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Sinead O'Connor's letter to Miley Cyrus

GreatGutsby said:
Yes, insane and uneducated.
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This is a very ignorant position to hold. It’s true that the majority were uneducated in the Middle Ages, but those who were most educated were those who had most contact with religion and religious belief. The peasantry, the least educated, mostly went about their business without thinking about god or religion very much at all. The majority of the population were fairly indifferent about religious belief.
 
SheilaNaGig said:
This is a very ignorant position to hold. It’s true that the majority were uneducated in the Middle Ages, but those who were most educated were those who had most contact with religion and religious belief. The peasantry, the least educated, mostly went about their business without thinking about god or religion very much at all. The majority of the population were fairly indifferent about religious belief.
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as far as you know

If you look at the auld romanesque churches in Spain you see how even small churches saw elements of Christianity incorporated into the church design, in paintings for example. No one knows the extent to which this 'took', but religious enthusiasms from the first crusade through the peasants' war in the 1520s iirc suggests they were a) aware and b) could be agitated by appeals to religion
 
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GreatGutsby said:
No, I explained WHY it's mental illness, I didn't just say she's mentally ill because I said so. O'Connor cannot be religious without falling for the delusion involved, so it can be seen as a type of mental illness. And I'm not saying that to have a pop at her, I have a history of mental illness myself and it's nothing to be ashamed of.
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This is clumsy conflation.

You are saying that Sinead O’Conner becomes mad as a result of joining one or another religious group. You say that once she joins a religion she is caught up in a delusion that makes her mad. Therefore, the religion is mad and makes her mad.

It’s the other way around: her madness manifests and finds expression in her religious beliefs. If she chose to express herself as a politician or as a painter or even maybe as a recording artist, she’d still be mad and her madness would find expression in whatever medium she chose.

For the record, like you and many others on here I too have struggled over the years with madness. I’m not ashamed of it, in fact finding sanity and continuing to work to be well is a source of great pride for me. And one of the centrally important factors of my wellness is my spiritual practice. Your insistence that religious belief and spiritual practice is always a cause and a symptom of madness is dismissive, rude, insensitive and ignorant. And wrong.
 
probably fairer to say that gods law was natural law, these were non materialists in a way that some people today, in this country at east don't recognize because they don't encounter it often. Back then it was the de riguer mode of thought, to think otherwise was the mad, the blasphemous.
I also want to talk about roman attitudes to religion similarly (I know they bore ye shiela but bear with me). Romans were from what I read cheerfully profane and less individually pious in general and socially than what I've read of the feudal peasantry. But only madmen crossed the gods or denied them before thier kin etc
 
Pickman's model said:
as far as you know
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Oh please stop. You know as well as I do that current understanding about the Middle Ages supports this.

As soon as I start posting again in gen.pop. on here I’m reminded why I usually don’t bother. This ridiculous sniping and nitpicking is really dull.

If the pub analogy for this place still holds, it’s getting to be like that place on the corner where everything revolves around the same old codgers in the corner who keep rehashing the same old boring bollocks.




GreatGutsby Do please stick around, we need some new blood on here. I disagree with you but at least it’s someone new to bicker with.



Right that’s me for the day. I’m off for some real-life life.
 
DotCommunist said:
probably fairer to say that gods law was natural law, these were non materialists in a way that some people today, in this country at east don't recognize because they don't encounter it often. Back then it was the de riguer mode of thought, to think otherwise was the mad, the blasphemous.
I also want to talk about roman attitudes to religion similarly (I know they bore ye shiela but bear with me). Romans were from what I read cheerfully profane and less individually pious in general and socially than what I've read of the feudal peasantry. But only madmen crossed the gods or denied them before thier kin etc
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And now I’m going to be drawn back in. You’re always a good conversation DotCommunist .
 
SheilaNaGig said:
Oh please stop. You know as well as I do that current understanding about the Middle Ages supports this.

As soon as I start posting again in gen.pop. on here I’m reminded why I usually don’t bother. This ridiculous sniping and nitpicking is really dull.

If the pub analogy for this place still holds, it’s getting to be like that place on the corner where everything revolves around the same old codgers in the corner who keep rehashing the same old boring bollocks.




GreatGutsby Do please stick around, we need some new blood on here. I disagree with you but at least it’s someone new to bicker with.



Right that’s me for the day. I’m off for some real-life life.
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Yeh. On your return pls see my edit
 
Pickman's model said:
as far as you know

If you look at the auld romanesque churches in Spain you see how even small churches saw elements of Christianity incorporated into the church design, in paintings for example. No one knows the extent to which this 'took', but religious enthusiasms from the first crusade through the peasants' war in the 1520s iirc suggests they were a) aware and b) could be agitated by appeals to religion
Click to expand...


For sure, religion and general awareness about religious tropes and memes (if you will) were part of the everyday vernacular. The Church and all its doing was the backdrop against which everything else took place. Much like comtemporary pop culture: I’ve never watched a single episode of the Kardashians but I know who they are, how they live and what their values are; or at least I think I do, and I tend to believe that I know enough to understand the wider conversation around them and all their doings.

The culture of the Church in the Middle Ages was I suspect in many ways comparable: some people are avid followers of and feel deeply involved with pop culture, talent contests, who’s putting on weight and who’s shagging who in the gossip rags; others keep an eye on it, make their living from it, or feel that it’s meaningful and crucially important; while others are largely unimpressed and not bothered and still others are vehemently against it all and all it stands for. You could say very similar things about the Church.

(For the pedantc: I’m obviously not making a direct comparison, I’m not saying contemporary pop culture is a religion or based on belief in the divine... although now I think about it..... I suppose some people do feel that Slebs are in some way *more* than the rest of us...)

So yes, everyone was deeply aware of the Church: it provided the framework for the day,for each month, the year, for every life. But not everyone wanted to go, not everyone was interested in it. The fact that so many sermons were about how you go to Hell if you stay away from church tells us that staying away from church was a Thing. The many rules and regulations as well as listed punishments about not ploughing on a saint’s day or whatever tells us that plenty of people ploughed in saint’s days. Being able to buy your way out of Hell with Indulgences tells us that it was so normal for people to want to find a secular way to avoid the worry of damnation that a huge and lucrative market sprang up around it.

It’s really not controversial to say that belief in god was far from universal in the Middle Ages.


In the past, the Middle Ages was often characterised as the 'Age of Faith', but now it is recognised that this moniker conceals the complexity of the medieval religious culture. Christianity was the dominant religion, but not everyone followed the faith with the same intensity: judging from legislation and sermons encouraging lay people to attend church and observe its teachings, many people were lukewarm in the faith, while others were openly or covertly sceptical.
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Church in the Middle Ages: from dedication to dissent
 
SheilaNaGig said:
For sure, religion and general awareness about religious tropes and memes (if you will) were part of the everyday vernacular. The Church and all its doing was the backdrop against which everything else took place. Much like comtemporary pop culture: I’ve never watched a single episode of the Kardashians but I know who they are, how they live and what their values are; or at least I think I do, and I tend to believe that I know enough to understand the wider conversation around them and all their doings.

The culture of the Church in the Middle Ages was I suspect in many ways comparable: some people are avid followers of and feel deeply involved with pop culture, talent contests, who’s putting on weight and who’s shagging who in the gossip rags; others keep an eye on it, make their living from it, or feel that it’s meaningful and crucially important; while others are largely unimpressed and not bothered and still others are vehemently against it all and all it stands for. You could say very similar things about the Church.

(For the pedantc: I’m obviously not making a direct comparison, I’m not saying contemporary pop culture is a religion or based on belief in the divine... although now I think about it..... I suppose some people do feel that Slebs are in some way *more* than the rest of us...)

So yes, everyone was deeply aware of the Church: it provided the framework for the day,for each month, the year, for every life. But not everyone wanted to go, not everyone was interested in it. The fact that so many sermons were about how you go to Hell if you stay away from church tells us that staying away from church was a Thing. The many rules and regulations as well as listed punishments about not ploughing on a saint’s day or whatever tells us that plenty of people ploughed in saint’s days. Being able to buy your way out of Hell with Indulgences tells us that it was so normal for people to want to find a secular way to avoid the worry of damnation that a huge and lucrative market sprang up around it.

It’s really not controversial to say that belief in god was far from universal in the Middle Ages.



Church in the Middle Ages: from dedication to dissent
Click to expand...
Remember stuff from a little later crossing into the early modern where you get a profusion of clerical tracts bemoaning the godlessness of the common people. Even given these were often drumming up support financial and otherwise for evangelical efforts must have been something in it.
 
DotCommunist said:
probably fairer to say that gods law was natural law, these were non materialists in a way that some people today, in this country at east don't recognize because they don't encounter it often. Back then it was the de riguer mode of thought, to think otherwise was the mad, the blasphemous.

I also want to talk about roman attitudes to religion similarly (I know they bore ye shiela but bear with me). Romans were from what I read cheerfully profane and less individually pious in general and socially than what I've read of the feudal peasantry. But only madmen crossed the gods or denied them before thier kin etc
Click to expand...


Well I suppose it was *said* to be natural law... That would make it far easier to impose it and scare people into obedience. Labelling people as mad or heretical was probably a convenience as much as anything else. Like any other narrow judgement “Oh well what can you expect s/he’s a ———, after all...” it just shuts down any discussion. And since the educated people (rich powerful and/or clergy) were those who had a vested interest in maintenaning the system there was no mileage in allowing any dissent.

Are we talking about the peasantry or the clergy here? Anything we know about those days is based on history not observation or experience, so it’s a bit tricky to be discussin it with any real certainty, we can only base what we say on what we read and receive from scholars and history.

But *were* the peasantry pious though? Pagan /pre-Xian beliefs were (are...) extant right through the Middle Ages. Of course some of them were. Maybe most of them (although I doubt it). Maybe they mostly gave lip service to it, out fo fear of damnation or of the Witch-finder or just for a quiet life. Like in the Soviet Union, where people stayed quiet or got KGB’d.

I take your point about the dull old Romans though. Despite having Peter himself on the throne there in Rome (or maybe because that made them feel safe as houses) they did seem more able to laugh and toss their curls he face of the Church. Maybe because of their history of mass exposure to many different religions by virtue of their rampage across the globe, so perhaps they were less impressed by the idea of one perfect god.
 
mrs quoad said:
'The defining characteristic of mental illness is that someone is isolated in their belief system.' Alan Stone wrote sth very similar to that* (I think in the context of Soviet political psychiatry), and it certainly got me thinking.

What makes religion non-insane is that lots of people believe the same set of batshit ideas, and have believed them for a very long time. If it was only Frank, shouting about it on a street corner in the Atheist Paradise of SomewhereElseville, Frank would bloody obviously be mad.

*I don't have the book to hand, or I'd check. That's close to verbatim tho!
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69A56160-2613-46C4-BCB7-93031C2A5EBC.jpeg

I’ll take that!
 
SheilaNaGig said:
For sure, religion and general awareness about religious tropes and memes (if you will) were part of the everyday vernacular. The Church and all its doing was the backdrop against which everything else took place. Much like comtemporary pop culture: I’ve never watched a single episode of the Kardashians but I know who they are, how they live and what their values are; or at least I think I do, and I tend to believe that I know enough to understand the wider conversation around them and all their doings.

The culture of the Church in the Middle Ages was I suspect in many ways comparable: some people are avid followers of and feel deeply involved with pop culture, talent contests, who’s putting on weight and who’s shagging who in the gossip rags; others keep an eye on it, make their living from it, or feel that it’s meaningful and crucially important; while others are largely unimpressed and not bothered and still others are vehemently against it all and all it stands for. You could say very similar things about the Church.

(For the pedantc: I’m obviously not making a direct comparison, I’m not saying contemporary pop culture is a religion or based on belief in the divine... although now I think about it..... I suppose some people do feel that Slebs are in some way *more* than the rest of us...)

So yes, everyone was deeply aware of the Church: it provided the framework for the day,for each month, the year, for every life. But not everyone wanted to go, not everyone was interested in it. The fact that so many sermons were about how you go to Hell if you stay away from church tells us that staying away from church was a Thing. The many rules and regulations as well as listed punishments about not ploughing on a saint’s day or whatever tells us that plenty of people ploughed in saint’s days. Being able to buy your way out of Hell with Indulgences tells us that it was so normal for people to want to find a secular way to avoid the worry of damnation that a huge and lucrative market sprang up around it.

It’s really not controversial to say that belief in god was far from universal in the Middle Ages.



Church in the Middle Ages: from dedication to dissent
Click to expand...
upload_2018-10-29_10-16-22.png
upload_2018-10-29_10-17-9.png
 
Pickman's model

That seems to support my point: that piety and religious certainty was not universal.

This started because GreatGutsby asserted that everyone in the Middle Ages was uneducated and everyone was religious. I said both those things were wrong. You said “so far as you know” and then added words to say “it’s complicated”, to which I replied along the lines of “yes, it is, and we can’t be sure, but it looks very much as if religious belief was not universal” and now you’ve posted this photo of some text, which pretty much agrees with what I was saying.

I had a more entertaining exchange with Cleverbot earlier today.
 
SheilaNaGig said:
Pickman's model

That seems to support my point: that piety and religious certainty was not universal.

This started because GreatGutsby asserted that everyone in the Middle Ages was uneducated and everyone was religious. I said both those things were wrong. You said “so far as you know” and then added words to say “it’s complicated”, to which I replied along the lines of “yes, it is, and we can’t be sure, but it looks very much as if religious belief was not universal” and now you’ve posted this photo of some text, which pretty much agrees with what I was saying.

I had a more entertaining exchange with Cleverbot earlier today.
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this is where posting on a phone falls down because i was more replying to your bit about peasants being indifferent to religion: as my edit, i thought, made clear. anyway i'm off to have a more entertaining encounter with some dead people.
 
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She's totally batshit. Top of the list with old Don Trump of people who really shouldn't be allowed grown up things like computers.

angrydadd‏ @angrydadd 11h11 hours ago




Replying to @MagdaDavitt77 @DeclanBurke2



Two weeks in... imagine what she’ll come out with after a few months?



7 replies . 4 retweets 200 likes











It’s actually been 7 hours and 15 days
1f914.png




24 replies . 32 retweets 435 likes
 
PursuedByBears said:
She's always been an attention-seeking loon.
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I'd say she's always been seeking a path to follow. She's dabbled in Irish Republicanism, fringe Catholicism, Rastafarianism and deviated from the "norm" many times over the decades. She had a dysfunctional childhood and in 80s and 90s Ireland - coming out and speaking her mind - against the status quo and the RCC, as a woman - earned her a lot of enemies and the label that she was mad.

At the same time, she grew up in the public eye and fought her demons in the spotlight. And she was told by various males to shut up, that she needed a good kicking/seeing to by people like Sinatra or Shaun Ryder (iirc). She also battled various journalists and others who sought to portray her in the most negative light possible, and there were custody battles to take on board as well.

I think anyone's mental health might suffer if they went through 30 years of that.

Still disappointed with that tweet, mind.
 
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