I want to be Human again!

I never thought about the idea that science can be so much of a blessing as so much of a curse. Without science’s development we would be dying of sicknesses that are curable nowadays, our lives wouldn’t be as comfortable without all the technological advances and we wouldn’t know our world as much as we do now. But in the other hand, violence and wars wouldn’t be as bad as they are because there wouldn’t be powerful weapons to easily kill people. It is also interesting to see how when science began to grow and develop religion lost some power. Once people began to discover that phenomenon had a scientific explanation other than a divine one, they began to question their beliefs. Science became a faith, it had the same effect on people like religion previously had. People saw the scientist like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and others as gods. People began to think that they could have all the answers to understand our existence.
The Scientific Revolution originated around the same time as the Renaissance was happening. People showed more interest in educating themselves and became more human, they were ready to grow and were interesting in investigating and discovering new things. Before the Scientific Revolution, the human being was described as a machine, nobody focused in explaining and analyzing the actual “human” side of men. Humanism was another important feature of the Scientific Revolution.
When reading about the Renaissance it didn’t even crossed my mind to think about the influence of humanism in Science. I thought humanism was mainly focused and expressed through visual arts.
I wonder if eventually technology will one more time destroy our human side, it seems to me that little by little we are relying on technology to connect with other people, to create visual arts and increase scientific development. Will humans realize this and have the need of another wave of humanism??

Renaissance

The Renaissance is an amazing period of time. It was the time when people began to realize how important it was to educate themselves and question their own beliefs and knowledge acquired mainly by the government and church’s influence. I loved the part that talks about humanism, especially the part about liberal arts. I always wondered why the term “liberal arts” was used, and I guess I finally got the answer. “The liberal arts are what are studied by free people and in turn are those arts whose studies make one free” (Knox). Having knowledge gives a person power to make decisions and therefore it makes you free.
The Renaissance was a time of change, growth and self expression, artists found in there creations a way to express their feelings, concerns and excitements of that time, and they did it in a beautiful way. The Italian Renaissance served as an example for other countries in Europe to do the same. One of my favorite examples is Spain. In the XVI century Spain’s military activity in Italy brought the Renaissance into the country. The press growth and the Italian Renaissance were the main factors that influenced the beginning of the Spanish Golden Age. The Golden Age is the period of time when the most amazing artistic works in Spain were created, mainly in literature.
I wonder if there is a modern time period that could be compared to the Renaissance. Could we compare this century when all the new technology is being used to create amazing works of art? What would be the main differences between the types of art?

Wikipedia 3

1. The article is 2837 words.
2. The Search term I used was Bartholomew’s Massacre and the exact title is “ St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre”
3. The disambiguation link brought me back to the exact same article.
4. In the discussion box there are a couple comments complaining about this article being biased and not using proper information to describe the Massacre. They say that the article is based on fantasy instead of facts. They also mentioned that the most recent edits are partisan.
5. In the History of the article I found that there were at least 500 changes, the earliest was on 12/30/2002 and the latest on 9/8/2008.
6. There are 3 external links provided.
7. There are 10 references.
8. There is one entry on further reading.

This article talks about the horrible massacre that happen in France (starting in Paris) because of the conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church and the Huguenots (the French Calvinist Protestants). It first gives some background information on why this Massacre happened. The main reasons were the end of the Third War of Religion, the marriage between Henry III of Navarre and Marguerite of Valois and attempt to murder the Admiral of Coligny.
This article then narrates how the massacres happened and the parts of France were they took place. Then it gives us some detail of the reactions and what happened after the massacres.
When I first read this article I thought it had good information, but after reading the Discussion in made me realize that it is indeed biased. I would recommend reading it to see one side of the story, but I would definitely encourage the reader to further investigate the other side of the story.

Team work!

While reading about the struggles between the Parliament and the King, it made me think a lot about how important was to create a set of laws that would control how much power each political entity has and the boundaries and limits that must be respected.
In England, the Parliament and the King divided the army. Some members of the army would be loyal to the king and some to the Parliament. Just imagine what would happen these days if we did not have a Constitution that would regulate a balance between powers. With all the different opinions and controversy about the U.S. military intervention in other countries, we would end up having a war within the country!
It is very important to realize that back in those days the Parliament was constituted by members of the church, nobles and other powerful people. The combination of all of their personal interests and beliefs were contradictory to those of the King Charles I. After reading about Charles I, I had the impression that he wanted to rule the country without any advice. Through history we’ve learned that the best governments are those who have a good balance among powers. In this case Charles I wanted to leave the Parliament on the side, at some point he was ignoring his pleas. The Parliament was so desperate to be heard that hey had to hold him down to make him listen to them. Charles I did not like this behavior so he went 11 years without calling another Parliament. There was also a conflict of religious beliefs. Charles I supported Catholic religion, while the Parliament was Protestant. The King did not have a positive attitude towards Protestants.
Whenever the King felt like he was in trouble he would turn to the Parliament for help, but then again he would turn his back on them at some point.
The Parliament ended up dividing because of opposing religious and political views among its members, and the King wasn’t able to moderate the situation. When Charles noticed that the Parliament was taking control, he ordered to arrest 5 of its members. The Parliament was afraid of military action, so they tried to get the army to respond to them. When Charles saw this he ignored and rejected the bill, and instead, he raised his own army. This is how a Civil War started. At some point in this war the Parliament was ready to make peace, but Charles I refused to listen to them because he was winning battles and feeling powerful. The Scots became an allied against the King. Oliver Cromwell emerged as the radical’s leader, and with his leadership they became ready to take over the King. The Parliament’s army became very powerful including members from all over the nation. They finally defeated the King. When Charles I found himself defeated, he tried to make negotiations with the Parliament, but Cromwell was sick of him. The Parliament brought the King to a final trial, where he was convicted for treason and sentenced to be executed. This was the first public execution of King in Europe.
This episode of history shows how bad things go and how much violence and drama is created when the powers within a government can’t agree and make decisions together. Right now the USA is going through a very important period of change in the government, and the only way things will actually have a positive change is if the powers support each other and find ways to make decisions that will benefit the country, even if not all of them have the same ideas and beliefs.

Religion to the fullest

It was very interesting to finally read something about the Christian religion that I agree with. I have always disagreed with people that are religious just because they don’t know any better or because they are afraid of opening their minds and analyze their beliefs. I enjoy seeing a person who truly enjoys his beliefs and that is completely in love with his religion.
In this history course we have been learning a lot about the development of Catholics and Christians and how the religion was mainly used as a weapon to control people and gain power. Of course there were always people who were truly believers, but the people in power were using it with a different purpose.
Martin Luther King’s “The Freedom of a Christian” was truly enjoyable to read. He found a way to explain what a true Christian is. Martin Luther King says “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful of all, and a subject to anyone”. This view of a Christian is just amazing, and it applies to all religious people no matter what religion they are from. You have to be the one in control of yourself and your surroundings, but at the same time live to help and serve others. This is the perfect balance and something we never saw in religion in previous chapters. If people would have these ideas in the past, they could’ve prevented many wars and violence mainly in the Middle Ages.
Martin Luther King also explains that if you are not true to your religion, you would be performing labors to justify your faith and save yourself and not following the spiritual principles of the religion. This was also very common in the Middle Ages, where people would fight to gain power and conquer new places using their religion as a shield to justify their actions.
“The law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Tim. i. 9). Laws were created because men could not peacefully live and govern themselves, sadly we need rules to be able to interact and respect each other freedom.

Church Rules!

Once again the most interesting topic from this section had to do with religion. I have always believed that religion is something very personal and nobody should be allowed to tell you how to experience it and live it. In the Middle Ages religion was imposed in a horrible way. It was the perfect tool to keep people under control and benefited political interests. You weren’t allowed to question it, so people would simply believe what they were told for fear of being hurt. When people began to show more interest in education, the church wasn’t happy because the more intellectual people became, the more they started questioning their beliefs. The rise of popular Heresies was the reading I was waiting for. After reading all those documents about how religion was developing in the ancient and middle ages, I was thinking: “when will people start questioning “the revealed truth”!!!!”
The rise of anti-clericalism is totally understandable. People started to get more educated what led to more research and examination of the “revealed truth”. From all that research there were some documents written by scholars that made people curious about questioning their beliefs. Also, in those times the Church was deeply involved with politics, Church was way stronger than any other form of government. The Church’s political interests led to inciting civil wars in countries like Germany, what caused a lot of suffering to their people. People also realized that churches were spending a lot of money in their buildings instead of helping the poor, and their main focus was on the wealthy people instead of on those that needed more economic help.
Church didn’t focus in the spiritual side, for me Church seemed to be just another political party that took possession of the government. When people realized all of that they began to think for themselves and changed their beliefs. Could it be possible that nowadays Church’s interests are similar but they are approaching people in different way?

Humanity

I enjoyed reading the 12th century Renaissance. It seemed that in this century people of all classes started to be more concerned about there human side and began to care about growing in every way. If we analyze what was going on at that time, we will be able to see how the changes in the government, education and religion influenced each other.
“Christianity was the matrix of medieval time” (Lectures on Ancient and Medieval European History). Every single aspect of everyday life was influenced by the religion. And in the 12th century Christianity was more oriented towards men, it became more human. I believe that one of the reasons why religion became more human was because people became more intellectual and instead of just believing what they were told to believe they started to analyze their beliefs. For this reason they became more optimistic towards their way of experiencing religion and wouldn’t believe or accept that half of the world would be damned forever. People were ready to have a more personal and intense religion experience.
The government had significant changes as well. People began to be concerned about justice. Before they would trust mainly in divine justice and rule society by God’s laws. The change in religion influenced people to believe that there should be a more efficient justice system. People started to be more concerned about safety and the solution of legal issues. There was also a growing desire for learning. Thousands of men and women were eager to expand their knowledge, which didn’t make the Church very happy. But the Church couldn’t do anything about it and there were a constantly increasing number of students. Because the old monastic and cathedral schools couldn’t absorb all of them, the students move to different places to find education. This is how the universities of Oxford, Paris and Bologna were founded.
In the 12th century people were very interested in bettering themselves. The most interesting part is that material riches weren’t their main goal, it was the spiritual and intellectual enrichment that mattered.

Vikings

From this period the most interesting culture for me was the Vikings. Because of television and movies, I used to have the idea that Vikings were drunken men with long beards and funny hats always sailing in the sea in big boats. But the truth is that they were much more than that. The first thing that surprised me was the fact that their culture lasted over 300 hundred years. By terrorizing places that were not well defended, they were able to subdue an area and settle down with their own people. They would remain in that area sometimes for several years and sometimes forever. They always targeted places that were full of riches and at the same time were weak and easy to conquer. They ended up conquering and settling down in places from Kievan Russia, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, England and France.
The Vikings were polytheist in the beginning, but once their royalty began to convert into Christianity, most of them became Christian. Once again, Christianity was so powerful that could take over a strong culture like the Vikings. My question is, did the Vikings change their ways of conquering and terrorizing people once they became Christian? Or was Christianity just a new shield to protect their culture?

WIKIPEDIA 2

This article talks about Pepin the Short, also called Pepin III and Pepin the Young. It describes how his father Charles Mantel divided the rule of the Frankish kingdom, between Pepin and his elder brother Carloman, when he died. The brothers pass the power to Childeric who then was taken off the power when Pepin was named king. It also talks about the expansion of the Frankish realm and this article shows a chart of Pepin’s family.

1. Article is 1,600 words.
2. Search term: Pepin Article name: Pepin the short.
3. No disambiguation link.
4. In the discussion I found a couple people trying to get the name Pepin changed to Pippin, which is the actual name in German. And they also mentioned that the title “the short” is a mistranslation.
5. There are 500 changes, the earliest on 2/3/2006 and the latest on 5/4/2008.
6. No external links provided.
7. No references.
8. No further reading.

I would recommend this article to people that just want basic information about Pepin the Short. But I wouldn’t recommend it for a serious research because there weren’t any references and that makes the article’s information a little hard to trust.

Religion

Once again in this part of history we can see how much the religion and church influenced changes and conquest of empires. Charles was trying to impose Christianity all over west Europe. The rejection of Christianity by the Saxons was his reason to begin a war and destroy their culture. He forced them to convert to Christianity. Charles founded monasteries and villages and filled them with Franks. He destroyed their pagan temples, just like he did before in other cultures, and removed the Saxon peasants.
Then he wanted to conquer Spain because it was mostly Muslim at the time, and wanted to impose his Christianity as well.
All the different forms of government he structured had a representative from the church as well. All the important decisions taken in the empire were highly influenced by the church.
Religion at that time seemed to be the weapon used to conquer. It didn’t have a lot of the meaning it has nowadays. It wasn’t focused that much on spirituality or on the recognition of good and evil. Church was a political institution that ruled with fear and violence.

Religion shouldn't creat borders....

My favorite reading from this week was the one about Islam and Muslims. It was great to understand a little bit more about this religion and culture. It is always very important to acquire knowledge about cultures that surround us, and the Muslim culture, especially in the USA, is growing rapidly.
The media always gives us an idea about Muslims that it is not completely true. We usually rely our understanding on information we get from movies, TV and newspapers. It was until I came to the USA to college that I had an opportunity to be close to Muslims and I learned more about the Islam.
It was only after de attack from 9/11 that me (and probably lots of other people) paid more attention to the Muslims. Before that all I’ve heard was that: Arabs = Muslims, Arabs ride camels and have magic carpets, and Islam is a crazy wronged religion.
When I met Muslim people I learned that the Islam and the Catholicism have a lot in common. Both religions talk about the angel Gabriel bringing knowledge about God to a very important icon within the religion. In Islam it was to Muhammad and in Catholicism it was to Virgin Mary. Both religions also believe in Jesus Christ, for Catholics they believe he was God’s son, and in Islam they believe he was a prophet. Overall both religions are about following God’s rules, preaching God’s word, daily praying and help people in need.
If people cared more about learning about other religions, they would find out that all of them in the end have the same purpose, to be a good human being. Each person lives their religion in their own particular way, some are more passionate and some like to keep it private, but as long as outcome is to be a good person and help and respect others, then who cares which God you believe in or what religion you like?

Feminists would love this!

One more time, I find Aristotle’s thinking very interesting. In the reading “Aristotle: On a good wife”, he finds a way to describe, something that nowadays would sound completely misogynic, in a beautiful way. In the present time, if that reading went public, it would cause a huge controversy. Feminists and women in general, would freak out and complain because the reading seems to portray women as if they were worth less than men. But I am pretty sure that in the ancient times, this was written to persuade women to be good wives and to empower them.
Throughout the whole reading he expresses the obligations, qualities and characteristics that a good wife must have. He refers to women as the ones that control the house and everything that go on inside their homes. Women are also in charge of raising the children well. If you think about it, the most important things in their lives and their families were completely ruled by women. In those ancient times men thought that women weren’t as smart as them and for this reason women weren’t expected to make decisions. But inside their homes they had control over everything; men weren’t even expected to have knowledge all the passes within the house.
“Her husband’s wishes are as laws appointed for her by divine will”, this was like a law back then, but is it really that different nowadays?
I found it interesting that women would take care of the house, manage home finances and serve their husbands, all of this in exchange for loyalty, love and guidance from their husbands. A good wife deserved to be loved and be treated with respect, and men had that clear in their minds.
Nowadays, women keep trying to prove men their independence by not dedicating their whole time to their homes and children. Women feel empowered when they have the option to face the world just as men do. My question is: which family structure works better? Should independent working women not have a family and just dedicate their time to their professional life? Is there an actual balance?

My hero!

While reading about the Punic wars I kept following the story as if it was a movie. I could picture how Rome was getting stronger by acquiring knowledge from the war. How they learned to make war at sea, how they made their war tools more effective by improving their technology and how these things helped them to conduct war in a massive scale. Rome seemed to be unstoppable until a “hero” showed up. Hannibal was truly amazing for me, just like a legendary hero in a movie would be. He began by taking the after Hamilcar’s (his father) death, and took the Carthaginian war to another level. His brilliant plan was to get Rome’s allies on his side because he knew they were unhappy. He wanted to show them that he could protect and take care of them as long as they stood by his side. Hannibal’s army was very small; invading Italy seemed to be an impossible task. The Romans thought that they could contain Hannibal in Spain, and because of their enormous power they didn’t feel a threat. But Hannibal proved them wrong. When he escaped from Spain he surprised the Roman armies by slipping northward, crossing the river by pontoons and swimming. They crossed using elephants as their transportation. He defeated the Roman army on Gaul. Now his biggest challenge came across, he needed to cross The Alps, and of course he did. But it wasn’t easy, the crossing cost him the death of most of the elephants and many men. When he arrived to Italy the task of convincing the allies to join him began. When the Roman senate realized this, they targeted the same objective. The following battles were with the purpose of proving to the allies who could take better care of them, whoever would achieve having the allies on their side would become the most powerful. Another amazing victory, totally movie hero like, was the Battle of Cannae. The Roman’s army outnumbered Hannibal’s army by a large amount, but Hannibal had the perfect plan to defeat them. “Out of the 70,000 Romans that took the field, only 10,000 survived” (The Punic Wars, Battle of Cannae). Hannibal was unbeatable, he was becoming a legend and everyone fear and respected him. But like every hero, his victories had to come to an end. He faced an enemy that was as clever and tricky as him, Scipio, who defeated him and his army in the battle of Zama. Hannibal surrender and advised Carthage to surrender as well. Hannibal died before his time, it was very possible that he was poisoned. But like a hero he remained in history, his memory brought fear to the Romans even after his death.
Learning about these legendary heroes brought up the following question for me: Why don’t we have this type of heroes nowadays? How big of a change in our society and government a hero like Hannibal would make?

WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE #1

In the article they explain how Ancient Greek Philosophy was a great influence for modern philosophy. The article begins by explaining the thought of the pre-socratic philosophers, who were concerned with what exists, how and where it comes from.
The article focuses mainly in Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. Socrates thought that a person should always try to do well by knowing ourselves. He taught Plato, who was one of the most influential philosophers in Western thought. He expressed his view on ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge and human life. Plato taught Aristotle who better earned the label of empiricist. He developed the Scientific method.
The article also takes us to see the influence of the Greek Philosophy into other cultures.



1. The article is 1358 words long.
2. I used Greek Philosophy as the search term and the article’s name is “Greek Philosophy”
3. There was no disambiguation link for this Wikipedia article.
4. In the discussion page I found many interesting comments about disagreements with the article. The one that stood out the most was a guy that made a correction to whoever wrote the Article. The author stated that Socrates taught both Aristotle and Plato. The reader made the correction that Socrates only taught Plato and Plato, with Socrates’ influence, taught Aristotle. The author corrected the article.
5. There have been 500 changes made to the article. The first change was on 1/19/2003 and the last change on 9/8/2008.
6. There are 2 external links provided.
7. There are 7 references listed.

I would recommend this article to someone that it is interested in just knowing the basics about Greek Philosophy. This article has very superficial information, especially when it comes to describe the biography and input of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato on philosophy.

Rule or Ruled?

Once again I find Aristotle’s opinion very interesting. In “The Politics---On Slavery” Aristotle mentions that slavery is necessary for a well-functioned society. The superior beings must rule over the inferiors. According to him there are three ways to determine who must rule and who must be ruled over.

Before explaining the three ways, I must say that it is understandable that he had this opinion because of the way the society worked back in the Ancient Greek culture, but nowadays his views wouldn’t apply.

First, he says that men are by nature marked to rule over women. In the Ancient Greek culture, women were not allowed to make important decisions or even have an opinion when it came to serious matters like politics, economy, military, etc. Those things were completely controlled by men. The few women that dared to have an opinion or rebelled to the men were called evil and dangerous and usually exiled or punished. It was a society merely ruled by men.

Second, he mentioned that depending on the physical and mental capabilities men were marked to rule or be ruled over. Some men had the body to do physical work, but not the brain to discuss politics and war and vice versa.

And third slavery by law, which means that whatever is taken from war, belongs to the victorious. If nation has a stronger army or forces, has the power to rule over the weaker ones.

My opinion is that nobody is born to rule or be ruled over. Women have the intelligence and strength to be as or more powerful than men. Humans have the same mental and physical abilities to acquire any kind of knowledge and experience to make important decisions and take action. But I understand that back in the day, government forms were just being formed and for them to actually work, they needed to really stand out and define who was to rule and who to be ruled.

Equality,,,why not?

While reading “Aristotle: The Polis, from Politics” I came to realize how important and beneficial would be to live in a society where the middle class would be the predominant.  I came to realize that not only in the ancient times, but nowadays, the people with better looks, more money and better social status are more powerful and have more influence in the way the society is ruled than the ones that lack of these “qualities”.  Aristotle mentions that the ideal state would be constituted by individuals who are equal and similar.  This wouldn’t prevent the society from so much negative competition, envy and violence caused by the huge pressure that we have to obtain a higher social status.  Like Aristotle mentions: “It has now become a habit among the citizens of the state, not even to care about equality, all men are seeking for dominion, or, if conquered, are willing to submit”.  Why are we afraid of equality?

The idea that the state is created by nature is very interesting too.  I never saw this point of view about our social structure.  As Aristotle says, “A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature”, we were created with the ability to speak and with the need to coexist with others.  And a state is formed by that relationship between individuals and the social needs and circumstances of each of them.