GaldraChevaliere wrote
Feudal systems were wholly reliant on the control of the spread of knowledge to maintain the caste system. That's why knights and their hand-picked men at arms dominated martial academies, mercenary bands and training fields to maintain their chokehold on the knowledge of warfare, clergymen read sermons in Latin to restrict biblical knowledge and understanding and therefore the ability to interpret teachings from the flock, and guilds initially formed to protect the interests of city-living freemen eventually became entities like the Hansa forcing all who would learn a trade to learn through their channels. Without the restriction of learning opportunities by birth or wealth, eradication of oral cultures that would otherwise pass on their ways outside of the Church's or the University's supervision, and enforcement of poverty and illiteracy among even yeomen, feudalism would not have been able to survive. Translating the bible into German is the one good thing protestants did for anyone.
[deleted] wrote
GaldraChevaliere wrote
Yeah. A society that, for example, taught its oral traditions to all its members and allowed for unrestricted pursuits of the arts, the trades, weapons training etc. would be one in which that knowledge wouldn't be any inherent advantage over another member of that society, since there would be no barriers to one learning the same skills.
[deleted] wrote
GaldraChevaliere wrote (edited )
The druids themselves are a case of controlling the flow of knowledge to maintain both their own monopoly on religious interpretation and as a pedagogical tool for their new initiates to be forced to recall lessons by rote or mnemonic devices rather than to become reliant on referencing texts. However, our knowledge of them is deeply fragmented both because of this method of teaching and because of what amounts to a society-wide character assassination by the Romans, painting them as violent inscrutable barbarians who engaged in whatever activities the average Roman noble would find distasteful or obscene. Because of this, it's hard to understand just how widespread druidic teachings were, how they differed from region to region and tribe to tribe, and how often the rule of not committing religious knowledge to writing was broken.
We do have surviving continental celtic texts (E: mostly secular or written by layfolk to clarify) written in Latin and Greek script, and so understand a bit of their languages, but in the way that an englishman would understand Japanese through romaji. Poorly and lacking many nuances of the language.
MHC wrote
America relies on rote learning.
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