The "Christian Europe" and other aberrant notions

So a gent offered recently to translate some of the older articles in Romanian, which turned out to be a very difficult task. Nevertheless, I like him, and while not yet usableⁱ I do believe his output can be fine tuned into greatness. For which reason, here is one of the articles he attempted, done in my own hand.

Just about the most ridiculous among the set of idiocies being paraded in pious self-sufficiency by the noob and the ungifted that nevertheless feel inclined to discuss matters of cultural anthropology is this one with "the christian history" of Europe, as if history could somehow carry ideological immanence. Similar nonsense was the height of fashion fifty to a hundred years ago, "ethnical geography", an item which produced moreover pretty stylistical figures such as "the forest is a Romanian's brother" and all sorts of related craptalkⁱⁱ with often painful effects.

The nude fact of the matter is that no soil carries in itself anything but that : the state of being a soil. On the footing it offers, any species, any race and any ethic group develops just as well. The space from the Carpathians to the seaⁱⁱⁱ is not more adequate or better fitting Romanians, or Hungarians, or Slavs or Pechenegs^iv or whosoever might have come by here, just like the American continent is not more adequate to red skins than white skins (a matter that we also had the opportunity to verify in practice, looky that the grains growing in the Great Black Swamp fills with milk both the tits of brunette Iroquis women and blonde German women, with perfectly comparable results.

Equally so history is mere history. It can of course be regarded ideologically, we could try to convince ourselves that "christian history", which is to say the falsifying^v view of history in Christian terms, has something to do with history. Just as well we could attempt to convince ourselves that the wishes of the subject modify objective reality, or that the world is altogether an immense conspiracy, or whatever other idiocy (if you prefer more "elevated" terms : ideology).

In reality, the happenstance that some problems of the [act of] being and the [state of] being, about image and representation or about other great themes of the essence were put against some concrete examples rather than other concrete examples is strictly irrelevant. It does not matter that Scholastics used the biblical blabla to construct and verify its theories of the world just like it doesn't matter if in point of fact the fruit that fell on Newton's head was an apple or a pear. The height of irrelevance, the laws of gravity are the same for any fruit and for any other object, and just so philosophy is the same irrespective if it were discovered working the imaginary example of an Oriental whore or some other. Sophia is one, the rest's just stories.

This does not mean that we're to erase anecdote from history, to no longer admit that Newton truly was hit in the head by an apple rather than a plantain^vi or whatever, that Archimedes was taking a bath in a tub rather than in a lake. Idem it does not mean to not admit that Thomas was reasoning about Mary, the Trinity and so forth. But we must immediately^vii understand anecdote as such, and not deem it above where the rope its relevancy allows it - which isn't very far.

Mary has absolutely no merit in the process of understanding, it has exactly no importance that God or Allah or any other figment of imagination played the role of stones upon which some people tried out their minds' hammers and chisels. If it weren't for them it'd have been some others, people made these like they would have made those, and if they didn't make them like this they'd have made them like that. Like any tool, like any experiment, like any theory these also aren't anything but mere toys, useful in a time and context, forgotten afterwards. You're not about to tell me that the exact type of spoon you fed your child with decides his future, I would hope. And I would further hope it's obvious that were you not to use that exact one you'd have used another, if you didn't happen to buy that type from the supermarket you'd have bought another type and overall it'd have made no difference. I should hope we're in agreement on this much.

So I wish to hear no further grumbles about the "importance" of Christianity in the building of European culture or civilisation. It is absurd, it is ridiculous and it is, if we're to be true to the end, degrading. It is degrading, because at the very best inculture and ignorance, but often enough mere stupidity feeds these aberrations.

And inculture and ignorance are degrading for people. Not quite as degrading as stupidity, it's true.

1. By me, it is otherwise certainly useful to others.

   And by the way I timed it, the translation took me from 9:20 to 9:44 this morning. [↩]

2. Traznai in the original is untranslatable in English. Structurally it denotes "the ill but indirect effects of having been struck by lightning". Think "crazily, obviously dysfunctional plan as hatched by otherwise highly functioning mind, like one of those B list scientist-villains of the 50s". [↩]
3. Black Sea. The Romanian homeland you see. [↩]
4. Ancient tribe. [↩]
5. Not in the Popper sense, but in the more direct "that which makes it be false". [↩]
6. Recent South American joke I just heard : Snow White carried by the prince, she's visibly thrilled. Prince asks her "why are you so happy ?" and the answer comes "because after all those apples it's finally time for the plantain." [↩]
7. This word is deeper in English than common usage. Immediately first and foremost means "without mediation", "directly". Forthwith! [↩]