicon points to how charismatic leaders like Julius Caesar or Hitler can greatly change human societies.

A good case study of cultural evolution is twelfth-century Europe. That century experienced elite promotion of men’s subservience to women in love (“courtly love”). Some scholars have even interpreted knights brutalizing other knights in service to idealized women as a means of civilizing and domesticating men. That cultural development remains influential in competition for prestige. Thus a best-selling author recently credited feminization of civilization for contributing to the long-run historical decline in violence. That author approvingly proclaimed an astonishing cultural development:

At the top, a consensus has formed within the international {elite} community that violence against women is the most pressing human rights problem remaining in the world. [3]

In the U.S. today, four times more men than women die from violence. Around the world, violence overwhelmingly occurs against men. Elite consensus that violence against women is the most pressing human rights problem in the world today shows that social learning can powerfully promote stupidity.

For social learning to develop a humane, rational collective mind, human societies need intellectual counterbalances to gynocentrism. Henrich promotes ideals of elite intellectual culture:

It’s the willingness and ability of large numbers of individuals at the knowledge frontier to freely interact, exchange views, disagree, learn from each other, build collaborations, trust strangers, and be wrong. [4]

As the recent persecution of Nobel-prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt has made clear, any deviation from the narrow path of social propriety in speaking about women can today cause anyone enormous harm. Men’s biological inferiority to women in social communication has been well-established in scholarly literature. Cultural cognition and the structure of current academic prestige competition has produce comically tendentious experiments, mind-numbing academic “scientific” rhetoric, and wide-spread dissemination of grotesque, highly damaging falsehoods about men.

Preventing the collective mind from going insane requires supporting recalcitrant masculine voices like those in medieval Latin literature. In medieval Europe, men writing in Latin freely expressed outrageous views about wives, the church, and women in general. Latin provided a language for views that couldn’t be expressed in commonly spoken languages. Medieval Latin literature addressed violence against men in ways far more intelligent than currently fashionable anti-men bigotry (talk of “toxic masculinity”). Medieval Latin literature played a crucial role in limiting the damage to the collective mind from vernacular gynocentrism.

With U.S. universities leading efforts, within existing conditions of mass incarceration, to criminalize men for ordinary sexual interactions, the future of the collective mind looks grim. But the die is not cast. Joseph Henrich’s new book The Secret of Our Success underscores the importance of culture. From an economic and political perspective, the most important cultural issue today is collective understanding of women and men in relation to each other.[5] Under particular human biological predispositions, the twelfth-century European cultural inheritance, imperatives of collegiality in academic competition for prestige, overwhelming mass media patronage of women, and particular national-political circumstances, cultural evolution is making us humans less humane and less intelligent. To become more humane and more intelligent, today’s human culture must embrace medieval Latin literature of men’s sexed protest and similar recalcitrant masculine voices.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Henrich (2015) pp. 317, 323.

[2] Id. pp. 13-5.

[3] Pinker (2011) p. 414. For related claims, see note [2] in my post on violence and enlightenment.

[4] Henrich (2015) p. 325. Underscoring his emphasis on techno-elite culture, Henrich further states:

It bears emphasizing that once the body of know-how becomes sufficiently complex, cultural evolution will often favor an increasingly complex division of labor (really, a division of information). In this new world, the size of the collective brain will be influenced by the size and interconnectedness of people at the knowledge frontier {emphasis in the original}, the place at which individuals know enough to have any chance of making improvements on existing forms.

Id. Persons in their teens have written highly successful mobile phone apps. Persons who dropped out of college have founded and led enormously powerful, high-tech corporations. The most important and most difficult aspects of culture concern human relations. Life experience and broad literary study contribute greatly to thinking about the most important aspects of culture.

Henrich briefly recognizes that cultural poetic sophistication is more important than factual knowledge:

The framing of the message and the messenger are crucial, but the mini causal models (the “facts”) are merely secondary — only necessary to support any acquired practices or social norms.

Id. p. 328.

[5] Marsupials, once a gregarious species, are now solitary mammals. The significance of that development shouldn’t be minimized. Human pair bonding is being challenged by social promotion of female promiscuity (celebrating slut walks) and men’s opportunistic response to that development. In addition, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is one of the most significant social movements of our time.

[image] Cleopatra and Caesar. Painting, detail. By Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1866. Thanks to Mezzo-Mondo and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The secret of our success: how culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pinker, Steven. 2011. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. New York: Viking.