#fifteenth century illustrations

[artifacts-archive]

Crib of the Infant Jesus

South Netherlandish, 15th century

Miniature cradles for the Christ Child were popular devotional objects in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were venerated, especially in convents, where they were often presented to women taking their vows. This splendid cradle comes from the Grand Béguinage of Louvain, Belgium, established for lay women in the twelfth century. It is decorated with carved representations of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi on either end. The biblical family tree of Christ is illustrated on the embroidered coverlet.

[bracketsoffear]

Codex Seraphinianus (Luigi Serafini) "The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. It has been compared to the still undeciphered Voynich manuscript, the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, and the artwork of M. C. Escher and Hieronymus Bosch. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed. The false writing system appears modeled on Western writing systems, with left-to-right writing in rows and an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals. Some letters appear only at the beginning or end of words, similar to Semitic writing systems. The curvilinear letters are rope- or thread-like, with loops and even knots, and are somewhat reminiscent of Sinhala script. In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles […] Serafini stated that there is no meaning behind the Codex's script, which is asemic; that his experience in writing it was similar to automatic writing; and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey was the sensation children feel with books they cannot yet understand, although they see that the writing makes sense for adults. Take a look for yourself"

Voynich Manuscript (Unknown) "Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. It's a strange code describing alchemical formulae and unknown life forms, and no one understands it. It's a mystery waiting for you to lose yourself in its pages, as Voynich himself was lost. There's an episode of Mystery Files about it!"

[kaalbela]

Basawan and Suraj Gujrati. Illustration from Baburnama or Memoirs of Babur, ca. 183-1530.

Baburnama is an autobiographical account by Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, a descendant of Timur and the first Mughal king of India. The miniatures are from an illustrated copy of the Baburnama prepared for the author's grandson, the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Akbar’s commissions were divided up among teams of artists working at the court, and often two painters collaborated on a single image, in addition to the calligraphers. This particular illustration is attributed to Basawan, responsible for the composition and the drawing, and Suraj Gujarati, who painted it. The miniatures reflect the culture of the Mughal court at Delhi, and are important as evidence of the tradition of exquisite miniature painting which developed at the court of Timur and his successors. Timurid miniatures are among the greatest artistic achievements of the Islamic world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

[mapsontheweb]

Spain and the Spanish Indies

A map illustrating one of the most significant processes of the early modern period - the rise and decline of Spain between the late fifteenth and the late seventeenth centuries. From a patchwork of kingdoms in the north of the Iberian peninsula, the Habsburg Spain grew into a global imperial superpower ruling, at its height, not only large territories in Europe but also vast portions of the Americas, Africa, and numerous islands in the Pacific and Oceania.

[sunnyrealist]

🌶️ Chapter 29: Surprises in Store 🌶️

The Sun, the Moon, and All Our Stars

Summary and Details…

Art: This chapter's illustration was created by @giselsann-opencommissions. The full picture (NSFW) is under the cut. MDNI!

Chapter Background and Summary: Sebastian and Kate have been seeing each other sporadically over the course of the workweek. In this chapter, Kate has her final day of the school year at the Hogwarts library - it's officially summer! It's also the first day of Sebastian's weeklong vacation from work. Sebastian has something truly exciting planned for the evening, and the next chapter will start their camping trip into the Scottish Highlands.

Pairing: Aged-up, post-Azkaban Sebastian Sallow x Kate Mayflower (my OC)

Content warnings: In general, this story is rated 18+, so MNDI! This chapter features girl-on-top sex and talk of commitments and intentions.

The full chapter is available below the cut; it can also be found on AO3 (link is posted below). Please leave some feedback. A comment, like, or Kudos would be quite motivational!

Chapter 29: Surprises in Store

A weight was lifted from Kate’s shoulders the moment she stepped out of Hogwarts into the courtyard on Friday, feeling the warmth of the evening sun. All tension disappeared. She felt as though she could really, truly breathe again. The air had never smelled so fresh, so sweet, so full of promise.

Summer. Finally, finally summer.

The library had been practically dead that day, save for a few students sprinting into the library to return their books at the absolute last minute before making their way to the train station. Kate’s last pupil interaction of the term had been with a first-year Ravenclaw - a young boy with desperate eyes, begging to take home a pile of books (“Or even just one, if I can’t take them all!”). Kate was just about to give in, when Agnes swooped in and put a cruel end to the plea, snatching his books. He trudged out with tears in his eyes. Kate tried not to dwell on it for too long, but she knew that may have been that boy’s final, lasting memory of the 1898-1899 school year. Upset, she decided to tidy up another area of the library to avoid Agnes for a while. Merlin knew there were plenty of messes.

Time spent cleaning gave her a wonderful idea - to grab some books for Sebastian for the summer that she could store at her cottage. Of course, she wasn’t entirely sure what he had already read, but she nabbed several books in different genres - Flesh-Eating Trees of the World, Confronting the Faceless, Gateway to the Far Stars, The Flap of the Cape, Fifteenth-Century Fiends, Sonnets of the Sorcerer, Most Macabre Monstrosities, The Noble Sport of Warlocks, and Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires. During her break, she took them out to the Owlery and had four owls take the books to her home. They would be waiting for her retrieval.

Now, officially walking past the Hogwarts boundary, Kate audibly lets out an exhale. Since the weather is so pleasant, she decides against apparating the entire way home. With only a few clouds in the sapphire sky, the rays of sunshine on her face, the sound of birds chirping, she has nothing but happy thoughts in her mind. 

She’ll get to see Sebastian again tonight. 

Kate’s heart feels as though it physically blooms when she pictures his smiling face, hearing his laughter, imagining his hand on her arm and his lips on her cheek. And not only will she see him tonight, but tomorrow, and probably every single night for the entire week, since his work holiday begins today as well.

A calm breeze lifts a few wisps of her blonde hair momentarily, and as she passes a patch of daffodils, they begin to honk, and she laughs in response. No matter how many times it happens, she always giggles. They’re some of her favorite flowers. She attempts to smooth out the hairs that escaped her updo to no avail, and she eventually gives up, not caring enough to try harder. She checks that the little yellow flowers in her hairstyle are at least still in place, and after confirming, that is enough to satisfy her.

Her camping trip with Sebastian begins tomorrow morning. She is fully prepared, having spent the entire Thursday evening cooking and baking. Kate had argued with Sebastian to let her contribute to their vacation in some way and finally got him to agree to let her take care of meals and snacks and beverages. Thank Merlin she had learned all those tricks for preserving food from the house elves in the Hogwarts kitchen years ago, or it may have been far more challenging. 

Packing was not the easiest task, either. Sebastian had advised her to not be fooled into thinking the temperature would reflect the summer season, as they were trekking into the cold mountains of the Scottish Highlands. Sweaters, jackets, sturdy boots, and scarves were a must, as were trousers, which Kate was not opposed to but normally would not choose unless it was truly the most practical choice. Her only “skirts” packed were pantaloons - trousers made to look like skirts. A couple of long nightgowns were also thrown into her bag, just in case, though Kate couldn’t imagine wearing them to bed unless it truly was freezing. Sebastian would keep her warm, and most likely, he would take the nightgown off, anyway… She smiled to herself, her cheeks turning a little pink.

Good gods, the sex. Based on how her friends would talk, she knew she had lucked into something - someone - rare. A man who would put her pleasure first and only then think about himself. With Sebastian’s lack of relationship experience, it was truly wild that he knew exactly what to do and when. Kate’s heart had never felt so open, so trusting, that it was not at all daunting to explore and discover what she actually liked in bed. Being tasted, the thrill of being tied up, her hair being pulled, the explosion of climaxing more than once - all things she had never thought to try or thought she’d be able to try… and yet she and Sebastian had hardly been in an official relationship for a week! What surprises would be in store on their trip?

If it wasn’t a camping trip, Kate would have packed a fancy set of lingerie for each night and made her own surprises for Sebastian. She smirks to herself at the thought.

Thinking of her chestnut-haired lover, she realizes he never confirmed when he might be finished with work that night. Could he already be at her home? She had promised a dinner, and yet, after all of the work she had done in the kitchen last night, cooking could not have sounded less enticing. She sighed. Maybe she’d see what Sirona had on the menu and take food home…

A half hour later, Kate strolls out of the Three Broomsticks with a smile and two large cloth bags filled with containers of fish and chips, along with two glass bottles of butterbeer. She immediately places a warming charm on the bags. Then, worried she would arrive home later than Sebastian, finally decides to apparate the rest of the way to her cottage. 

With a crack, Kate lands right into her living room.

“Sebastian?” she calls out. 

There is no answer. 

She shrugs and begins to move towards the kitchen to deposit the food when she suddenly stops dead in her tracks and practically drops the bags. Her eyes go wide, and her mouth falls open.

Where once there was an empty wall, it is empty no longer. 

There stands the green upright piano Kate had pointed out to Sebastian just last weekend, adorned with a huge white bundle of ribbons to mark it as a gift. 

Kate had envisioned it so many times - how it would look, how its color and white painted flowers would perfectly match the walls and decor in the living room, how much joy it would bring - but now that it is here, the reality is far beyond her imagination. 

As though she is almost afraid it might disappear - or that it isn’t actually there, she steps forward gingerly and lightly presses a finger to a key, which instantly produces a beautiful, rich sound. She gasps. It is real, and it’s actually in her home. She runs her hand gently over the top of the piano, gazing upon it with admiration. 

When her fingertips touch the corner of an envelope, her eyes narrow in surprise, as she had not noticed it before. She opens it carefully to find a handwritten note inside, which almost immediately causes her to cry. 

My darling Kate,

I saw this caught your eye and could not resist buying it for you.

If my intentions for you have not already been clear, let me be frank. I can’t wait to listen to you play for the rest of our lives.

Yours,

S

Two hours later, Sebastian still hasn’t come home.

Kate has been pacing back and forth, from the kitchen to the end of the hallway to the living room and back again, for about 15 minutes now, thinking about how she will greet him after receiving such an expensive and meaningful gift. 

Finally, she sighs and decides to give up her aimless wandering. She’s been waiting eagerly for so long she hasn’t even really played the piano yet - just a few notes here and there.

Kate strolls to the empty room - the one that will one day become a study - to look for sheet music. Crouching down, she blows dust off of the top of a wooden chest, then opens it. Inside are all of her personal books, including two books with piano sheet music by Frederic Chopin and Claude Debussy. Clutching them to her chest, she hurries back to the piano.

For the very first time, she pulls out the bench and sits. Opening her Chopin book, she selects “Prelude in E Minor” and places it on the stand. Adjusting her position, she readies her foot over the pedal and straightens her back and shoulders. Then, she begins to play. 

One song after another, Kate’s soul begins to lift higher and higher. She smiles as she plays, even though she is making countless mistakes. They can be fixed later, with practice. 

When she is partway through the Raindrop Prelude, she hears the door open and close.

Standing up, Kate quickly runs and throws her arms around Sebastian, embracing him tightly. “I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Sebastian drops his large, dragon-hide bag and returns the hug eagerly, kissing the top of her head. “I love you, my sun. You deserve it. You deserve the world. And I’ll bring it all to you if I can.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” Kate murmurs, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “It was so expensive, Sebastian. How did you-”

He cuts her off. “Please don’t worry about it. I came upon some money, and had to use most of my savings, but it was worth it. You are worth it.” Tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, he cups her cheek as he gazes into her eyes. “I am serious about you, Kate. You’re my dream now - my future. I…” He begins, hesitating for a moment, then summons his courage. “Please accept the gift as a commitment. I want to court you with the intention of marriage. I am very serious about this, my sun.”

A shiver of excitement runs down Kate’s spine and settles in her belly. “As am I, my moon. I mean it. Someday… I believe we will be married. And this will be our home.”

Sebastian’s smile is wide as he picks Kate up and swings her around. When he carefully puts her back down, they kiss in a way they never have before - with intent, with trust, with pure joy. When Kate pulls away to take a breath, his lips chase hers, unwilling to part. With every step backward, he moves forward until her arse meets the piano bench. He crouches down, scooping her up and carrying her carefully to the bedroom, as if she is a princess to his knight.

Back on her feet once more, Kate kisses Sebastian passionately as his hands move over her clothed body. A needy moan escapes her as his hands find her breasts, cupping and squeezing eagerly. Her own hands graze up and down his torso. She begins to unbutton his tan vest, and he follows her cue, unbuttoning her white blouse. Slowly - so, so, so slowly, they undress each other until nothing remains but a pile of clothes on the floor.

“I’ll never get tired of you,” Sebastian whispers, transfixed by her naked form. “Never. Not in a year, not in a decade, not when we’re old.” He kisses her, ghosting his hand over her stomach. “Not after I put a ring on your finger, not when you swell with our children… or anytime after. I’ll always want you. Always.”

Kate inhales sharply at the mention of children - their children.

“You’ll always be my sun princess,” he whispers, kissing down her neck. “And I’ll worship you accordingly.” Moving down her collarbone, he places a kiss on each breast. “Gods, I love you. You know these are perfect, yeah? I’ve never seen such gorgeous tits. All of you is perfect, absolutely bloody gorgeous. You look like an angel.”

“Oh, Merlin!” Kate cries out as Sebastian’s lips encircle her nipple, sucking sharply. 

One of her hands fists itself in his hair, while the other glides down his toned, solid abdomen, through his pubic hair, until it reaches his thick cock. Her fingers lightly trace over his length, then cup his balls. Still flicking his tongue over her breast, a moan escapes him when she finally grasps his arousal. He switches to her other nipple, latching on and sucking hard, when she whimpers.

“Merlin, the noises you make,” Sebastian begins as he briefly takes in air. “They drive me wild, Kate.”

He groans as she begins to pump his dick steadily, his tip leaking precum. Her fingers become coated in it, and then her hold tightens as her hand moves back and forth more quickly. His lips make their way back up to hers, and their kissing is hungry and frenzied. Sebastian deepens it, his tongue sliding over her lower lip before dancing with hers. His knee presses between her legs, urging them to open, and then his fingers reach her cunt. 

“Gods, you’re so wet,” he whispers breathlessly.

He teases Kate’s clit relentlessly until she is trembling, then pushes his fingers into her entrance as she cries out. 

“Bash,” she whines. “Bash…”

Mimicking lovemaking, he fucks her with his fingers, in and out, in and out, until she’s whimpering and begging. 

“Bash, please… Please… I want you…” 

Sebastian kisses her lips tenderly, slowly pulling his slick fingers out. Panting, he chokes out, “How… How do you want me?”

Kate turns them around and maneuvers him backwards towards the bed. “I want to ride you,” she whispers in response.

His eyebrows raise as he pulls away from her, getting on the bed and laying down flat with a huge grin on his face. “I love you.”

She follows him onto the bed, positioning her legs around his hips. She leans down to kiss him, smiling with adoration. “I love you, too.”

There is a brief moment in which nothing happens. They gaze into each other’s eyes, hearts racing.

“I want to be close to you,” she murmurs, placing her hands under his back. 

Understanding her meaning, he sits up, pulling her body flush against his. She adjusts her position as she feels his tip poking against her center. 

“Sebastian,” she breathes out as she begins to lower herself onto him, her hands on his shoulders. “I love you.”

He groans as she begins to envelope him in her warmth, wrapping his arms around her. “I love you, my Kate, my- my future…” he trails off.

When Sebastian is completely sheathed within her, she takes a moment to adjust to the intrusion. Both of them breathe heavily, overwhelmed by the feeling. Her fingers weave into his thick hair, while her other hand glides over his shoulder to explore his back, covered with the scars of his past. Feeling more comfortable with them than she ever was before, she gingerly ghosts her fingers back and forth.

“They don’t hurt,” he murmurs, to assuage her. “You don’t have to be so careful.”

Growing more confident, she presses her fingers harder against his marred skin, then leans in, their lips almost touching. Their heavy breathing is the only sound filling the air until she closes the small distance and captures his lips in a deep, tender kiss.

When they pull apart, Kate begins to move atop him. Both of them are flushed, panting hard, as she brings her hips up and down, over and over again. She places her other hand upon his shoulder for more leverage, crying out as the pleasure increases. He is so deep inside of her now that she can’t help but shriek every time her hips fall back upon him. He’s moaning, too, breathing out her name and other unintelligible words of praise.

Sebastian begins to thrust up into her when she brings her hips down, finding a rhythm that has them both whimpering as they chase after their impending orgasms. Kate’s breasts bounce with each stroke, and strands of her hair start to escape her updo and fall into her face. Her cheeks are bright pink, her lips swollen. Both of them, but especially Sebastian, are beginning to perspire, bodies shining with sweat. Wet smacking sounds fill the room.

“I- oh- Seb!” Kate whines, each syllable punctuated by her movements. “I’m- I’m not going to- to last…”

Sebastian lets out a heavy exhale. “That’s it… come on, darling… let it out…” He bites his lip, breathing through his nose.

All at once, fireworks appear behind her eyelids, engulfed by a bright white light as she falls into sweet oblivion. Sebastian continues to thrust into her, grunting as her walls close in all around him, pushing him over the edge as well. He groans loudly as he pushes hard as he can, his seed exploding into her depths.

Kate and Sebastian continue to lazily rock against each other through it until they both come down from their respective highs. He kisses down her neck and back up again until their lips meet once more. Ever so gently, he pushes her down onto the bed, pressing his lips to hers over and over again, even though they’re both out of breath. She groans when he carefully pulls out of her, feeling the loss immediately.

“My love,” he whispers, peppering kisses all over her face. “My one and only.”

“Sebastian…” she whispers back, running her hands over his scarred back. “My love…”

“I’ll get a towel and some water,” he rasps, moving to get up from the bed. 

“No, wait - not yet,” she begs, placing a hand on his arm. “Stay with me for a minute.”

Sebastian rolls over onto her side. He holds her close and combs his hands through her hair. Kate gazes up at him in wonder.

“Someday, I’ll kiss every single one of your freckles,” she whispers breathily.

“I know you will,” he replies. “I know.”

The rest of the evening goes fast. 

Dinner is absolutely wolfed down.

There is little time to enjoy the new piano, as packing and ensuring the household chores are done before their days-long trip take precedence. Leaving her garden untended would be a huge mistake, and clearly the sheets need to be laundered once more.

When Kate finishes up in the garden, she remembers about the books she picked up for Sebastian and wanders to the back of the house, where owls always deliver mail. Sure enough, the books are all waiting there. She gathers them in her arms - no easy feat for most, but Kate is a librarian and knows how to balance a large stack just right.

“I have something for you, Sebastian!” she calls out when she comes back into the cottage.

Sebastian, who had offered to make up the bed with a set of fresh sheets, bounds into the room, eyes wide when he sees the books.

“I thought you might like some books to read over the summer. I may have stolen them from the Hogwarts library,” she explains with a smile and wink. “I hope they are to your liking - I just took some from all different genres.”

Sebastian takes the pile from her and deposits them on the coffee table, examining the titles. “This is great. Thank you - thank you so much. I’m going to tear through these. They all sound interesting. Thank you.” He pulls her into an enthusiastic hug. 

Pulling away, Kate wipes perspiration from her brow from working in the garden. “Whew. I’m going to be very tired tonight.” 

“It will be good to sleep well. You’ll need your energy in the morning,” Sebastian tells her. “It would be best if we apparate by 8 am to the starting point.” He wanders over to the piano, running his hand over it. “I know we don’t have a lot of time, but could you at least play one song for me tonight?”

“Of course,” Kate replied. “I can play a song. I’ll do a short one.”

She sits down at the bench and selects sheet music for Chopin’s “Prelude Number Seven,” then glances up at Sebastian, standing behind her. “I haven’t practiced for a long time, Seb. I will probably make mistakes.” She blushes, already embarrassed. 

“I don’t care,” he gently responded, touching her shoulder. 

Kate begins to play, missing a few notes here and there but generally doing pretty well by her own standards. When she finishes, Sebastian claps softly. “Bravo!”

Kate laughs, standing up and curtsying. “Perhaps I could teach you a few simple tunes this summer, if you’d like.”

Sebastian smiles. “Sure. I’d like that a lot. Do you mind if I sit down and try it out by myself right now anyway?”

When she shakes her head, he immediately sits, closing the book of Chopin pieces, handing it to Kate. He seems to have watched her closely, mirroring how she straightened her posture and prepared her hands over the keys. Kate grins as he presses a few of the keys.

“That is a C,” she whispers in his ear. “And that note - it’s a G.”

Sebastian turns his body around and gives Kate a cheeky smile. She chuffs in response.

“Let me just try something else quick,” he murmurs and positions his hands over the keys once more.

What happens next shocks Kate. She never saw it coming.

Sebastian begins to play the opening notes of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” 

Her jaw drops.

She waits for him to stop and admit that he only knows the beginning, but he doesn’t. He keeps going, not missing any notes - playing it perfectly, with feeling. He plays louder and softer precisely when he should. 

For minutes, she simply stares, dumbfounded, as he continues. There was no such spell to give someone the ability to play a song perfectly - not that she knew, anyway…

When the song finishes, Kate whispers, “Sebastian…” She doesn’t even know how else to respond.

He turns around and nonchalantly says, “Surprise.”

“What…? How…?” she fumbles.

“I know I could have told you before, but I wanted to surprise you. My mother taught me from a young age and made me memorize everything. She considered it important for Anne and me to be able to read music and to play an instrument. ‘Music is a language, too,’ she would always say. ‘Just as important as Latin and Greek.’” He paused. “Anne quit a few years in, but I never did. I used to go to the music room at Hogwarts all the time… it helped me remember my mum and calmed me down when I was upset,” he explained softly. “It truly is a wonder we never ran into each other, Kate… Your story of how you played music reminded me so much of mine.” He turned around to face her. “And when you pointed out this piano, I knew it was the perfect gift to seal my commitment to you…” He took her hand. “We can play for each other… and teach our own children when the time comes.” He blushes deeply.

She breaks out in gooseflesh, trying to regain her composure. She smiles. “You’ll have to teach them, Seb. You’re far better than me. I’m almost embarrassed now that I’ve heard you play. Your skills put mine to shame.”

“No, no - we’ll do it together,” he replies kindly. “They’ll have so much to learn from their beautiful, talented, and kind mother.”

Kate lets out a little chuckle. Talking about children… already… is it too soon? She wrestles with the idea in her head. I know it, though… he’ll be their father. I know it.

Sebastian rises from the bench and holds her tightly to his chest, his arms around her. Practically reading her mind, he says, “If it’s too uncomfortable, we won’t talk about children yet. I just… Ever since I met you, I just want to be with you, to spend my days with you, and all that entails. I want to have children with you someday, and I wanted you to know. That’s all.”

Kate melts into his warmth. “It’s okay, Sebastian. It’s fine. I’m just… getting used to it is all.” She pauses. “Just a few months ago, I was discussing with my mother how I was slowly becoming an old maid, and tonight, I’m talking about having children with the love of my life.” She kisses his chest. “I guess life is full of surprises, isn’t it?”

[digitalnewberry]

Still thinking about the eclipse? Explore the stars, fifteenth-century style, with this 1425 cosmography textbook--full of illustrations of the cosmos and maps of Earth.

Done with this manuscript? Explore the cosmography tag at Newberry Digital Collections

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 8: Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves (continued)

Labour-unions grown after the destruction of the guilds by the State. — Their struggles. — Mutual Aid in strikes. — Co-operation. — Free associations for various purposes. — Self-sacrifice. — Countless societies for combined action under all possible aspects. — Mutual Aid in slum-life. — Personal aid.

When we examine the every-day life of the rural populations of Europe, we find that, notwithstanding all that has been done in modern States for the destruction of the village community, the life of the peasants remains honeycombed with habits and customs of mutual aid and support; that important vestiges of the communal possession of the soil are still retained; and that, as soon as the legal obstacles to rural association were lately removed, a network of free unions for all sorts of economical purposes rapidly spread among the peasants — the tendency of this young movement being to reconstitute some sort of union similar to the village community of old. Such being the conclusions arrived at in the preceding chapter, we have now to consider, what institutions for mutual support can be found at the present time amongst the industrial populations.

For the last three hundred years, the conditions for the growth of such institutions have been as unfavourable in the towns as they have been in the villages. It is well known, indeed, that when the medieval cities were subdued in the sixteenth century by growing military States, all institutions which kept the artisans, the masters, and the merchants together in the guilds and the cities were violently destroyed. The self-government and the self-jurisdiction of both, the guild and the city were abolished; the oath of allegiance between guild-brothers became an act of felony towards the State; the properties of the guilds were confiscated in the same way as the lands of the village communities; and the inner and technical organization of each trade was taken in hand by the State. Laws, gradually growing in severity, were passed to prevent artisans from combining in any way. For a time, some shadows of the old guilds were tolerated: merchants’ guilds were allowed to exist under the condition of freely granting subsidies to the kings, and some artisan guilds were kept in existence as organs of administration. Some of them still drag on their meaningless existence. But what formerly was the vital force of medieval life and industry has long since disappeared under the crushing weight of the centralized State.

In Great Britain, which may be taken as the best illustration of the industrial policy of the modern States, we see the Parliament beginning the destruction of the guilds as early as the fifteenth century; but it was especially in the next century that decisive measures were taken. Henry the Eighth not only ruined the organization of the guilds, but also confiscated their properties, with even less excuse and manners, as Toulmin Smith wrote, than he had produced for confiscating the estates of the monasteries.[295] Edward the Sixth completed his work,[296] and already in the second part of the sixteenth century we find the Parliament settling all the disputes between craftsmen and merchants, which formerly were settled in each city separately. The Parliament and the king not only legislated in all such contests, but, keeping in view the interests of the Crown in the exports, they soon began to determine the number of apprentices in each trade and minutely to regulate the very technics of each fabrication — the weights of the stuffs, the number of threads in the yard of cloth, and the like. With little success, it must be said; because contests and technical difficulties which were arranged for centuries in succession by agreement between closely-interdependent guilds and federated cities lay entirely beyond the powers of the centralized State. The continual interference of its officials paralyzed the trades; bringing most of them to a complete decay; and the last century economists, when they rose against the State regulation of industries, only ventilated a widely-felt discontent. The abolition of that interference by the French Revolution was greeted as an act of liberation, and the example of France was soon followed elsewhere.

With the regulation of wages the State had no better success. In the medieval cities, when the distinction between masters and apprentices or journeymen became more and more apparent in the fifteenth century, unions of apprentices (Gesellenverbände), occasionally assuming an international character, were opposed to the unions of masters and merchants. Now it was the State which undertook to settle their griefs, and under the Elizabethan Statute of 1563 the Justices of Peace had to settle the wages, so as to guarantee a “convenient” livelihood to journeymen and apprentices. The Justices, however, proved helpless to conciliate the conflicting interests, and still less to compel the masters to obey their decisions. The law gradually became a dead letter, and was repealed by the end of the eighteenth century. But while the State thus abandoned the function of regulating wages, it continued severely to prohibit all combinations which were entered upon by journeymen and workers in order to raise their wages, or to keep them at a certain level. All through the eighteenth century it legislated against the workers’ unions, and in 1799 it finally prohibited all sorts of combinations, under the menace of severe punishments. In fact, the British Parliament only followed in this case the example of the French Revolutionary Convention, which had issued a draconic law against coalitions of workers-coalitions between a number of citizens being considered as attempts against the sovereignty of the State, which was supposed equally to protect all its subjects. The work of destruction of the medieval unions was thus completed. Both in the town and in the village the State reigned over loose aggregations of individuals, and was ready to prevent by the most stringent measures the reconstitution of any sort of separate unions among them. These were, then, the conditions under which the mutual-aid tendency had to make its way in the nineteenth century.

Need it be said that no such measures could destroy that tendency? Throughout the eighteenth century, the workers’ unions were continually reconstituted.[297] Nor were they stopped by the cruel prosecutions which took place under the laws of 1797 and 1799. Every flaw in supervision, every delay of the masters in denouncing the unions was taken advantage of. Under the cover of friendly societies, burial clubs, or secret brotherhoods, the unions spread in the textile industries, among the Sheffield cutlers, the miners, and vigorous federal organizations were formed to support the branches during strikes and prosecutions.[298] The repeal of the Combination Laws in 1825 gave a new impulse to the movement. Unions and national federations were formed in all trades;[299] and when Robert Owen started his Grand National Consolidated Trades’ Union, it mustered half a million members in a few months. True that this period of relative liberty did not last long. Prosecution began anew in the thirties, and the well-known ferocious condemnations of 1832–1844 followed. The Grand National Union was disbanded, and all over the country, both the private employers and the Government in its own workshops began to compel the workers to resign all connection with unions, and to sign “the Document” to that effect. Unionists were prosecuted wholesale under the Master and Servant Act — workers being summarily arrested and condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehaviour lodged by the master.[300] Strikes were suppressed in an autocratic way, and the most astounding condemnations took place for merely having announced a strike or acted as a delegate in it — to say nothing of the military suppression of strike riots, nor of the condemnations which followed the frequent outbursts of acts of violence. To practise mutual support under such circumstances was anything but an easy task. And yet, notwithstanding all obstacles, of which our own generation hardly can have an idea, the revival of the unions began again in 1841, and the amalgamation of the workers has been steadily continued since. After a long fight, which lasted for over a hundred years, the right of combining together was conquered, and at the present time nearly one-fourth part of the regularly-employed workers, i.e. about 1,500,000, belong to trade unions.[301]

As to the other European States, sufficient to say that up to a very recent date, all sorts of unions were prosecuted as conspiracies; and that nevertheless they exist everywhere, even though they must often take the form of secret societies; while the extension and the force of labour organizations, and especially of the Knights of Labour, in the United States and in Belgium, have been sufficiently illustrated by strikes in the nineties. It must, however, be borne in mind that, prosecution apart, the mere fact of belonging to a labour union implies considerable sacrifices in money, in time, and in unpaid work, and continually implies the risk of losing employment for the mere fact of being a unionist.[302] There is, moreover, the strike, which a unionist has continually to face; and the grim reality of a strike is, that the limited credit of a worker’s family at the baker’s and the pawnbroker’s is soon exhausted, the strike-pay goes not far even for food, and hunger is soon written on the children’s faces. For one who lives in close contact with workers, a protracted strike is the most heartrending sight; while what a strike meant forty years ago in this country, and still means in all but the wealthiest parts of the continent, can easily be conceived. Continually, even now, strikes will end with the total ruin and the forced emigration of whole populations, while the shooting down of strikers on the slightest provocation, or even without any provocation,[303] is quite habitual still on the continent.

And yet, every year there are thousands of strikes and lock-outs in Europe and America — the most severe and protracted contests being, as a rule, the so-called “sympathy strikes,” which are entered upon to support locked-out comrades or to maintain the rights of the unions. And while a portion of the Press is prone to explain strikes by “intimidation,” those who have lived among strikers speak with admiration of the mutual aid and support which are constantly practised by them. Every one has heard of the colossal amount of work which was done by volunteer workers for organizing relief during the London dock-labourers’ strike; of the miners who, after having themselves been idle for many weeks, paid a levy of four shillings a week to the strike fund when they resumed work; of the miner widow who, during the Yorkshire labour war of 1894, brought her husband’s life-savings to the strike-fund; of the last loaf of bread being always shared with neighbours; of the Radstock miners, favoured with larger kitchen-gardens, who invited four hundred Bristol miners to take their share of cabbage and potatoes, and so on. All newspaper correspondents, during the great strike of miners in Yorkshire in 1894, knew heaps of such facts, although not all of them could report such “irrelevant” matters to their respective papers.[304]

Unionism is not, however, the only form in which the worker’s need of mutual support finds its expression. There are, besides, the political associations, whose activity many workers consider as more conducive to general welfare than the trade-unions, limited as they are now in their purposes. Of course the mere fact of belonging to a political body cannot be taken as a manifestation of the mutual-aid tendency. We all know that politics are the field in which the purely egotistic elements of society enter into the most entangled combinations with altruistic aspirations. But every experienced politician knows that all great political movements were fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of them were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm. All great historical movements have had this character, and for our own generation Socialism stands in that case. “Paid agitators” is, no doubt, the favourite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The truth, however, is that — to speak only of what I know personally — if I had kept a diary for the last twenty-four years and inscribed in it all the devotion and self-sacrifice which I came across in the Socialist movement, the reader of such a diary would have had the word “heroism” constantly on his lips. But the men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men, inspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper — and there are hundreds of them in Europe alone — has the same history of years of sacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families living without knowing what would be their food to-morrow, the husband boycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and the wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting for years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach, simply saying: “Continue; we can hold on no more!” I have seen men, dying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow and fog to prepare meetings, speaking at meetings within a few weeks from death, and only then retiring to the hospital with the words: “Now, friends, I am done; the doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades that I shall be happy if they come to see me.” I have seen facts which would be described as “idealization” if I told them in this place; and the very names of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends, will soon be forgotten when the friends, too, have passed away. In fact, I don’t know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of these few, or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great number. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred votes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of energy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And what is now done by Socialists has been done in every popular and advanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress has been promoted by like men and by a like devotion.

Co-operation, especially in Britain, is often described as “joint-stock individualism”; and such as it is now, it undoubtedly tends to breed a co-operative egotism, not only towards the community at large, but also among the co-operators themselves. It is, nevertheless, certain that at its origin the movement had an essentially mutual-aid character. Even now, its most ardent promoters are persuaded that co-operation leads mankind to a higher harmonic stage of economical relations, and it is not possible to stay in some of the strongholds of co-operation in the North without realizing that the great number of the rank and file hold the same opinion. Most of them would lose interest in the movement if that faith were gone; and it must be owned that within the last few years broader ideals of general welfare and of the producers’ solidarity have begun to be current among the co-operators. There is undoubtedly now a tendency towards establishing better relations between the owners of the co-operative workshops and the workers.

The importance of co-operation in this country, in Holland and in Denmark is well known; while in Germany, and especially on the Rhine, the co-operative societies are already an important factor of industrial life.[305] It is, however, Russia which offers perhaps the best field for the study of cooperation under an infinite variety of aspects. In Russia, it is a natural growth, an inheritance from the middle ages; and while a formally established co-operative society would have to cope with many legal difficulties and official suspicion, the informal co-operation — the artél — makes the very substance of Russian peasant life. The history of “the making of Russia,” and of the colonization of Siberia, is a history of the hunting and trading artéls or guilds, followed by village communities, and at the present time we find the artél everywhere; among each group of ten to fifty peasants who come from the same village to work at a factory, in all the building trades, among fishermen and hunters, among convicts on their way to and in Siberia, among railway porters, Exchange messengers, Customs House labourers, everywhere in the village industries, which give occupation to 7,000,000 men — from top to bottom of the working world, permanent and temporary, for production and consumption under all possible aspects. Until now, many of the fishing-grounds on the tributaries of the Caspian Sea are held by immense artéls, the Ural river belonging to the whole of the Ural Cossacks, who allot and re-allot the fishing-grounds — perhaps the richest in the world — among the villages, without any interference of the authorities. Fishing is always made by artéls in the Ural, the Volga, and all the lakes of Northern Russia. Besides these permanent organizations, there are the simply countless temporary artéls, constituted for each special purpose. When ten or twenty peasants come from some locality to a big town, to work as weavers, carpenters, masons, boat-builders, and so on, they always constitute an artél. They hire rooms, hire a cook (very often the wife of one of them acts in this capacity), elect an elder, and take their meals in common, each one paying his share for food and lodging to the artél. A party of convicts on its way to Siberia always does the same, and its elected elder is the officially-recognized intermediary between the convicts and the military chief of the party. In the hard-labour prisons they have the same organization. The railway porters, the messengers at the Exchange, the workers at the Custom House, the town messengers in the capitals, who are collectively responsible for each member, enjoy such a reputation that any amount of money or banknotes is trusted to the artél-member by the merchants. In the building trades, artéls of from 10 to 200 members are formed; and the serious builders and railway contractors always prefer to deal with an artél than with separately-hired workers. The last attempts of the Ministry of War to deal directly with productive artéls, formed ad hoc in the domestic trades, and to give them orders for boots and all sorts of brass and iron goods, are described as most satisfactory; while the renting of a Crown iron work, (Votkinsk) to an artél of workers, which took place seven or eight years ago, has been a decided success.

We can thus see in Russia how the old medieval institution, having not been interfered with by the State (in its informal manifestations), has fully survived until now, and takes the greatest variety of forms in accordance with the requirements of modern industry and commerce. As to the Balkan peninsula, the Turkish Empire and Caucasia, the old guilds are maintained there in full. The esnafs of Servia have fully preserved their medieval character; they include both masters and journeymen, regulate the trades, and are institutions for mutual support in labour and sickness;[306] while the amkari of Caucasia, and especially at Tiflis, add to these functions a considerable influence in municipal life.[307]

In connection with co-operation, I ought perhaps to mention also the friendly societies, the unities of oddfellows, the village and town clubs organized for meeting the doctors’ bills, the dress and burial clubs, the small clubs very common among factory girls, to which they contribute a few pence every week, and afterwards draw by lot the sum of one pound, which can at least be used for some substantial purchase, and many others. A not inconsiderable amount of sociable or jovial spirit is alive in all such societies and clubs, even though the “credit and debit” of each member are closely watched over. But there are so many associations based on the readiness to sacrifice time, health, and life if required, that we can produce numbers of illustrations of the best forms of mutual support.

The Lifeboat Association in this country, and similar institutions on the Continent, must be mentioned in the first place. The former has now over three hundred boats along the coasts of these isles, and it would have twice as many were it not for the poverty of the fisher men, who cannot afford to buy lifeboats. The crews consist, however, of volunteers, whose readiness to sacrifice their lives for the rescue of absolute strangers to them is put every year to a severe test; every winter the loss of several of the bravest among them stands on record. And if we ask these men what moves them to risk their lives, even when there is no reasonable chance of success, their answer is something on the following lines. A fearful snowstorm, blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. One of these last, a refined coastguard, was found next morning, badly bruised and half frozen in the snow. I asked him, how they came to make that desperate attempt?” I don’t know myself,” was his reply. “There was the wreck; all the people from the village stood on the beach, and all said it would be foolish to go out; we never should work through the surf. We saw five or six men clinging to the mast, making desperate signals. We all felt that something must be done, but what could we do? One hour passed, two hours, and we all stood there. We all felt most uncomfortable. Then, all of a sudden, through the storm, it seemed to us as if we heard their cries — they had a boy with them. We could not stand that any longer. All at once we said, “We must go!” The women said so too; they would have treated us as cowards if we had not gone, although next day they said we had been fools to go. As one man, we rushed to the boat, and went. The boat capsized, but we took hold of it. The worst was to see poor drowning by the side of the boat, and we could do nothing to save him. Then came a fearful wave, the boat capsized again, and we were cast ashore. The men were still rescued by the D. boat, ours was caught miles away. I was found next morning in the snow.”

The same feeling moved also the miners of the Rhonda Valley, when they worked for the rescue of their comrades from the inundated mine. They had pierced through thirty-two yards of coal in order to reach their entombed comrades; but when only three yards more remained to be pierced, fire-damp enveloped them. The lamps went out, and the rescue-men retired. To work in such conditions was to risk being blown up at every moment. But the raps of the entombed miners were still heard, the men were still alive and appealed for help, and several miners volunteered to work at any risk; and as they went down the mine, their wives had only silent tears to follow them — not one word to stop them.

There is the gist of human psychology. Unless men are maddened in the battlefield, they “cannot stand it” to hear appeals for help, and not to respond to them. The hero goes; and what the hero does, all feel that they ought to have done as well. The sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual-aid feeling, because this feeling has been nurtured by thousands of years of human social life and hundreds of thousands of years of pre-human life in societies.

“But what about those men who were drowned in the Serpentine in the presence of a crowd, out of which no one moved for their rescue?” it may be asked. “What about the child which fell into the Regent’s Park Canal — also in the presence of a holiday crowd — and was only saved through the presence of mind of a maid who let out a Newfoundland dog to the rescue?” The answer is plain enough. Man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education. Among the miners and the seamen, their common occupations and their every-day contact with one another create a feeling of solidarity, while the surrounding dangers maintain courage and pluck. In the cities, on the contrary, the absence of common interest nurtures indifference, while courage and pluck, which seldom find their opportunities, disappear, or take another direction. Moreover, the tradition of the hero of the mine and the sea lives in the miners’ and fishermen’s villages, adorned with a poetical halo. But what are the traditions of a motley London crowd? The only tradition they might have in common ought to be created by literature, but a literature which would correspond to the village epics hardly exists. The clergy are so anxious to prove that all that comes from human nature is sin, and that all good in man has a supernatural origin, that they mostly ignore the facts which cannot be produced as an example of higher inspiration or grace, coming from above. And as to the lay-writers, their attention is chiefly directed towards one sort of heroism, the heroism which promotes the idea of the State. Therefore, they admire the Roman hero, or the soldier in the battle, while they pass by the fisherman’s heroism, hardly paying attention to it. The poet and the painter might, of course, be taken by the beauty of the human heart in itself; but both seldom know the life of the poorer classes, and while they can sing or paint the Roman or the military hero in conventional surroundings, they can neither sing nor paint impressively the hero who acts in those modest surroundings which they ignore. If they venture to do so, they produce a mere piece of rhetoric.[308]

The countless societies, clubs, and alliances, for the enjoyment of life, for study and research, for education, and so on, which have lately grown up in such numbers that it would require many years to simply tabulate them, are another manifestation of the same everworking tendency for association and mutual support. Some of them, like the broods of young birds of different species which come together in the autumn, are entirely given to share in common the joys of life. Every village in this country, in Switzerland, Germany, and so on, has its cricket, football, tennis, nine-pins, pigeon, musical or singing clubs. Other societies are much more numerous, and some of them, like the Cyclists’ Alliance, have suddenly taken a formidable development. Although the members of this alliance have nothing in common but the love of cycling, there is already among them a sort of freemasonry for mutual help, especially in the remote nooks and corners which are not flooded by cyclists; they look upon the “C.A.C.” — the Cyclists’ Alliance Club — in a village as a sort of home; and at the yearly Cyclists’ Camp many a standing friendship has been established. The Kegelbrüder, the Brothers of the Nine Pins, in Germany, are a similar association; so also the Gymnasts’ Societies (300,000 members in Germany), the informal brotherhood of paddlers in France, the yacht clubs, and so on. Such associations certainly do not alter the economical stratification of society, but, especially in the small towns, they contribute to smooth social distinctions, and as they all tend to join in large national and international federations, they certainly aid the growth of personal friendly intercourse between all sorts of men scattered in different parts of the globe.

The Alpine Clubs, the Jagdschutzverein in Germany, which has over 100,000 members — hunters, educated foresters, zoologists, and simple lovers of Nature — and the International Ornithological Society, which includes zoologists, breeders, and simple peasants in Germany, have the same character. Not only have they done in a few years a large amount of very useful work, which large associations alone could do properly (maps, refuge huts, mountain roads; studies of animal life, of noxious insects, of migrations of birds, and so on), but they create new bonds between men. Two Alpinists of different nationalities who meet in a refuge hut in the Caucasus, or the professor and the peasant ornithologist who stay in the same house, are no more strangers to each other; while the Uncle Toby’s Society at Newcastle, which has already induced over 260,000 boys and girls never to destroy birds’ nests and to be kind to all animals, has certainly done more for the development of human feelings and of taste in natural science than lots of moralists and most of our schools.

We cannot omit, even in this rapid review, the thousands of scientific, literary, artistic, and educational societies. Up till now, the scientific bodies, closely controlled and often subsidized by the State, have generally moved in a very narrow circle, and they often came to be looked upon as mere openings for getting State appointments, while the very narrowness of their circles undoubtedly bred petty jealousies. Still it is a fact that the distinctions of birth, political parties and creeds are smoothed to some extent by such associations; while in the smaller and remote towns the scientific, geographical, or musical societies, especially those of them which appeal to a larger circle of amateurs, become small centres of intellectual life, a sort of link between the little spot and the wide world, and a place where men of very different conditions meet on a footing of equality. To fully appreciate the value of such centres, one ought to know them, say, in Siberia. As to the countless educational societies which only now begin to break down the State’s and the Church’s monopoly in education, they are sure to become before long the leading power in that branch. To the “Froebel Unions” we already owe the Kindergarten system; and to a number of formal and informal educational associations we owe the high standard of women’s education in Russia, although all the time these societies and groups had to act in strong opposition to a powerful government.[309] As to the various pedagogical societies in Germany, it is well known that they have done the best part in the working out of the modern methods of teaching science in popular schools. In such associations the teacher finds also his best support. How miserable the overworked and under-paid village teacher would have been without their aid![310]

All these associations, societies, brotherhoods, alliances, institutes, and so on, which must now be counted by the ten thousand in Europe alone, and each of which represents an immense amount of voluntary, unambitious, and unpaid or underpaid work — what are they but so many manifestations, under an infinite variety of aspects, of the same ever-living tendency of man towards mutual aid and support? For nearly three centuries men were prevented from joining hands even for literary, artistic, and educational purposes. Societies could only be formed under the protection of the State, or the Church, or as secret brotherhoods, like free-masonry. But now that the resistance has been broken, they swarm in all directions, they extend over all multifarious branches of human activity, they become international, and they undoubtedly contribute, to an extent which cannot yet be fully appreciated, to break down the screens erected by States between different nationalities. Notwithstanding the jealousies which are bred by commercial competition, and the provocations to hatred which are sounded by the ghosts of a decaying past, there is a conscience of international solidarity which is growing both among the leading spirits of the world and the masses of the workers, since they also have conquered the right of international intercourse; and in the preventing of a European war during the last quarter of a century, this spirit has undoubtedly had its share.

The religious charitable associations, which again represent a whole world, certainly must be mentioned in this place. There is not the slightest doubt that the great bulk of their members are moved by the same mutual-aid feelings which are common to all mankind. Unhappily the religious teachers of men prefer to ascribe to such feelings a supernatural origin. Many of them pretend that man does not consciously obey the mutual-aid inspiration so long as he has not been enlightened by the teachings of the special religion which they represent, and, with St. Augustin, most of them do not recognize such feelings in the “pagan savage.” Moreover, while early Christianity, like all other religions, was an appeal to the broadly human feelings of mutual aid and sympathy, the Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it; and, instead of the mutual aid which every savage considers as due to his kinsman, it has preached charity which bears a character of inspiration from above, and, accordingly, implies a certain superiority of the giver upon the receiver. With this limitation, and without any intention to give offence to those who consider themselves as a body elect when they accomplish acts simply humane, we certainly may consider the immense numbers of religious charitable associations as an outcome of the same mutual-aid tendency.

All these facts show that a reckless prosecution of personal interests, with no regard to other people’s needs, is not the only characteristic of modern life. By the side of this current which so proudly claims leadership in human affairs, we perceive a hard struggle sustained by both the rural and industrial populations in order to reintroduce standing institutions of mutual aid and support; and we discover, in all classes of society, a widely-spread movement towards the establishment of an infinite variety of more or less permanent institutions for the same purpose. But when we pass from public life to the private life of the modern individual, we discover another extremely wide world of mutual aid and support, which only passes unnoticed by most sociologists because it is limited to the narrow circle of the family and personal friendship.[311]

Under the present social system, all bonds of union among the inhabitants of the same street or neighbourhood have been dissolved. In the richer parts of the large towns, people live without knowing who are their next-door neighbours. But in the crowded lanes people know each other perfectly, and are continually brought into mutual contact. Of course, petty quarrels go their course, in the lanes as elsewhere; but groupings in accordance with personal affinities grow up, and within their circle mutual aid is practised to an extent of which the richer classes have no idea. If we take, for instance, the children of a poor neighbourhood who play in a street or churchyard, or on a green, we notice at once that a close union exists among them, notwithstanding the temporary fights, and that that union protects them from all sorts of misfortunes. As soon as a mite bends inquisitively over the opening of a drain — “Don’t stop there,” another mite shouts out, “fever sits in the hole!” “Don’t climb over that wall, the train will kill you if you tumble down! Don’t come near to the ditch! Don’t eat those berries — poison, you will die.” Such are the first teachings imparted to the urchin when he joins his mates outdoors. How many of the children whose playgrounds are the pavements around “model workers’ dwellings,” or the quays and bridges of the canals, would be crushed to death by the carts or drowned in the muddy waters, were it not for that sort of mutual support. And when a fair Jack has made a slip into the unprotected ditch at the back of the milkman’s yard, or a cherry-cheeked Lizzie has, after all, tumbled down into the canal, the young brood raises such cries that all the neighbourhood is on the alert and rushes to the rescue.

Then comes in the alliance of the mothers. “You could not imagine” (a lady-doctor who lives in a poor neighbourhood told me lately) “how much they help each other. If a woman has prepared nothing, or could prepare nothing, for the baby which she expected — and how often that happens! — all the neighbours bring something for the new-comer. One of the neighbours always takes care of the children, and some other always drops in to take care of the household, so long as the mother is in bed.” This habit is general. It is mentioned by all those who have lived among the poor. In a thousand small ways the mothers support each other and bestow their care upon children that are not their own. Some training — good or bad, let them decide it for themselves — is required in a lady of the richer classes to render her able to pass by a shivering and hungry child in the street without noticing it. But the mothers of the poorer classes have not that training. They cannot stand the sight of a hungry child; they must feed it, and so they do. “When the school children beg bread, they seldom or rather never meet with a refusal” — a lady-friend, who has worked several years in Whitechapel in connection with a workers’ club, writes to me. But I may, perhaps, as well transcribe a few more passages from her letter: —

“Nursing neighbours, in cases of illness, without any shade of remuneration, is quite general among the workers. Also, when a woman has little children, and goes out for work, another mother always takes care of them. “If, in the working classes, they would not help each other, they could not exist. I know families which continually help each other — with money, with food, with fuel, for bringing up the little children, in cases of illness, in cases of death. “‘The mine’ and ‘thine’ is much less sharply observed among the poor than among the rich. Shoes, dress, hats, and so on, — what may be wanted on the spot — are continually borrowed from each other, also all sorts of household things. “Last winter the members of the United Radical Club had brought together some little money, and began after Christmas to distribute free soup and bread to the children going to school. Gradually they had 1,800 children to attend to. The money came from outsiders, but all the work was done by the members of the club. Some of them, who were out of work, came at four in the morning to wash and to peel the vegetables; five women came at nine or ten (after having done their own household work) for cooking, and stayed till six or seven to wash the dishes. And at meal time, between twelve and half-past one, twenty to thirty workers came in to aid in serving the soup, each one staying what he could spare of his meal time. This lasted for two months. No one was paid.”

My friend also mentions various individual cases, of which the following are typical: —

“Annie W. was given by her mother to be boarded by an old person in Wilmot Street. When her mother died, the old woman, who herself was very poor, kept the child without being paid a penny for that. When the old lady died too, the child, who was five years old, was of course neglected during her illness, and was ragged; but she was taken at once by Mrs. S., the wife of a shoemaker, who herself has six children. Lately, when the husband was ill, they had not much to eat, all of them. “The other day, Mrs. M., mother of six children, attended Mrs. M—g throughout her illness, and took to her own rooms the elder child.... But do you need such facts? They are quite general.... I know also Mrs. D. (Oval, Hackney Road), who has a sewing machine and continually sews for others, without ever accepting any remuneration, although she has herself five children and her husband to look after.... And so on.”

For every one who has any idea of the life of the labouring classes it is evident that without mutual aid being practised among them on a large scale they never could pull through all their difficulties. It is only by chance that a worker’s family can live its lifetime without having to face such circumstances as the crisis described by the ribbon weaver, Joseph Gutteridge, in his autobiography.[312] And if all do not go to the ground in such cases, they owe it to mutual help. In Gutteridge’s case it was an old nurse, miserably poor herself, who turned up at the moment when the family was slipping towards a final catastrophe, and brought in some bread, coal, and bedding, which she had obtained on credit. In other cases, it will be some one else, or the neighbours will take steps to save the family. But without some aid from other poor, how many more would be brought every year to irreparable ruin![313]

Mr. Plimsoll, after he had lived for some time among the poor, on 7s. 6d. a week, was compelled to recognize that the kindly feelings he took with him when he began this life “changed into hearty respect and admiration” when he saw how the relations between the poor are permeated with mutual aid and support, and learned the simple ways in which that support is given. After a many years’ experience, his conclusion was that “when you come to think of it, such as these men were, so were the vast majority of the working classes.”[314] As to bringing up orphans, even by the poorest families, it is so widely-spread a habit, that it may be described as a general rule; thus among the miners it was found, after the two explosions at Warren Vale and at Lund Hill, that “nearly one-third of the men killed, as the respective committees can testify, were thus supporting relations other than wife and child.” “Have you reflected,” Mr. Plimsoll added, “what this is? Rich men, even comfortably-to-do men do this, I don’t doubt. But consider the difference.” Consider what a sum of one shilling, subscribed by each worker to help a comrade’s widow, or 6d. to help a fellow-worker to defray the extra expense of a funeral, means for one who earns 16s. a week and has a wife, and in some cases five or six children to support.[315] But such subscriptions are a general practice among the workers all over the world, even in much more ordinary cases than a death in the family, while aid in work is the commonest thing in their lives.

Nor do the same practices of mutual aid and support fail among the richer classes. Of course, when one thinks of the harshness which is often shown by the richer employers towards their employees, one feels inclined to take the most pessimist view of human nature. Many must remember the indignation which was aroused during the great Yorkshire strike of 1894, when old miners who had picked coal from an abandoned pit were prosecuted by the colliery owners. And, even if we leave aside the horrors of the periods of struggle and social war, such as the extermination of thousands of workers’ prisoners after the fall of the Paris Commune — who can read, for instance, revelations of the labour inquest which was made here in the forties, or what Lord Shaftesbury wrote about “the frightful waste of human life in the factories, to which the children taken from the workhouses, or simply purchased all over this country to be sold as factory slaves, were consigned”[316] — who can read that without being vividly impressed by the baseness which is possible in man when his greediness is at stake? But it must also be said that all fault for such treatment must not be thrown entirely upon the criminality of human nature. Were not the teachings of men of science, and even of a notable portion of the clergy, up to a quite recent time, teachings of distrust, despite and almost hatred towards the poorer classes? Did not science teach that since serfdom has been abolished, no one need be poor unless for his own vices? And how few in the Church had the courage to blame the children-killers, while the great numbers taught that the sufferings of the poor, and even the slavery of the negroes, were part of the Divine Plan! Was not Nonconformism itself largely a popular protest against the harsh treatment of the poor at the hand of the established Church?

With such spiritual leaders, the feelings of the richer classes necessarily became, as Mr. Pimsoll remarked, not so much blunted as “stratified.” They seldom went downwards towards the poor, from whom the well-to-do-people are separated by their manner of life, and whom they do not know under their best aspects, in their every-day life. But among themselves — allowance being made for the effects of the wealth-accumulating passions and the futile expenses imposed by wealth itself — among themselves, in the circle of family and friends, the rich practise the same mutual aid and support as the poor. Dr. Ihering and L. Dargun are perfectly right in saying that if a statistical record could be taken of all the money which passes from hand to hand in the shape of friendly loans and aid, the sum total would be enormous, even in comparison with the commercial transactions of the world’s trade. And if we could add to it, as we certainly ought to, what is spent in hospitality, petty mutual services, the management of other people’s affairs, gifts and charities, we certainly should be struck by the importance of such transfers in national economy. Even in the world which is ruled by commercial egotism, the current expression, “We have been harshly treated by that firm,” shows that there is also the friendly treatment, as opposed to the harsh, i.e. the legal treatment; while every commercial man knows how many firms are saved every year from failure by the friendly support of other firms.

As to the charities and the amounts of work for general well-being which are voluntarily done by so many well-to-do persons, as well as by workers, and especially by professional men, every one knows the part which is played by these two categories of benevolence in modern life. If the desire of acquiring notoriety, political power, or social distinction often spoils the true character of that sort of benevolence, there is no doubt possible as to the impulse coming in the majority of cases from the same mutual-aid feelings. Men who have acquired wealth very often do not find in it the expected satisfaction. Others begin to feel that, whatever economists may say about wealth being the reward of capacity, their own reward is exaggerated. The conscience of human solidarity begins to tell; and, although society life is so arranged as to stifle that feeling by thousands of artful means, it often gets the upper hand; and then they try to find an outcome for that deeply human need by giving their fortune, or their forces, to something which, in their opinion, will promote general welfare.

In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men’s understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution. What was the outcome of evolution since its earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of the aspects of that same evolution. And the need of mutual aid and support which had lately taken refuge in the narrow circle of the family, or the slum neighbours, in the village, or the secret union of workers, re-asserts itself again, even in our modern society, and claims its rights to be, as it always has been, the chief leader towards further progress. Such are the conclusions which we are necessarily brought to when we carefully ponder over each of the groups of facts briefly enumerated in the last two chapters.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dumping links like Galileo dumped the orange

Today (May 20) at 3:15PM, I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on Monday (May 22), I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On Tuesday (May 23), I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

Welcome to my Saturday linkdump, the third in an occasional series that may or may not be restricted to Saturdays, but which will ever be a celebration of olde-timey linkblogging of the sort practiced by our blogfathers, blogmothers, and assorted other blogparents:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday, and today’s woke felinism comes courtesy of Dr Eleanor Janega, the earthiest of all the Medivelist Bloggers, author of the superb Once and Future Sex, all about dirty dirty medieval people and their filthy filthy habits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/17/ren-faire/#going-medieval

One of Janega’s winningest formulas is “Find a dopey thing about medieval people racing around social media and then set the ignorant straight in a world-beating, extremely well-informed rant.”

See, for example, “I assure you, medieval people bathed”:

https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/

This week, Janega addresses herself to the burning question, “Did 14th C religious leaders label cats evil, precipitating a mass European cull of poor moggies?”

The answer, you will not be surprised to learn, is: “No.”

https://going-medieval.com/2023/05/16/on-cats/

Rather, medieval people — including those in the 14th century — just adored cats. That goes double for the religious leaders, as is evidenced by all the cats monks drew in the margins of religious manuscripts. Janega also reproduces painstakingly inked manuscripts crisscrossed by pawprints left by a cat that did the medieval version of walking back and forth over your keyboard while you’re trying to enter your password.

There’s also a manuscript with a large blotch that is labeled by a monk who identifies it as a piss-stain left behind by a cat (presumably a cat that wanted to go out and was tired of the monk not taking the walking-back-and-forth-over-the-manuscript hint).

In case there’s any doubt about how monks felt about cats, there’s a freaking adorable manuscript margin-doodle of cat in a little monk’s outfit. There’s doodles of cats with nuns, illustrations of cats hanging out with 14th century monks, and of course, drawings of working cats keeping down the rats in the barns and kitchens of the day.

As if that wasn’t enough, Janega closes with this banger: 14th century didn’t kill all their cats in a witch panic, because “witch panics are not a feature of medieval society”:

Indeed, medieval people didn’t really believe in the concept at all. Even in the fifteenth century when the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, a witch-hunting guide was written it had to justify its very existence because no one believed that ol’ Heinrich Kramer was right about witches existing.

When people think that the Middle Ages is a place full of superstitious backwards religious fanatics it allows them to think they can just ignore over a thousand years of history because all you are going to see is disease and cat murder. This then allows stupid ideas like this to perpetuate and exacerbates the problem further. Suddenly the only people paying attention to medieval history are weirdo trad people who can bend the truth to suit their own aims, and baby, we cannot have that.

Happy caturday all, and especially to Dr Janega, may her quill never blunt.

Caturday — even a caturday about people being Very Wrong About Cats — is a reminder that the internet is often great, and not a cesspit of awful. Here is one way in which that is true: Mohit Bhoite builds tiny, perfect electronic sculptures that are both gorgeous little artworks and supremely functional exemplars of the hardware hacker’s noble art:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/

Oh. My. God. These are so great. The tiny temperature monitor with the 7-seg digital display:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/tiny-temp-monitor/

This stunning 7-seg counter:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/seven-segment-counter/

This 555 Demux, with its delicate tracery of chassis and pins:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/555-bcd-demux/

Each one a delightful morsel, made seemingly for the artist’s own pleasure and self-expression. I’m slightly disappointed that these aren’t for sale (because I want all of them), but even happier that these pure works of art, unsullied by commerce.

An important note about Bhoite’s sculptures is that they’re built on open source hardware, notably kits from Adafruit, often based on Arduinos and other open designs. This openness leads to “generativity,” the ability of follow-on creators and inventors to make new things based on existing things.

Generativity is the heart of the early explosive growth of the internet. From “view source” teaching millions of us to make the web to the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, Mysql and python/perl) forming the substrate for billions of projects, the generative internet was — and is — the creative internet.

Despite a decade of energetic commons-enclosing, some of the staunchest bastions of openness and generativity continue to thrive, like Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that isn’t just “free as in beer,” it’s also “free as in speech” — free to mix and remix as you choose.

Here’s a whole passel of delightful Wikipedia-generated search tools, the Search Gizmos, a whole suite of special-purpose search tools that mine Wikipedia for informational goodies:

https://searchgizmos.com/

They’re the creation of Tara Calishain, and there are so many of them that’s it’s hard to choose just one to highlight, but I’m enormously fond of “Gossip Machine”:

A powerful tool that uses Wikipedia page views to surface potential “news days” in a given year for any topic with a Wikipedia page. By analyzing daily page views and flagging dates with significantly higher-than-average views, Gossip Machine provides you with pre-filled Google News and Google Web search links, taking you straight to valuable and insightful information about your chosen topic.

One of the bitter ironies of companies like Open AI is the co-opting of generativity for “Generative AI,” a set of products that could not be more unlike the generative projects of Bhoite or Calishain.

This kind of language game is a hallmark of every scam (not for nothing: Open AI isn’t open, and its product is neither artificial nor is it intelligent). As debates over “Generative AI” (which neither “generative,” nor “artificial,” etc, etc) rage, it’s worth revisiting how earlier debates about automation, creativity and appropriation played out.

This week in Clot Magazine, Estela Oliva interviews electronic music pioneers Jennifer Walshe and Jon “Wobbly” Leidecker (Negativland):

https://clotmag.com/interviews/jennifer-walshe-jon-leidecker-on-collaboration

The whole interview is great, but it really starts to smoke when Leidecker describes “Morover” a Negativland project built on samples of billionaires’ own fevered rants about AI:

With Negativland, we sample those CEO quotes directly — with Jennifer, those quotes also wind up in her notebooks, which she uses live as a source — it turns out CEO & EA musings make for an excellent libretto. Our deliverable is the ecosystem itself! Image diversity is more useful than photorealism! Sometimes the original sample is unbeatable, such as when Sam Altman’s voice falters when he says he feels terrible that AI is the reason his Rationalist friends have decided not to have kids. He thinks in the future, so many jobs will be lost to AI that our economy will be forced to come up with new solutions.

Later, Leidecker digs into the meat of the debate:

Electronic music has been dealing with issues of generative music and cybernetics since the 1940s, with Louis and Bebe Barron working out the creative potential of these new tools, making self-playing instruments capable of observing their own behaviour. I take the core questions faced by creative electronic musicians to involve issues of automation. What can be automated that points one in unheard musical directions?

Can networks involve more people, as opposed to replacing them? What new roles open up for humans once the old decisions are being handled? Electronic music has over 70 years’ worth of deeply moral and very creative responses to the issue of automation, and these patent-chasing corporations aren’t likely to bring up any of that work during their product demos. They need you to believe they invented this. But there’s a long and helpful history, and there’s still time to learn it.

These are the interesting discussions we could be having about these tools, if we could stop letting mediocre billionaire live rent-free in our heads as they hold flashlights under their chins and intone “Aaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeeee” in their spookiest voices. These guys are pumping their upcoming dump, and all the biggest disaster-stories are part of the scam: “AI will become sentient” and “AI will do your job as well as you” are both statements whose primary purpose is to increase the value of the stock in companies making “AI” technology (neither “artificial” nor you get the idea).

I mean, sure, our bosses will fire our asses and replace us with shell-scripts, but they don’t need working AI to do that — no more than they needed working voice response systems to replace human operators. They just enshittify their products and services, and do it under cover of chasing amazing new technology, and reap the stock gains bequeathed by keyword-drunk investors.

But the endless repetition of this vision of Fully Automated Austerity Pronatalist Space Neofeudalism gives people absolute brain-worms. The entire passive-income/rise-and-grind subculture has been convinced that they can use AI (neither etc etc) to make a fortune by…uh…generating plausible paragraphs.

Only problem: there’s no market for plausible paragraphs. The closest anyone comes is the tiny, low-dollar market for short science fiction and fantasy, which is pretty much the last bastion of paid short fiction markets. Now, these are amazing publications, and they do wonderful work, but they pay $0.01 to $0.25/word, and — more importantly — are edited by humans who sift through 1,000+ manuscripts per month looking for brilliant work to publish.

These editors are handily capable of distinguishing between extruded verbal slurry and actual short fiction, but the brain-worm bros are convinced that if they hammer these editors hard enough with enough algorithm-wrought word-salad, eventually, they’ll sell a “story” (netting a princely sum in the tens of dollars!).

This is objectively very stupid, but it’s also very terrible, because the human editors doing this labor of love are drowning in aishit. The most vocal among these LLM-blighted publishers is Neil Clarke, editor of the great Clarkesworld, who is waging a one-man war on spammy LLM submissions. His latest dispatch from the front lines (ominously titled “It continues…”) would be hacky sf, if it wasn’t real:

The one thing that is presently missing from the equation is integration with any of the existing AI detection tools. Despite their grand claims, we’ve found them to be stunningly unreliable, primitive, significantly overpriced, and easily outwitted by even the most basic of approaches.

http://neil-clarke.com/it-continues/

This is not the future we dreamt of. It’s been stolen from us by the brain-worms. Writing in Business Insider, the great Nathan Proctor describes how automation lets companies bring about the “death of ownership”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-software-legal-tricks-subscriptions-customers-money-pay-death-ownership-2023-5

When your device won’t accept the ink you chose, or run the software you prefer, or let you repair it at the depot of your choosing (or even on your own kitchen table), do you really own it?

This is the theme of much of my work, of course, including my novella “Unauthorized Bread,” which performs the science-fictional trick of building a world around a single technical conceit to magnify and clarify the underlying issues:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Proctor leads PIRG’s Right to Repair campaign, and he’s a comrade. He’s got these companies’ numbers and he’s a tireless fighter:

I believe in truth in advertising. If you’re going to sell somebody something, sell it to them. If you are going to lease something to somebody, lease it to them. If you tether their future purchases to a secret “agreement” that you baked into the technology that they don’t know about, that is deceptive. Not to mention, tinkering and fixing are American traditions. The ethos of “if it’s broke, then fix it” has other benefits, too. Repair teaches critical skills, it saves consumers money, it helps cut waste and product obsolescence. Tinkering and fixing also leads to product innovations that can benefit everyone.

Preach on, brother!

For ever tech bro who took cyberpunk dystopia as a suggestion, there are a dozen more who took it as a warning. Technologists like Micah Lee are on the front lines with Proctor and others. Lee was my colleague at EFF when Snowden contacted him privately, identifying himself as a would-be whistleblower who was trying to securely deliver a trove of US government leaks to some journalists who were struggling with the technology.

Now Lee is at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept, and he’s working on a book: “Hacks, Leaks and Revelations,” is a practical manual for whistleblowers, reporters and investigators. Subtitled “The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data,” it’s out in November:

https://nostarch.com/hacks-leaks-and-revelations

Meanwhile, Lee has put swathes of the book online for early perusal:

https://staging.hacksandleaks.com/introduction.html

This book isn’t a mere manifesto — it’s a manual, and it contains exercises for the reader to help them build a secure process for communicating and publishing in a way that protects sources.

Micah’s work is a reminder that the internet is made of people. Take the people away, all you’ve got is algorithms spamming each other (this is the plot of my short story, “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#eschatology-watch

People matter. Everything people make — corporations, cities, workplaces, networks — only matter to the extent that they help people. Here’s a useful rule of thumb: when you’re trying to figure out whether a cause deserves your support, ask yourself, “Does this help people? Does it help more people than the alternative? Does it help people who need help?”

Asking that question made me a union man. That’s why I’ve been walking the WGA picket-lines in my neighborhood on my home-days while touring. It’s also why I cheered the dancers at LA’s Star Garden Topless Dive Bar when they became the first topless dancers in America to win recognition for their union:

https://apnews.com/article/strippers-union-los-angeles-star-garden-4069df93b149076dc2e23a0bff16438b

The Star Garden workers are organized under the Actors’ Equity Association, the same union I wrote a check to when I paid Wil Wheaton to record the audiobook of Red Team Blues (Wil’s a union man, too:)

https://www.tvinsider.com/1093201/jeopardy-wil-wheaton-ken-jennings-writers-strike/

There’s been a lot of “ha ha the strippers unionized ha ha” nonsense in response to this news, but fuck that. Sex work is work. These are workers. They work in a field that is physically demanding, potentially dangerous, and rife with exploitative practices. Damned right they need a union. Go, sisters, go!

People who think they understand ironic laughter because they made a snotty remark about a stripper’s union are absolute amateurs. To see how it’s done, check out The Onion, a publication that is consistently pretty funny, but also reliably screamingly, viciously, incredibly funny, especially about the things that hurt the most.

The canonical example of this, of course, is The Onion’s first issue after the 9/11 attacks, headlined “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” and containing such articles as “Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake”:

https://www.wired.com/2001/09/onions-bitter-tears-of-irony/

The Onion continues to be America’s leading ha-ha-only-serious forum, serving, somehow, as both escape valve and flame-fanner for the nation’s bitterest ailments. For years, they’ve run their “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” headline after every major mass shooting:

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527

But as America continues to record multiple, daily, mass shootings, The Onion’s writers needed something else. Yesterday, they ran “Americans Describe What It’s Like Surviving A Mass Shooting,” and oh shit is it a doozy:

https://www.theonion.com/surviving-a-mass-shooting-americans-describe-what-it-s-1850438794

“It makes you really appreciate how free we are as a country when you’re hiding under a desk with bullets flying over your head.”

“Those 15 minutes standing a safe distance away from the school while the suspect finished shooting were the most harrowing of my life.” (picture of a cop)

“There’s nothing like a brush with death to remind you that all your previously held beliefs are correct and should not be questioned.” (Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA))

“My boss let me use one of my three unpaid sick days to get sewed up.”

“Only two of my three kids came home from school, but Texas has no property taxes, so it’s a wash.”

I mean.

Shit.

The new Gilded American Age is already looking a little tarnished. The unholy alliance between the infinite greed of the capital classes and the sadistic indifference of the terrified, authoritarian, musket-fucking Bible-bashers has us racing for the precipice.

It’s wild to see the parties fiddle while the Shining City on the Hill burns. I think we all expect it of the Republicans, but watching the Democrats fail working people and continue to climb into bed with the ultra-wealthy and their priorities is demoralizing, especially for those of us hoping for more from the party of the New Deal.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the Trump transformation of the GOP, but Dems’ transformation from a party representing labor to a party representing McKinsey consultants is less well understood.

A new book, Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, by Lily Geismer, tells that story:

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/lily-geismer/left-behind/9781541757004/

Left Behind gets a fascinating review by Ruby Ray Daily in Public Books, where it is contrasted with Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Nicole Hemmer:

https://www.publicbooks.org/what-the-1990s-did-to-america/

Both books grapple with way that the end of the Cold War and the Reagan era transformed both major US parties. In Hemmer’s telling, Reagan wasn’t the “dawn of the free-market conservative,” but rather, the “late summer” of that brand of conservativism. Without “anticommunism” to animate it, the Reagan Right coalition thrashed in a void, eventually gelling into today’s “nativism, racial resentment, and media hysteria.”

Meanwhile, the Dems under Clinton turned their backs on state-backed programs and towards market-based initiatives, making today’s “lopsided, unfair economic gains” inevitable. The Atari Democrats of the Clinton years were — in the words of one bitter union organizer — “crypto-Republicans.”

Clinton isn’t the Democrats’ Eisenhower (“accommodating his party to, and sanding the radical edges off, a new consensus”). He’s the Democrats’ Reagan, “shaping and even leading this new market-oriented consensus.”

For Geismer, Clinton wasn’t simply jettisoning the New Deal — rather, he was embracing its technocratic, expertise-worshiping aspect. It was this tendency that produced Clinton’s ghastly “welfare reform” and other attacks on working people. It’s a stark reminder that ideology without a moral center sows the seeds of its own ruin.

Meanwhile, we live today in the Atari Democrats’ world, where wealthy professionals play a high-speed game of musical chairs for the few remaining opportunities to survive the coming polycrisis with intact shelter, food and comfort. One way this plays out is in the surreal, vicious fights over college admissions.

It’s only been a minute since the Varsity Blues scandal erupted: wealthy parents (including some celebrities) bribed college officials to pretend that nepobabies and failsons were elite athletes, letting them ooze into top college slots reserved for sports prodigies (slots that often represent the only chance for poor teens of color to enter these universities):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal

The scandal touched a nerve, perhaps because it punctured the already-fragile bubble of pretense that top colleges were full of the smartest kids in America — rather than, say, the kids whose parents attended those institutions (“legacies”), or made giant donations, or were coached and polished by tutors and consultants.

Well, there’s never just one ant. Varsity Blues wasn’t the only way for rich, status-obsessed parents to buy their kids’ way into college. The latest rot exposed is a doozy of a scam: parents pay academics to pretend to collaborate with high-schoolers so they can put their names on papers published in peer-reviewed journals:

https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications

The story was broken last week by Dan Golden for Propublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a long-read that details all the variations on this scam. For example, sometimes the kid does actually do some original research, but the “journal” is a fake outlet run by the “service” that connects academics and kids.

Bottom line is it works: college admissions officers are deluged with applications and don’t have time to look up the “peer reviewed” publications claimed by applicants. Faculty don’t have the time or inclination to do it either. The stakes are incredibly high, the costs are very high, and the institutions that do the evaluations are weak afterthoughts.

I wonder if we won’t just eventually give up and admit that a degree from a Big Ten or an Ivy is just a thing you buy, like a Picasso or a blood diamond. We could just turn it into a half million dollar blue tick and have done with it.

Anyway.

Hate to end this linkdump on a down-note, but there you have it. Next time I do one of these, I’ll try to remember to hold back one of the upbeat links for a palate cleanser.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

[Image ID: A pot of chunky chicken and vegetable stew.]

[isadomna]

Fourteenth Century: Fredegund the Fierce

Amid the many crises of the fourteenth century, Fredegund was portrayed as a warrior king would be, leading her troops into battle and overseeing the torture of her enemies.

Fifteenth Century: Victim of Ambition

Fifteenth-century illuminated manuscripts reveled in the gruesome execution that cleaves through the queens’ story. Alarmed by the power wielded by the likes of Isabella, the She-Wolf of France; Yolande of Aragon; and Margaret of Anjou, chroniclers used these images as a warning to other women with political ambitions.

Seventeenth Century: Shameless and Cruel

This deck of playing cards designed for a young Louis XIV showcases various queens. While some are described as saincte (holy) or a bonne femme (a good wife), Brunhild and Fredegund are cast as murderous villains, the sort of women the young king ought to avoid.

Eighteenth Century: Foremothers of France

A century later, both queens were rehabilitated. The rise of nationalism led to an obsession with the great men of the past. Brunhild and Fredegund were transformed into the respectable wives of the kings they overshadowed in life.

Nineteenth Century: Defiant Heroines

At a time when the ideal woman was submissive and self-effacing, Brunhild and Fredegund were cast as fighters. In a woodcut, Brunhild is carried by her warriors, and in an illustration, Fredegund battles with her daughter.

Nineteenth Century: Opera Darlings

By the end of the nineteenth century, both queens enjoyed newfound popularity. They appeared as the subjects of poems, the protagonists of plays, and, most notably, the leads of operas.

Twentieth Century: The Catfight

Illustrators lampooned Brunhild and Fredegund’s decades-long political rivalry. The two queens box one another on the back of a turn-of-the-century magazine; by mid-century they have progressed to yanking each other’s hair out in a lottery advertisement.

Shelley Puhak, The Dark Queens: A gripping tale of power, ambition and murderous rivalry in early medieval

[artistalley]

Hunt of the Unicorn — 90cm Silk Scarf by @logandria

In vibrant pinks and greens on a deep blue ground, the Hunt of the Unicorn scarf takes inspiration from the famous fifteenth/sixteenth-century tapestry series of the same name. Our central figure is the Unicorn Centaur, embodying the archetypal naïveté and foolishness of both maiden and unicorn, serenely brushing her hair while predatory eyes watch from the darkness. The border, illustrated by Lee Woolhiser, depicts a unicorn hunting scene from old lore.

Like what you see? Of course you do. Now go use code TUMBLR for 10% off all purchases from @logandria's store.

[werewolf-transgenderism]

can you talk a little about the heart shaped manuscripts, like why are they shaped like that? just for fun?

YEAH I CAN TALK ABOUT HEART-SHAPED MANUSCRIPTS

^ this is the Hjertbogen, from Kongelige Bibliotek (MS Thott 1510), the earliest extant manuscript of Danish ballads (shaped like that because it's full of love ballads)

(also, fun fact about this one: there's a replica with the language changed to Middle English in the library of Castle Hautdesert in the film The Green Knight [above], which I did a post about the other day!)

^ this is the Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu (Paris, BnF, Ms. Rothschild 2973), which contains French and Italian chansons (again heart-shaped because it's got a bunch of love songs in it, also the only one of the surviving heart-shaped manuscripts that has color illustrations)

there are also heart-shaped books of hours and heart-shaped manuscripts in art that are more overtly connected to religious love, the earliest example is a late fifteenth century painting of a saint holding a heart-shaped manuscript

[haggishlyhagging]

[Note to self: Compare the female suicide attempts of modern day to those of women during the height of the witch craze. Compare the environment women were forced to survive in then to the one we must endure now. Compare the patriarchal explanation for mass suicides then to modern psychological explanations.]

Another form of scholarly mystification is illustrated in the work of social historian/ anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches. In the last section of his book, adopting a modern "psychological" approach, Baroja presumes to describe "the personality of the witch." He sagely informs us that "a woman usually becomes a witch after the initial failure of her life as a woman; after frustrated or illegitimate love affairs have left her with a sense of impotence or disgrace." Hags may successfully "double-double unthink" this statement to mean that "a woman usually becomes a witch after the initial success of her life in overcoming the patriarchally defined role of 'woman'; after seeing through the inherent contradiction of 'romantic love'—a clarifying process which enriches her sense of gynergy and grace." Baroja's book concludes:

In conclusion, it seems to me, as a historian, that witchcraft makes one feel pity more than anything else. Pity for those who were persecuted, who wanted to do evil yet could not do it, and whose lives were generally frustrated and tragic. Pity, too, for the persecutors who were brutal because they believed that numberless dangers surrounded them.

This pitiful analysis reveals the pitfalls of "pity." Since there is no reason to think that good witches—Spinsters, midwives, healers—"wanted to do evil," this "pity" is perverted and deceptive. Hags may well feel grief and anger for our tortured foresisters, but pity for their/our persecutors is not the appropriate response. Righteous anger is more in accord with the reality and can generate creative energy.

Just as social historian Baroja has recourse in the end to feeble psychologizing so also does moralist W. E. H. Lecky in his two-volume History of European Morals. He writes revealingly (in the sense of unveiling and re-veiling at the same time) of the conditions that drove some witches to suicide:

In Europe the act was very common among the witches, who underwent all the sufferings with none of the consolations of martyrdom.

Without enthusiasm, without hope, without even the consciousness of innocence, decrepit in body and distracted in mind, compelled in this world to endure tortures, before which the most impassioned heroism might quail, and doomed, as they often believed, to eternal damnation in the next, they not unfrequently killed themselves in the agony of their despair.

This is a perfect description of the condition to which the lords of patriarchy desire to see defiant women reduced. It is an announcement of androcratic intent. How would Lecky know that the witches were "without even the consciousness of innocence"? The expressions "decrepit in body" and "distracted in mind" are deceptive because not accompanied by any description of the christian torturers' methods.

On the following page, this "historian of morals," having admitted the fact of unspeakable torture of witches, actually manages to write that "epidemics of purely insane suicide . . . not infrequently occurred [emphases mine]." Lecky here refers specifically to the women of Marseilles and of Lyons. He then goes on.

In that strange mania which raged in Neapolitan districts from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, and which was attributed to the bite of the tarantula, the patients thronged in multitudes towards the sea, and often, as the blue waters opened to their view, they chanted a wild hymn of welcome, and rushed with passion into the waves [emphases mine].

By naming this phenomenon a "mania" and failing to note the significance of the dates, Lecky makes its meaning invisible to most readers. Hags, however, knowing something about the history of The Burning Times, can see that this was a completely sane decision. Multitudes of women rushed into the sea, precisely because they refused to be "patients" for the witch doctors/torturers and chose to be agents of the one Self-affirming act possible under the Reign of Infernal Justice. Otherwise, they would have been forced to submit their minds and bodies, to accuse themselves, their daughters, their mothers, their dearest friends, of impossible crimes. Moral historian Lecky legitimates this horror by deleting the context and the agents of gynocide from his text. He writes that such cases "belong rather to the history of medicine than to that of morals." Thus no one is to blame. The Fathers are exonerated, since there is nothing in this picture relevant to the history of "morals."

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite History Books || The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440–1627 by Kavita Mudan Finn ★★★★☆

Most modern accounts of fifteenth-century queens focus on separating what really happened from what was fabricated— an important distinction, particularly in such a volatile time period. What has not been considered in any detail is the fabrications themselves as narratives, and as reflections, not of fifteenth-century reality, but of the questions and anxieties that haunted their writers. Well into the Jacobean period, the civil wars of the fifteenth century—known to us now as the Wars of the Roses, through William Shakespeare’s own fabricated Temple Garden scene in the first part of Henry VI —were repeatedly invoked as the dire consequences of weak monarchy. Directly linked to these invocations, I argue, is the representation of queens, who, by virtue of their proximity to the reigning monarch and larger cultural discourses trying to make sense of that role, are inextricably associated with questions of political instability.

It can be, and frequently is, written off as a commonplace that anxiety about queens exercising political power manifests itself in historical writing—a fact pinpointed decades ago by feminist critics and therefore in no further need of exploration. My interest, however, lies in the embedded literary narratives used to illustrate that anxiety—themselves culled from multiple generic frameworks including, but not limited to, romance (in the sense of the medieval roman), hagiography, and, most prominently, de casibus tragedy—and how they echo across texts, time, and even geographical boundaries. Why do certain narratives persist and others die out? How is the choice of embedded narrative an inscription of the political and cultural climate in which the writer was working? How, especially later in the sixteenth century with the growing popularity of historical drama, does the staging of queenship deconstruct those politically and culturally motivated narratives, and, by extension, ideas of historiography and sovereignty?

There has been a recent surge of critical interest in the traumatic effects of the fifteenth-century civil wars on the English cultural psyche under the Tudor monarchs and their manifestation in texts such as A Mirror for Magistrates —to say nothing of the history plays of Shakespeare, Heywood, and that most prolific of authors, Anonymous—and it is within this dialogue of literary patterning and historiographical engagement that I wish to position this study. Most recently, in his monograph on concepts of nationhood in the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles, Igor Djordjevic has called for “a new critical vocabulary to refer to Shakespeare’s source-narratives,” pointing out the innate instability of the fifteenth-century historical narrative that he calls “a palimpsestic form characterized by multiple revisions, corrections, and annotations.” While I cannot claim to have produced this new critical vocabulary, an exploration of the palimpsest Djordjevic describes through the lens of how each of those layered narratives deals with questions of gender and power dynamics will hopefully open up further discussion of other ways early modern writers and readers approached and produced histories.

I focus on five royal consorts from the late fifteenth century— Margaret of Anjou (1430–1482), Cecily Neville (1415–1495), Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1437–1492), Anne Neville (1456–1485), and Elizabeth of York (1466–1503)—whose personae have been repeatedly appropriated by both historical and literary writers. By charting their changing representations in the context of larger shifts in discourses of femininity and historiography from approximately 1450 to the beginning of the Jacobean period, I propose to challenge the imposition of modern models of female agency upon this body of texts, particularly in representations of queenship, by drawing attention to generic shifts and emplotted narratives. This involves interrogating the complex relationship between literature, politics, and historiography.

My analysis of Shakespeare’s first history tetralogy, as a result, interprets these four plays in light of a century and a half of literary, political, and historiographical negotiations.  Further complicating these issues is the question of the female voice: when women do display agency in these texts, it is often compromised, both in terms of generic emplotment and in terms of a more pervasive conception of womanhood that informs that emplotment. This complex relationship is highlighted in Shakespeare’s three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, all of which feature women in prominent political and rhetorical positions, but runs as an undercurrent through texts as early as the chronicles and diplomatic accounts from the mid-fifteenth century. With the advent of two queens regnant in the later sixteenth century comes a more urgent questioning of how to represent powerful women, further informed by changing historiographical trends and shifts in concepts of textual authority. The writing and rewriting of the fifteenth century led to an interrogation of historiography itself, and queens can often be found near those points of interrogation.

[une-sanz-pluis]

Hi, what exactly did the royal charter excluding the Beaufort family from the throne say?

Hi! So in February 1407, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset requested that the act legitimatising him and his siblings be confirmed by Letters Patent, which he duly received. At the same time, the royal charter that legitimised the Beauforts was modified by the insertion of the words excepta dignitate regali ("except to royal dignity"). I believe the royal charter is in the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England which I don't have access to but a 19th century historian published a transcription:

Be it remembered, that on Tuesday the fifteenth day of Parliament, the Chancellor, by the King's command, declared how our Holy Father the Pope had, in reverence of the most excellent person of the King, and of his honorable uncle the Duke of Guyenne and of Lancaster, and of his blood, enabled and legitimatized Sir John de Beauford, his brothers and his sister, and that therefore our Lord the King as entire Sovereign of his Realm of England, for the honour of his blood, wills, and hath of his full royal power enabled and of his own proper authority made the said John, his said brothers and sister, muliers, and also pronounced and published the ability and legitimatization according to the form of the King's charter thereof made. The which charter was read in full Parliament and delivered to the said Duke, father of the said John, and his said brothers and sister, the tenor of which charter ensueth. Richard by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to our most dear cousins the noble men, John the Knight, Henry the Clerk, Thomas 'Domicello,' and to our beloved the noble woman Joan Beaufond 'Domicelle,' the most dear relatives of our uncle the noble John Duke of Lancaster, born our lieges, greeting, and the favour of our royal majesty. Whilst internally considering how incessantly and with what honours we are graced by the very useful and sincere affection of our aforesaid uncle, and by the wisdom of his counsel, we think it proper and fit that, for the sake of his merits, and in contemplation of his favors, we should enrich you (who are endowed by nature with great probity and honesty of life and behaviour, and are begotten of royal blood, and by the divine gift are adorned with many virtues,) with the strength of our royal prerogative of favour and grace. Hence it is, that, yielding to the entreaties of our said uncle your father, we do, in the fullness of our royal power and by the assent of Parliament, by the tenor of these presents empower you, who as it is asserted suffer from the want of birthright, (notwithstanding such defect, which, and the qualities thereof, we take to be in these presents sufficiently expressed) to be raised, promoted, elected, assume, and be admitted to all honours, dignities, [except to the royal dignity] pre-eminencies, estates, degrees and offices public and private whatsoever, as well perpetual as temporal, and feodal and noble, by whatsoever names they may be designated, whether they be Duchies, Principalities, Earldoms, Baronies or other fees, and whether they depend or are holden of us mediately or immediately, and to receive, retain, bear, and exercise the same as freely and lawfully as if ye were born in lawful matrimony, and you and every of you do restore and legitimatize : any statutes or customs of our realm of England to the contraiy thereof made or observed (which we consider to be herein fully expressed) in anywise notwithstanding. (Source: Samuel Bentley, Excerpta Historica, Or Illustrations of English History (1831))

Wars of the Roses historians generally credit this addition to Henry IV, historians of Henry IV to Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury who was no Beaufort fan and in a powerful position during this time due to Henry IV's illness.

[mai-love-andthestars]

Tarot 101: History and the Arcanas

Lets go over a quick summary of Tarot's history and Arcanas

Brief history

The history of tarot can be traced as far back as Egypt, back to the great Library of Alexandria where scrolls were housed by the famous librarian, mathematician, Philosopher and astronomer, Hypatia. Within the library were scrolls of the book of thoth which is said to contain texts written by Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge and writing. The illustrations of the tarot cards at the time are said to contain secret teachings which is presented by the major Arcana that represents a course in personal and Spiritual Development.

The minor Arcana appears later in time and has history in different areas of the world   In the Fourteen hundreds Italian Aristocrats use the cards called “trionfi” to play a game called “Il trionfos”. Artists were commissioned to create the cards that were either hand-painted or printed on wood blocks. Players took the themes shown on the cards and composed poems about each other. One of the earliest decks that still exist is the Visconti Tarot that was commissioned by the Duke of Milan in the mid 1400 that was printed on gold and silver foil.

Tarot cards also existed in areas of Asia such as India. It is hypothesized that cards were brought over to Europe by the Knights of Templar; there were also suggestions that the cards were brought by Romani travelers from the east to Europe in the Middle Ages. Tarot also appeared in Islamic playing cards from a card game in the 14th or 15th Century that was popular among the wealthy and higher class. One deck was called the Mamluk deck that had an important influence in Tarot cards today. The deck consisted of four suits: the coins, the cups, the swords and polo sticks, as well as 10 numbered cards and 4 Court cards per suit. However, It is only assumed that this card game was used for fortune-telling.

In Spain, the Spanish nobility in the fifteenth century played a game called Juego de Naypes that came with 49 cards. These cards specifically were used to tell fortunes and reveal Secrets especially in the matters of love. These cards were divided into four suits that were based on women. These suits were called maiden's, wives, widows and nuns and were used to show what someone loved or desired most. Each card would have a verse or poem that had the same amount of lines as the card number. These cards began to be used by fortune tellers and were laid out in a similar way as modern tarot spreads today.

The most common tarot card deck known today is the Rider -Waite-Smith Tarot which was developed in 1909 by Arthur Edward Waite, who commissioned Pamela Colman Smith an artist and Theatrical designer to create the deck. Smith produced 78 paintings which became the cards of the Tarot deck; the deck was then published under the London company William Rider and son in 1910. The deck became noticeable for it's storytelling scenes that were depicted in the major Arcana as a way to convey their meanings. This design allowed readers to read the card intuitively and since the original publication of the deck a number variations have been created since then. And while many have made different designs and types of Tarot deck, the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck is one of the more popular cards today.

The Cards

Standard Tarot decks consist of seventy-eight cards, divided into two groups called the Major and Minor Arcana, the word Arcana meaning Secret. The major arcana consists of 22 cards, and the minor consists of 56 cards. The major arcana often reflects events in your life that are important and long lasting, “major” events in your life. While the minor arcana often depicts day to day events. It can also be seen as aspects that can affect you more personally in comparison to the minor arcana that may not.

The major arcana is numbered from 0 to XX or twenty. It follows the journey of the fool all the way to the completion of the world. Unlike the minor arcana, the major arcana does not correspond with the suit of playing cards, they slightly vary depending on the deck. The minor arcana correspond with the suits in traditional playing card decks as well as the four elements of water, fire, air and earth.

The suits

There are four suits in the minor arcana that are numbers from 1-10 with the Ace being the first card and the court cards known as the page, the knight, the queen and the king of the suits in traditional tarot decks.

The Wands are often associated with the suit of clubs and are represented by the element of fire, it is also a representation of your higher self or your higher realm, or in other words the spirit. They are also associated with the season of spring and in terms of time represent days. The qualities of the wands are elements such as action, creativity, energy, enterprise, intuition, hope and potential. In astrology they are represented by the signs Aries, Leo and Sagittarius that are also fire signs.

The cups are associated with the suit of hearts and are related to the element of water and represent a person’s emotions. In terms of timing it is associated with the months And is associated with the season of Summer. The qualities of the cups contain such keywords such as, love, relationships, happiness, harmony, sensitivity, emotion and fulfillment. In astrology they are represented by the zodiac signs of cancer, pisces and scorpio.

The swords were associated with a suit of Spades and are related to the element of air and represent a person's mental plane. In terms of timing the cars can be associated with weeks and are associated with the season of autumn or fall. The swords represent qualities such as ideas, communication, conflict struggle , separation resolution and change. In astrology they're represented by the zodiac sign of Gemini Libra and Aquarius.

The Pentacles are associated with the suit of diamonds and are related to the element of Earth And represent a person's physical self. The Pentacles can be associated with the timing in terms of years and is related to the Season Winter. The storage represents keywords such as money, work, talent, reputation, achievements, stability and material wealth. In astrology they are represented by the signs of Taurus Virgo and Capricorn.

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[naturalrights-retard]

Deterrence By Savagery?

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

― Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996)

Western colonialism began in the fifteenth century and ended, with a few exceptions, in the mid of the 20th century. It was enabled by the development of technologies and fast population growth. The West then changed to a new model of ruling the world. It talked about human values and human rights and certain rules that would allegedly enable everyone to enjoy those.

The facade did not hold up well. The West, and especially the U.S., abused the 'rules based order' by circumventing international law whenever it did not fit its interests. It continued to apply 'organized violence' under dubious circumstances. The wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to demonstrate that the West would uphold whatever rules it claimed to exist. But the wars were lost and the U.S. had to retreat from them.

The war in Ukraine is only the latest but most obvious demonstration that the 'rules based order' no longer exists:

Over the past several decades, the United States has continually placed Moscow in a position either to accept the fait accompli of NATO expansion at the expense of Russian security interests, or to escalate with force and suffer the consequences of increased economic and political ostracization. This disincentive to avoid escalation has been effectively removed. Explicating the altered state of international relations is not cheerleading for the Russian position — although it may be treated as such by those who disingenuously present any realistic assessment of the situation as “appeasement” — but rather illustrating how Moscow has insulated itself from Western ostracization, thus changing the entire balance of power in not only Europe, but the world. Now, it is Russia that has the West on the horns of a dilemma: It can either watch the Kremlin achieve its strategic objectives, guaranteed in a one-sided negotiated settlement or through the continued attrition of Ukrainian forces, or it can escalate with force. Putin’s statement regarding nuclear weapons was not mere rhetoric—it was the Russian president defining the limits of the current conflict from a position of authority. Anything short of total Ukrainian victory is therefore an implicit admission that the “rules-based” economic and political order has been irreversibly altered.

This morning hypersonic weapons destroyed an SBU headquarter in Kiev just seconds after the air alarm was activated. Western air defenses had failed. Russia has destroyed the myth of the West's superiority in applying organized violence.