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ORIGINAL: Icarys

Personally when I see the word being used and talked about it's usually coming from someone who wants to lift themselves up as some suave and debonair ladies man...

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ORIGINAL: leadership527

Real:

I see your reasoning, but as an engineer, I'm personally more comfortable with facts. It's an interesting philosophy, but I'm curious what an actual historian would make of it? My deep suspicion is that they would belly laugh.

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
Of course one would!!!!!!!!!! Because historians don't deal with ethics or philosophy or how the environment affects collective psychology.

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yeeeeeaaaah teeheehee I like those

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
So people in the past were more naked to life's truths simply because things were harder for them. This made them either worse than they would be today, but most people- who are naturally good- were better than they would have been today because there were less distractions from 'direct experience' not mediated or interfered with - i.e., moments of communal ritual, loyalty, peace, friendship, intimacy, fortitude, spirit, inner strength, nature, death, sickness, pain. So I think *individually* people were generally more moral, yes. 

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ORIGINAL: sravaka

~FR~

I'm probably going to regret this, but I'll do it anyway.

Chivalry. In any reasonable permutation... is it extricable from love, and goodness, and caring, and other such common words? (some might add "courtesy," but I find that hollow by comparison.)

Let go of the anachronisms (whereby, yes, chivalrous knights were horrible violent pigs, and even "gentlemen" were oppressors.)

We are given as a species, I think, to having pretty fantasies about the past. But none of that matters. Speak to what is, precisely.

"I believe that taking care of those I love, from the vastest things to the most trivial, is *good* and incumbent upon me as a controller." (or lover or pick-the-best-label.)

Even that is not precise enough, but I offer it as an example.

I, personally, would sort of wince at most who describe themselves as "chivalrous." The word itself does not inherently speak to surfaces vs. depths.... but I would tend to be suspicious that those who use it cannot distinguish between the two. It's lovely, of course, if a man wishes to open a door or pull out my chair.... but I'd rather have that arising from something *between us* than from an anachronistic abstraction.

Apologies, Zevar. I've loved many of your posts here, and wish you very well indeed. But thought I'd toss out some unvarnished thoughts.

--sravaka

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ORIGINAL: Icarys

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yeeeeeaaaah teeheehee I like those

It's rarely the case that people are what they say they are, seem to be or what you think them to be.

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
Of course one would!!!!!!!!!! Because historians don't deal with ethics or philosophy or how the environment affects collective psychology.

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They don't? *blinks* OK, now I've given myself a real task to find a PHD historian and ask some questions.

I would very much expect to be able to have a very interesting and thoughtful conversation with a modern historian on how social currents and geopolitical events of the 20th century shaped the philosophy and ethics of the 21st. I strongly suspect that if I provided such a person my own personal definition of "goodness" they'd be quite capable of discussing the various ways that there is more and less of it and what the drivers for those changes were.

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You do understand that a good historian maintains a level of objectivity, correct? A 'social historian' , philosopher or psychologist would know more about the topics I mentioned. Not a regular historian.

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In closing I will say that what really matters is how one views their own self, chivalrous or not. The inner strength that is ever present through every tribulation known to humanity is what must remain intact, else internal defeat begins to erode at the fabric that suit’s the internal patterns of self dignity into a whole garment which clothes the soul with beauty and the heart with love. Chivalry in my eyes indeed is rich with deep intense love amidst many wonderful qualities that lend toward a life indicative of immeasurable goodness reflecting shades of beauty one day at a time to those I love and am blessed to know.

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a GODDAMN duck.

A chivalrous duck for you! Well, if you use your imagination could be, aye?

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
So people in the past were more naked to life's truths simply because things were harder for them. This made them either worse than they would be today, but most people- who are naturally good- were better than they would have been today because there were less distractions from 'direct experience' not mediated or interfered with - i.e., moments of communal ritual, loyalty, peace, friendship, intimacy, fortitude, spirit, inner strength, nature, death, sickness, pain. So I think *individually* people were generally more moral, yes.

Wow. There was an awful lot in that post to talk about, RWK. I hope you'll forgive me for zeroing in only on the excerpt above. It's just that it reminded me of some argument I had to resolve for a bit of work I was doing some years ago in the context of how best to look after the environment. The argument involved two authors - Maurice Berman and his The Reenchantment of The World (1981) and Murray Bookchin's Re-Enchanting Humanity (1995). Berman's view was like your own, roughly: he thought that 'mediations' were the ruiner, that what we needed was direct experience. Murray Bookchin thought that this was claptrap and that it's precisely humanity's ability to experience in a mediated way that has brought out our best qualities in us.

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I concluded that it was both. You need that direct experience, and you need that abstracted, distanced and mediated experience, as well - even though each pulls against the other. You cannot get by with just one or the other, and assume that the one or the other experience would lead to your being a 'good person'.

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By the way, re the Buddha - I read Siddartha by Herman Hesse, ages ago - the 'story' of the Buddha's life and his learning. Hesse himself was a devotee of Carl Jung. Jung believed in exactly this idea of opposites and tensions. The long and short of it was that while the Buddha learned from his immediate experiences, he could only have done so as a result of his prior, very abstract meditations. The Buddha was no simple, direct-experiencing, non-thinking man, nor was he just an abstract thinker - he was both. That was the point. He'd taken both thinking and feeling to their nth degree.

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ORIGINAL: Zevar

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a GODDAMN duck.

A chivalrous duck for you! Well, if you use your imagination could be, aye?

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Haha, now by regular historian I simply mean I suppose, research historians or most of them. Social historians make up a subsection. It's like most psychologists are clinical psychologists, some are research and a smaller subsection of psychologists are for example, Jungian or 'transpersonal', lol. Ther of coure is overlap. They take in their work a particular perspective and subject matter. Unsure why this would be that confusing.

It was basically semantics- my point was simply that most historians *would* laugh at some fuzzy notion of collective morality in one era compared to another..because they are historians as opposed to philosophers for example. Sure it is in their purview,as most things of the past are. I would also be in that of an anthropologist, sociologist or theologian. But not as much in th purview of a historian as in someone else's (see the above) I had made the point previously that a big part of why this would be is also that it is inherently an abstract, unquantifiable thing.

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ORIGINAL: sravaka

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Haha, now by regular historian I simply mean I suppose, research historians or most of them. Social historians make up a subsection. It's like most psychologists are clinical psychologists, some are research and a smaller subsection of psychologists are for example, Jungian or 'transpersonal', lol. Ther of coure is overlap. They take in their work a particular perspective and subject matter. Unsure why this would be that confusing.

It was basically semantics- my point was simply that most historians *would* laugh at some fuzzy notion of collective morality in one era compared to another..because they are historians as opposed to philosophers for example. Sure it is in their purview,as most things of the past are. I would also be in that of an anthropologist, sociologist or theologian. But not as much in th purview of a historian as in someone else's (see the above) I had made the point previously that a big part of why this would be is also that it is inherently an abstract, unquantifiable thing.

Thanks for your reply, RWK :)

Note: I speak to you as a research historian, and yet not, I imagine, a regular one by your definition.

Yes, most of us would laugh (or more likely sigh) at "fuzzy notions," such as have been posted in this thread.... But I swear to you that even fuzzy notions can be grounded and explicated until they become as-concrete-as-possible, and thence grappleable-with.

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History is only half social science; the rest is humanities, which is all about abstract, unquantifiable things. The trick is to find the best possible sources and explicate them in the most rigorous possible way, always conscious of and acknowledging what cannot be done with them, but exploiting what can be done with them fully.

All of the types I mentioned are academic (research) historians. (what are we going to do, work for corporations?) You'll find more purely quantitative people in polisci, sociology, econ, etc.

Not to quibble, just to give a view from the inside, perhaps. I would have more to say here if I were a medievalist, but I am not.

--sravaka

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight

It was just a sort of unspecific, overarching view that today is the first time in history we are throughly mediated, and as such, I sense that we are less in tune with spirituality, morals, proper values, community, our inner selves, etc. It was not directly related to 'real' chivalry, but the popular modern notion of it which is based on some of these ideals. I am sure no one agrees, but that's ok I'm used to it.

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ORIGINAL: crazyml

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ORIGINAL: realwhiteknight

It was just a sort of unspecific, overarching view that today is the first time in history we are throughly mediated, and as such, I sense that we are less in tune with spirituality, morals, proper values, community, our inner selves, etc. It was not directly related to 'real' chivalry, but the popular modern notion of it which is based on some of these ideals. I am sure no one agrees, but that's ok I'm used to it.

I'm certain you have an interesting point to make, and if I had the faintest clue what your that point actually was, I'd be in a position to agree/disagree.

We've established that the "popular" notion of chivalry doesn't seem to match well with yours, we've established that there is potentially a discussion to have about "manners", "respect etc" (whether you choose to - wrongly in my view - call these "chivalry" becomes a secondary question.) So... where are we going with this?