Organic art = the patterns of life (3)

2.   how did Modernity emerge in Europe

Why is understanding the emergence of Modernity so important ? Well, in order to survive in the 20th century, all countries on earth were forced to convert to the quasi-worldview of Modernity and to the reason that is at work within capital. What ensued was a radical departure from the past that thoroughly impacted the ways of thinking and the behaviors of the individuals in all third-world nations. And this resulted in a blow-back of monumental proportion on their worldviews, culture, art, and societal governance.

I observed first hand how – the art world in Beijing during the eighties was mesmerized to ape Western productions, rock and punk music, the modernist avant-garde painting, – and how this resulted in three decades of sheer insanity. Things have certainly evolved since then but the blow-back resulting from aping the first world has still not been completely digested...

Having said that the fact of the matter is that the blow-back on the 3rd world is nothing compared to the chaos that was unleashed on the first world.

Today we come to suspect that Modernity and capitalism have cursed humanity. And nothing could liberate us more thoroughly from this curse than by gaining a clear comprehension of why and how Modernity emerged in Western Europe in the first place and how things then evolved toward Late-Modernity.

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Dark ages of localism and Western Christianity



When they were conquered by the Roman empire the territories making up present day Western Europe were fully engaged in the age of transition between tribal societies and empire. After their conquest they formed an integral part of the empire for some 500 years. That period was called the age of antiquity. Around 400 AD the empire fell and the European territories were plunged in what is called the ‘Middle-ages’ (middle ages between the age of antiquity and the age of modernity which reached the apex of its early phase with the Renaissance). 

For some 1000 years the territories making up present day Western Europe were living in what has been described as the dark ages of localism under the aegis of an aristocracy of knights towering over their slave and serf peasants. After the fall of the Roman empire the imperial power institutions collapsed and all matters pertaining to the production of daily life ended up being settled at the local level. But power did not disappear completely. Knights grabbed the power of governance over local concentrations of populations and they rapidly were competing among themselves to enlarge their estates. Kingdoms reappeared, as a conclusion of this competition for larger estates, sometimes after 1100.


The clergy was the only centralized institution that survived after the fall of Rome. Christianity was structured as a pyramid of power that it had copied from the imperial institutional structure. Its center was thus in Rome which was governed by the Pope and priests were governing over local congregations while archbishops and bishops governed over the priests of the different regions. This formed the institutional structure of Catholicism (Western Christianity).


Christianity was the official religion imposed to their subjects by emperor Constantine and his followers. But sensing the fragility of Rome Constantine moved his court to Constantinople (present day Istanbul). After the fall of Rome, capital of the Western part of the empire, Western and Eastern Christianity followed their own and separate paths. In the Western part Christianity developed as Catholicism while in the Eastern part it developed as Orthodoxy. Here after I focus on Catholicism for the good reason that it was the worldview out of which Modernity emerged.


For centuries priests and bishops kind of assumed the dual role of – religious men of knowledge, – and men of power which sometimes resulted in conflictual relationships with secular men of power. But at all times these conflicts remained contained for the good reason that the functions of the men of power and the functions of the men of knowledge were exercised by members of the same families.


Being the sole centralized institution Catholicism played a crucial role in gluing the minds of the citizens around its religious narrative. This gluing of the minds allowed to:

• foster societal cohesion locally which then legitimized the power of the local nobility
• ensured that Western Europe continued to share a common worldview over the following 1000 years.

Since its early days Roman Catholicism tried to differentiate itself from Paganism and Animism by encouraging its followers to enter into a personal communication with their god. This infused in the believers’ minds the illusion of a personal relation that slowly fostered a perception of self and after 7-800 years this perception had solidified into a generalized feeling that the individuals had gained some autonomy. This was a great leap forward for individualism that had emerged, as a differentiation of the men of power from their subjects, after the stabilization of the first institutions of power some 3-4000 years earlier.


After the fall of Rome long distance communications abruptly stopped and the empire’s extensive road system went literally under the ground invaded by grasses, shrubs, and later trees. Roman and Greek cultures were similarly very rapidly forgotten.


It is in this particular context that, during the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II called for a military expedition to liberate Jerusalem and his call echoed all around Europe...

 

The crusades


The call of Pope Urban II gave rise to numerous expeditions to the Middle-East, the Holy land of the Christians, from 1096 onward till as late as the 15th century when they were finally petering out.


To encourage a large participation of fighters the Pope offered ‘indulgences’ or sin forgiving certificates to the participants. This infused in the crusaders’ minds the perception of having been freed from the judgment of god about their misdeeds. So from the get go the crusades were expected to result in extreme violence and it effectively resulted in gruesome stories that are still remembered to this very day by Middle-Eastern populations. These memories have been documented, in written descriptions by Christian crusaders themselves1. Should we be surprised that some Muslims, on occasion, feel justified nowadays to return the same kind of violence to the Christians ?

Modernity emerged in a very backwards Western Europe


Fully immersed in its dark ages Western Europe was a very poor place at the time that Pope Urban II called for a crusade to liberate Jerusalem. Not only were the large majority of people living poor, serf like, local lives the men of power and the men of knowledge had also completely forgotten about the existence of Greek and Latin philosophers and their language had thus reverted to vernacular local dialects.


Priests and monks wrote and spoke the language of the church which was Latin and this unified the Europe of knowledge. After the unification of estates into kingdoms after 1100 the Catholic hierarchy was called upon by the new men of power to administer their institutions. Bishops, priests, and monks were indeed the only one who could read and write. So for centuries, til as late as the end of the 16th century, they were acting as the ministers of Western European kings.


Arriving in Palestine the knights and nobility, who directed the crusades, were literally taken aback by the material richness that they discovered in Arab markets as well as by the advanced knowledge that was taught in Muslim universities. This was a huge surprise for them and it caused much resentment that soon transformed in looting and other acts of barbarity.


In their eagerness the crusaders pillaged the markets and the universities and carried the proceed of their looting back to Europe where these luxuries soon nourished a desire for more. To guarantee a regular supply the looting gradually transformed into trade undertaken by professional long distance merchants.

The emergence of Modernity was an accident of history


Very shortly after their first encounter with Muslim universities the nobility helped the clergy to establish the first European universities. Among the earliest and most famous were : – the University of Paris established between 1160 and 1250; – The University of Padua founded in 1222; – the University of Naples founded in 1224; – the University of Sienna established in 1240; etc…


Many material luxuries also found their way from the Arab markets to Western Europe. Tapestries and carpets helped to insulate the cold and humid stone walls and floors of palaces and mansions while mirrors were among the most searched after novelties. Chinese silk cloth and garments had been reaching Arab markets since hundreds of years prior and were another kind of avidly searched after luxuries.


Trade expeditions were a high risk business on the non-policed European trails of the time and the risk was thus great that the merchants would be robbed from their merchandise. So they observed that the money financing their expeditions transformed into merchandises that, because of this risk, took the character of an absolute. Losing their merchandise meant indeed the extinction of their trade and the retaliation of those who had loaned them the money in the first place. To avoid ending up being destitute it was thus an absolute necessity that they preserved their investments.


Being Franks the merchants spoke old local French and in their dialects the word “capital ” meant ‘of the head’ hence ‘capital, chief, first’. The merchants’ observation, about the transformation of money into merchandises that took on the character of an absolute, was thus naturally referred to as a first, chief, capital priority… And so the word capital came to signify the transformation of money into an investment that one has to preserve at all costs. This explains how investment took on such an absolute character that over time it started to be conflated with “the reason that is at work within capital ”.


We now better understand how the luxury goods transported from Middle-Eastern markets to European fairs imposed in the minds of the merchants the recognition and the veneration of the reason that is at work withing capital. This veneration, took the form of a religious veneration, and it powered 500 years of merchant capitalism which gave rise :

• first to the rediscovery of the Greek classics that opened the way to the European Renaissance between approximately 1500 and 1600. The Renaissance gave rise to the increased role of observation in painting as well as in thinking. In painting it led to the development of perspective and the imposition of the “3 obliged subjects” of – landscapes around the mansion, – portraits of those living in the mansion, – and stills of the tables in the mansions. In thinking it led to a gradual strengthening of reasoning based on the observation of facts.
• secondly this gradual strengthening of reasoning concluded with its generalization to absolutely everything which a few centuries later eventually took the form of philosophic rationalism.

Starting with the call of Pope Urban II, to the particular ways in which the crusades unfolded, a dynamic process was put in motion that :

1. fostered the new worldview of Modernity. The crystallization of the self under Christianity transformed into a new ideology: individualism and private property radically changed the outlook on reality of Western Europeans,
2. fostered a wild desire to possess such luxuries as observed in the Arab markets which eventually resulted in long distance trade that gave rise to an era of merchant capitalism which by the 18th century transformed in industrial capitalism.

This whole process took the form of a very improbable chain of causalities which is characteristic of an accident of history :

1. the crusades confronted the minds of the Western aristocracy with an irresistible desire to possess the luxuries offered on the Arab markets
2. the first reaction of the Europeans was to loot, and kill, to possess such luxuries. Reading Raoul de Caen and Albert d’Aix gives us a good measure of the extreme European behaviors at the contact with “the other” in the Middle-East. Such extreme behaviors contrast with Chinese behaviors2 at the same epoch during the expeditions under the leadership of Zheng He 3.
3. once these initial looted goods reached Europe they fostered an irresistible desire in the minds of the entire nobility to possess even more of such luxuries in their mansions and castles.
4. a process of long distance trade slowly emerged to satisfy this desire, of the nobility and the new rich merchants, for luxury material possessions
5. the risks of long distance trade gradually imposed a religious kind of veneration, of the reason that is at work within capital, in the minds of the merchants.
6. European long distance merchants adopted the financial instruments that were in use on the silk road (double entry accountancy, letters of credit, commercial banks, …)
7. Christianity was rejecting the principle of making money from the use of money (interests) but banking institutions were necessary to finance long distance trade. This contradiction was solved by letting the practice of banking to non-Christians. The Jews seized the opportunity.
8. the success of the long distance merchants helped to finance the building of castles and mansions, the possession of Middle-Eastern luxuries and … early modern art works...
9. artists working for the church were asked to enter at the service of the new rich merchants. But working for a competitor of the church came with a high risk. So to lure the artists into accepting their commands the merchants had to be very generous indeed. And so rich painters could suddenly afford a privileged lifestyle which procured them high social esteem. This explains how Modernity was such a radical turning point socially for artists. For over 1000 years, at the service of the church, artists had been considered to be craftsmen of very low social standing. With Early-Modernity they suddenly jumped higher on the social ladder…
10. the merchants ostentatious life-styles and material possessions gradually fostered the envy of all Europeans
11. university teachers and lecturers were not immune and so they gradually transformed into rationalist philosophers and technical tinkerers who eventually innovated the textile machinery that launched the industrial revolution.

The probability of such a long chain of causalities succeeding to work its miracle from start to finish is by all accounts extremely low. That’s why I call it an accident of history. An accident of history is like an “unknown unknown”. But in this case it was more like a chain of “unknowns unknowns” that were so profoundly unknown that only very few, with the benefit of hindsight, have ever been able to decode their happenstance. This explains also why, even hundreds of years after the fact, very few people understand the truly world changing causality chain that led to the emergence of Modernity and of capitalism.


I light of the largely misunderstood emergence of Modernity it should not come as a surprise that its evolution into Late-Modernity completely escapes most of us.

Evolution opens many possible paths


The Chinese economy had been market driven for a few thousand years before Modernity emerged in Europe.
But the Chinese merchants were never enlightened by the reason that is at work withing capital and so they never venerated its rationality. China had to wait for Marxism to be enlightened. And oh boy what a galloping change this has been, for China and for the whole world, since that Marxist awakening.


For the historian Fernand Braudel4 the failure, to discover the reason that is at work withing capital, by the Chinese merchants is related to the monopolization of long distance trade by the imperial institutions. This factor certainly played a determinant role but there was a lot more at play.


In my description of the emergence-development of Modernity in Europe I mention an 11 links chain of causality that transformed its societies over a span of 5-6 centuries. Such a complex process could only have been an accident of history whose probability to unfold was practically nil and so its reproduction somewhere else was thus even more unlikely.


Links 1 & 2 in the chain of causality leave no doubt that it was the formatting of European behaviors by the axioms of their civilization that forced the European views of “the other” that impulsed their desire to loot Arab material possessions. The Chinese axioms of civilization formatted a different kind of national and individual behavior and so they never acted as crusaders who want to impose their views on others. Their views of “the other” fosters curiosity in their minds about his ways of thinking and doing in his daily live. They are indeed interested to discover if some of his ways are more efficient than theirs. And if it is the case they will adopt such ways as theirs.


What I mean to say here, in substance, is that Modernity and capitalism emerged successfully in one place only. And the further certainties we know is that:

• this successful emergence of Modernity in Western Europe was the result of a long chain of causalities,
• at the start of this chain of causalities Europe was at a very primitive stage of societal development,
• dualism, as the core axiom of the European civilization, played a determinant role in formatting European behaviors toward “the other”

At this stage the question that pops in the mind is “could the same kind of long chain of causalities ever have emerged in another geographic area ? ”. I’m doubtful of that. The same as I’m doubtful that the European model of political democracy could possibly have emerged in the context of another kind of society. We too often forget that societal, like biological, evolution give rise to a near infinite gamut of evolutionary possibilities. And so the chance of identical evolutionary outcomes arising in different contexts is very slim indeed.


What this suggests is that a near infinite range of evolutionary possibilities is the most probable outcome of societal change. We should view such a vast range of evolutionary possibilities as a chance. Other ways, than the European ways in art and in governance or in any other field, can also be valid ways for societies to thrive… Unfortunately this is not the way Western axioms of civilization work... which leads me to observe that the Western automatism of imposing its ways on other nations only works for as long as its society is more powerful than “the other”. But when the power of other societies overtakes the power of its own society these other societies will start to reject the Western ways...


Having said that; what is known with absolute certainty is the following:

1. once the process of Modernity and capitalism had transformed Europe, and had spread to its geographic extensions, the whole world was forced to take note and to adapt in consequence.
2. once China’s GDP per PPP overtook US GDP the US felt threatened to lose its supremacy. But the fact of the matter is that humanity gained a new avenue of societal evolution…
3. this new avenue of societal evolution resides in the sheer power of numbers that gives China the advantage of unbeatable economies of scale while the pragmatic knowledge, that its nation acquired over a span of thousands of years, gives it an unbeatable advantage in managing a huge society through times of chaos...

NOTES


1  A series of French participants wrote chronicles describing Christian cannibalism and other crude and extremely violent acts. Here follow the best known among them :

• “Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana” ("The Deeds of Tancrede in the Crusade") Raoul de Caen. See Latin original and French translation. Also English PDF.
• “Histoire des croisades” Albert d’Aix. Book 1, Book 2. Fordham University Medieval Sourcebook gives some text selections in English.

2     This differentiation is rooted in the formatting of behaviors by the axioms of civilization :

• Dualism imposes in the European unconscious mind the judgmental idea that the individual is on the side of good while “the other”, meaning different and non-European, is on the side of evil and must thus be vanquished and eliminated.
• In contrast polarism imposes in the Chinese unconscious mind the pragmatic idea of a win-win exchange with “the other” . In their views such an exchange necessarily procures a gain to each party because if there was no gain for both the exchange would simply not take place.

     For more see :
     06. From Modernity to After-Modernity. The axioms of civilizations (1)
     07. From Modernity to After-Modernity. The axioms of civilizations (2)
     08. From Modernity to After-Modernity. The axioms of civilizations (3)

3    See Zheng He’s expeditions.
      See also “ Zheng, known as the Three-Jewel Eunuch Admiral, carried gifts from the Chinese emperor aboard his "treasure ship", which groaned with valuable cargo including gold, porcelain and silks.
These were exchanged along the established Arab trade routes for ivory, myrrh and even China's first giraffe, promoting recognition of the new Ming dynasty. “
      in “Zheng He: Symbol of China's 'peaceful rise' “ by Zoe Murphy BBC News. 2010-07-28.


4    Fernand Braudel

• "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II " 2 Volumes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• “Civilization and Capitalism”. 3 Volumes. Harpers & Row. 1972.