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Captain Cook gives ‘em what for in these 70s Australian History comics.
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It is thus not women, or the love of women, that causes evil, but the fault belongs to those who have never known how to love properly…
…Perhaps some grim and gloomy hypocrite might dispute this point, some scowling, crook-necked monk, who pretends to imitate the Curii while actually living a continual orgy, who speaks of chastity while wiggling his behind. Such a man will say that I am preaching false teachings to you, that I am presenting something scandalous to your impressionable dispositions, that I am a stumbling stone to your pious ears, that I am schooling you in vice, teaching you degenerate morals, confounding the sacred and the profane, and am making invalid distinctions between carnal and divine love…
…Nevertheless, the essence of love remains the same. Since it is entirely good, no evil can follow from it. Therefore, no kind of love can be bad or described as such.
Cornelius Agrippa’s introductory lecture on Plato’s Symposium, 1512.
Yes, I think I do want to do my thesis on medieval university life. Verrrrry interesting.
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As a person whose life and thoughts revolve around academic concepts, I think this was the hardest lesson to learn. Constantly asking the “why’s” of historical study or in theoretical formulae, or those who ask the “how’s” through the experimental sciences or governing, you see how most people in these fields are limited because they refuse to admit this truth:
Your discipline strangles you. It limits your vision, and forces your opinions. It denies the infinite, no matter how expansive or inclusive your theory or policy or findings are.
It’s easy to see this in your contemporaries, but it’s harder to see it in yourself. And when you do, it’s even harder to deal with. What it comes down to acceptance.
I am an historian. I ask why, and this leads inexorably to paradox. All history is paradox. That’s not something I can explain away, it’s fact. I try and explore how, and I trap myself in a universe of cause and effect - it’s fact. The greatest geniuses of our disciplines have found ways to make our rules look pretty, or just written new ones. This is not a bad or limiting thing, but it is true.
The open-mindedness of scholarship improves after you accept this of your discipline.
Jerky dancing.
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