Darwin and the Complexity of History

History is always pretty complicated.
The word complex is probably scribed into every history book known to man because no history is ever easy.
Many major figures in history are usually a mix of good and bad... often contradictory. 

I did not know anything really about Charles Darwin prior to this semester, one of the reasons I found an entire class based upon his work and its relation to the Victorian Era so interesting....

Now that I know him...he is pretty complex lol.

Darwin was a huge humanitarian, he loathed slavery and it pained him to see people abused, animals abused for that matter.

His whole family, a mix of the Wedgwoods (yea the tea pot and dinner china people) and Darwins were HUGE abolitionists and very anti-cruelty to a high degree...


When Darwin was a child and he would fish at his Wedgwood relations home, they taught him to soak worms in brine prior to hooking them so they would not feel the metal hook going into them.  Let us think about this for a second... he did not want the worm to feel pain.

This did not stop Darwin from being a HUGE hunter, he was a hunting enthusiast and also... when he was on his trip to the Galapagos... he captured, killed, and preserved hundreds of specimens, shooting tons of game to eat.  I am sure he tried to do it in the most humane way as possible, but still... does not want to make that worm suffer.

One of the books I am reading attributes Darwin's entire exploration into the origin of species and man to his hatred of slavery and in defiance of the normal excuse that somehow those enslaved by other men were lesser...not in the same species. As disgusting and horrible as it sounds, that horrible excuse was pretty prominent and others all the way through until the Civil Rights movement used those kind of disgusting and dim witted excuses to deny people the vote, rights, or even human dignity. 

Darwin witnessed the harsh treatment of slaves on some of his trips and it devastated him... and so he wanted to prove that regardless of skin, people came from the same stock.

I already liked Darwin, I just like him a lot more now. 

GREEN BEER!!!!!???!! WOOOOO... no.

We all fall for it.. even I do as I sit here after having shamrock shaped pancakes for breakfast and green rice krispy treats all day while drinking Irish Breakfast Tea.
(ok well the ones of us who are obsessive about things Irish)... we get all caught up in the fervor of St. Patrick's Day and yes, I will have a guinness tonight as well, as I should.

But... what is it all about?

The very modernized and proper depiction of St. Patrick

No... he did not run all the snakes out of Ireland, though the comics with him driving the car with them in it is pretty hilarious and fantastic.

He was not even from Ireland.

But...that is OK, we are an adaptive society of people, we go with it. 

He was probably born somewhere in Scotland in the late 3oos, so you know...records are not the best. It is not like his mum had the opportunity to facebook every moment of his life... look Patrick's first bowl of gruel, look Patrick playing with his stick doll... nope... 

Patrick did not have the best adolescence... I mean if you are a young teen and you are kidnapped, made a slave, and then forced to tend sheep in Ireland, it is not exactly what you planned on doing (and if you did...well, special... just special)

Eventually he escaped and began working to Christianize the pagan Irish, which turned out to be pretty successful since when I visited Ireland I found more Churches in Dublin than I did in Middle Georgia and well, wow...that is a difficult thing to do.

He lived like many of us think the mendicant orders lived during the middle ages...vow of poverty, chaste, scant living...and he continued to work to turn people to God, inspiring others in Ireland to follow in his footsteps, so pretty cool guy, I can see why he has a holiday.

So...the Shamrock?  Simple, he used it to explain the holy trinity..worked out pretty well. 

Do not even ask me to explain how it turned into green beer and drunken lunacy.  I went to the Savannah celebration once, I am good.  

That being said... I am currently wearing a green tshirt with a giant cat leprechaun on it.  

Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

The Past is Not Ideal

This is going to be quick because I am currently studying for my graduate comprehensive exams, but something occurred to me this morning as I read...something that I encounter a lot and something that really aggravates me about people who look to the past as "better times".

First... many people have this idealistic view of the past so let me just shatter that for a moment and say that just because I love studying the past in no way means I want to revisit it.

We are a progressive society (for the most part) and we move forward in the hopes to make life better for all people...at least some of us do.

So... first...
Those nuts who think that we should go back to the days of the founders when FREEDOM was real!!!!  This is the worst representation of 'Mercuh that I can think of and it is an example of the growing dangers of civil religion and nationalism that I have seen in a while.
The 1700s were not ideal for anyone...well unless you were a wealthy, white, and land owning male. Women had no rights, no property and were at the will of their fathers or husbands... there was slavery... and a lot of the population could not vote... how is that ideal?
By the way... during our Second president's tenure...we had some of the strongest censorship laws in our history with the alien and sedition acts.... just saying.

Second...
the 1950s
Um Red Scare people and Jim Crow
I am not even going past that...that is enough. 

Thanks 

Grit and Darwin

I am in full paper mode right now so I do not have much time to talk...but after reading most of Desmond and Moore's biography of Darwin, I have such a different perception of him.
I always pictured him as this high society naturalist with an edge, but... during his time on the Beagle , Charles Darwin was anything but dainty. He spent most of his time rouging it on the plains of South America with native guides and riding with gauchos, eating armadillo and puma and liking it. He had to bargain with warlords and tread over hundreds of miles of rough territory just to look at new flora and species. 
I just did not know... it is a pretty interesting thing. 

Beetle Mania

A good bit of my blogs come from content that I am currently studying because well...when you read three books at once you really do not have a lot of spare time to look into other things, sadly.
Today I found something amazing when reading Desmond and Moore's biography of Charles Darwin (and I do recommend it if you have time to read it, it is amazing)

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist
By the way, I had the opportunity to correspond with one of the authors of this book, James Moore...because I had some questions about his studies when I researched him as a Darwin historian, he is a very friendly and helpful scholar who gave a random student a bit of his day and made some awesome suggestions, which is why I am promoting this book even more... it is very rare someone is so nice. 

Anyway, when Darwin was attending college at Cambridge to become a member of the Anglican clergy...yep Charles Darwin...he took up the hobby of collecting and categorizing beetles. During one of his years at Cambridge, Darwin and his cousin obsessively collected beetles and this was a popular thing to do. People would buy books and basically compete to see who could amass the most extensive collection of beetles. Darwin freaked out one time because he got ahold of this German species of beetle with red antenna. Now, I do understand the efforts to reconnect to nature by pursuing such a hobby and naturalism was popular during the industrialization filled 19th century in England, but I just cannot get out of my head this intense group of college students at Cambridge...walking around in their gowns and caps...feverishly looking for the perfect beetle specimen. 
Hilarious...

You KNOW you want to spend your time looking for this guy and his friends 

Puritans and Witches

Anyone who knows me can back up that I have a slight obsession with the Puritans. Honestly I love those crazy Predestination, hard life, devotees to one of the most strict interpretations of Christianity I have ever seen. Why? Beyond the obvious insane things I read when studying their court records? I think it is because they are the perfect representation of how a society can break down when you put too many restrictions on the natural behaviors of human beings to long to be happy and free thinking.
We just do not appreciate some daunting figure telling us if we love our children (you were supposed to have this distant separation), like to dance, read, sing...etc... maybe work in the garden on a Sunday afternoon...we are going to suffer in the depths of hell for an eternity. Especially when you have no idea if you were one of the select who only knew they were one of God's chosen few to go to Heaven by WANTING to adhere to such tight restrictions. 

Oh man...and did it have a bad effect on their daily lives.

We love starving and walking through the snow NOT to dance or sing

One negative effect of such a restrictive lifestyle manifested itself a few times in the new world with Puritan and puritan-like peoples in Massachusetts AND Connecticut. I know most people are aware of the witch hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, but it was not a singular event. 

From the late 1640s until the end of the century, people in Connecticut also faced the charge of witch and just like in Salem...turned to hysteria and murder (I am sorry, hanging and executing people for witchcraft is murder so I am just going to be honest here and call a spade a spade).

Let me preface... I do not care if a 100% lunatic in an official manner (COTTON MATHER I AM TALKING TO YOU SIR) writes memoirs of his escapades as a crusader against the Devil's war against American colonialism and describes bad Exorcist style scenes to legitimize his fantasies and delusions of grandeur, these people were charged, jailed, and often executed because they were poor, disliked, or proved to be an obstacle for someone else's success in a town and Mather with his various cronies contributed to straight up murder in my eyes... no sympathy for the real wicked here. 

" One while their Tongues would be drawn down their Throats; another-while they would be pull'd out upon their Chins, to a prodigious length. They would have their Mouths opened unto such a Wideness, that their Jaws went out of joint; and anon they would clap together again with a Force like that of a strong Spring-Lock. The same would happen to their Shoulder-Blades, and their Elbows, and Hand-wrists, and several of their joints. They would at times ly in a benummed condition and be drawn together as those that are ty'd Neck and Heels;' and presently be stretched out, yea, drawn Backwards, to such a degree that it was fear'd the very skin of their Bellies would have crack'd. They would make most pitteous out-cries, that they were cut with Knives, and struck with Blows that they could not bear. Their Necks would be broken, so that their Neck-bone would seem dissolved unto them that felt after it; and yet on the sudden, it would become, again so stiff that there was no stirring of their Heads; yea, their Heads would be twisted almost round; and if main Force at any time obstructed a dangerous motion which they seem'd to be upon, they would roar exceedingly. "

-Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689)

You can Marvel at the Entire Thing HERE

By the way, this complete horrible excuse for a human being, riled up Salem so bad that after he appeared to help more people were arrested and executed.  Good going Cotton, good going!

Oh look what the moron just so happened to Publish and make money off of....

Back to Connecticut...
So of course, the practice of anything even akin to witchcraft during the 17th century was a capital crime in the colonies and please let me be clear... if you walked into a friend's house in 1650 in Connecticut and accidentally said something to the effect of "Hey I was walking outside and it was so glorious that I wanted to marvel at the magic of nature." There might be a chance that a day later your best friend who you shared bread recipes with and sat by in church might be pointing their finger at you in a frenzy because moments after you left (you heathen nature worshipping demon) she came down with a sharp pain in her head...placed there by you of course and the DEVIL (also know as a headache). 

Oh and that is all it took by the way.... you caused a headache, froze the cow's milk (does not matter if it was 19 degrees outside in February in Connecticut), or looked at someone funny.  All it took was one annoyed person and the utterance of witchcraft and your butt was toast. 

Like Salem, dozens of people were accused and executed for witchcraft in the late 17th century... Puritans man...Puritans. This happened decades before the tragedy at Salem and proceeded throughout the rest of the century, until the late 1690s when new laws were implemented in colonies to restrict the prosecution of witches (probably because of Salem)...but still, these people Mary Sanford, Lydia Gilbert, and John Carsington were killed in part because of the restrictive nature of an overbearing theocratic rule that deprived early colonists of any sort of free thinking or will.... the Enlightenment could not come soon enough for these people. 

Massachusetts witch execution