Rekiwi's Blog

Humans are funny creatures.

Quoting again from William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire, examining the belief that the Church was immutable and perfect:

In A.D. 340 Saint Cyril of Jerusalem had reasoned that what all men believe must be true, and ever since then the purity of the faith had derived from its wholeness, from the conviction, as expressed by an early Jesuit, that all who worshiped were united in "one sacramental system under the government of the Roman Pontiff."

If enough people believe hard enough, it's true, like "we are the master race and we will now invade Russia" or "our Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere will bring peace and civilization to our half of the globe" or "we need to invade before Saddam unleashes his WMDs". If you doubt or question then you are an unpatriotic terrorist-lover.

Manchester characterizes medieval leaders' inability to account for the sweeping changes to be brought by the nascent Renaissance:

The popes, emperors, cardinals, kinds, prelates, and nobles of the time sorted through the snarl [of events] and, being typical men in power, chose to believe what they wanted to believe, accepting whatever justified their policies and convictions and ignoring the rest.

How depressingly familiar.