Hi Lawrence,
A long time ago you responded in this thread to a comment I made about
teaching. I'm now getting a chance to catch up... (full text of your
message is included below)
But briefly, you asked:
> How do we determine whether a teacher has indoctrinated
> him/herslf past the point of usefulness, and to a point where they have
> indeed become disempowering?
I'm not sure that there is a single infallible means of determining when a
teacher becomes an ideologue - wouldn't it be nice if there were? However,
referring back to the thread with Platt where we talked about means of
determining the truth, I suspect things like agreement with empirical data,
logical consistency and aesthetic and ethical appeal. So with the Cathars,
they had all sorts of truth on their side, but they were opposed by the
Catholic hierarchy who saw their own sources of power and legitimacy coming
under threat. From our perspective (having thrown off that Catholic
hierarchy) the dispute seems clear. However, there was no agreed means for
determining the truth at that time, so it ended up being a political
struggle - and the hierarchy had all the tanks. (or rather, their medieval
equivalent).
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2001 12:17 AM
Subject: RE: MD of doctors and germs...
>
> Wim:
> > You wrote 31/10 12:32 -0000 in response to "my criticism on a
> > tradition employing priests to interpret God's will, thereby
> > disempowering the other believers":
>
> Sam:
> > "Do you believe that primary school teachers disempower their
> > students? Secondary school teachers? University teachers? At
> > which point does a teacher become something disempowering? (I
> > would say: when the teacher doesn't realize that he or she
> > doesn't have anything further to teach, and becomes a static
> > block). ...
>
> The Cathar heresy, repression and inquisition was primarily about this
very
> matter. In the 12th and 13th centuries (at the least), the Catholic clergy
> had become profoundly corrupt. It imposed special religious taxes and
> enforced them by excommunicating those who wouldn't pay, thus, in the
belief
> system they espoused, damning the excommunicants to hell and isolating
them
> socially. The clergy also could demand lodging and food, and fees for
> providing religious services that were, again according to the belief
system
> they spread, necessary for a moral life: marriage, last rites, funerals,
> baptisms, etc. The clergy asserted that only they could absolve people of
> sin, convey the blessings of god, and mediate the effectiveness of
prayer --
> all for a fee.
>
> The Cathars pronounced that all these religious rites and services could
be
> carried out by ordinary people without the help of clergy. At a time books
> were few and revered, lay Cathars asserted that they did not need priests
to
> interpret the bible. Cathars opposed the church taxes and denounced the
> church as corrupt.
>
> The crusade against the Cathars went through several stages. The first was
> that the Vatican conspired with the king of France -- then restricted to
the
> Ile St. Louis region -- to attack (via the first 'crusade' to be launched
> against christian people) the lords of the regions of Toulouse and Albi,
> etc. With the political power in the area destroyed, the Vatican then set
up
> the Cathar Inquisition to rout Cathar beliefs, pronouncing them
'heretical.'
> After many decades of harassment, arrests, lengthy interrogations,
> indefinite imprisonment, property seisures, executions by burning and
lesser
> punishments, Cathar beliefs were pronounced by the Catholic church to be
> eradicated, but not after mass resistence by a number of Cathar villages,
in
> which dozens and in a couple of cases hundreds of Cathars chose suicide
> rather than submission.
>
> Sam's description of teachers becoming disempowering when they have
nothing
> more to teach rings partially true, but in the case of the Cathars the
> Catholic inquisitors would have asserted vigourously that their teachings
> had just begun... How do we determine whether a teacher has indoctrinated
> him/herslf past the point of usefulness, and to a point where they have
> indeed become disempowering?
>
> Lawry
>
>
>
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