Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
2025-12-31
11th-13th Century: Christian Superstitions Doom the Norse in Greenland
In full in section 7.1: The Danish Norse who settled in Greenland died of starvation after converting to Christianity and using too many resources to build churches, and allowing prejudice against non-Christians to prevent trade or cultural exchange with the Inuit, who knew how to survive.
www.humantruth.info/greenland.html
2010-06-19
1836: The first cheap newspaper
I've added a little bit of history - the 1830s - to "Modern Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution: 4. Politics and Democracy" by Vexen Crabtree (2009)
It was the year 1836 that saw the first cheap newspaper appear (La Presse) that depended upon a readership that was not an intellectual or class élite of some kind. Mass media had arrived. Politicians worried about the destabilizing effects of the misinformation and sensationalism that news papers frequently contained.
“The growth of such powerful engines of information or misinformation inevitably had large political implications. [...] Conservative fears that an irresponsible trouble-making press, given enough rope, might become a danger to political stability and public order, seemed fully justified. [...] Opposition papers were more often than not factious, irresponsible and sometimes dangerously violent.” -- "The Ascendancy of Europe 1815-1914" by M S Anderson (1985)
Close to two centuries later, and not much has changed: mass produced cheap newspapers remain an anathema to civility.
It was the year 1836 that saw the first cheap newspaper appear (La Presse) that depended upon a readership that was not an intellectual or class élite of some kind. Mass media had arrived. Politicians worried about the destabilizing effects of the misinformation and sensationalism that news papers frequently contained.
“The growth of such powerful engines of information or misinformation inevitably had large political implications. [...] Conservative fears that an irresponsible trouble-making press, given enough rope, might become a danger to political stability and public order, seemed fully justified. [...] Opposition papers were more often than not factious, irresponsible and sometimes dangerously violent.” -- "The Ascendancy of Europe 1815-1914" by M S Anderson (1985)
Close to two centuries later, and not much has changed: mass produced cheap newspapers remain an anathema to civility.
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