h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ben, and Toxxin, and Nog...and everyone else,

Heresy *is* a means of social control. It has always been a method of social control. That's what heresy, and counter-heresy (although it has a long, drawn out technical name that I am blanking on at the moment...blame it on too much Marx and a sick kid).

Now, if we're not trying to talk about specific methods of belief, then of course, heresy doesn't really "fit" or does it? It does. heresy is a way in which one can see the struggle between social control and personal belief systems, political, social and cultural movements, and other assorted stuff...and looking at historical movements that were considered heretical also allows us to examine why "heresy" is not something we talk about in a modern context (unless, of course, we were at the 2000 Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, wherein they decided that anyone not in the SBC was a heretic, but that's a whole nother ball o wax).

I am currently trying to come to terms with the term "heresy" itself, in preparation for my own dissertation research. The line, as you can well imagine, is neither clear nor terribly easy to see in the first place. Why is St. Francis a saint, and Henry of Bruys, a man with essentially the same ideas, dragged out of his grave two years after his death and burnt?

Oh, yes...please leave your monolitihic institutions and notions of a medieval holocaust at the door. The inquisition was neither a monolith, nor a random killer. That would be the Spanish Inquisition of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and only them. The rest of the inquisition, from 1229 on, was pretty much a mismash of conflicting ideas, and occasional flashes of strangeness, like, say, Bernardo Gui.

It will be a work in progress soon. As soon as I finish Das Capital, vol. 1.

You are right, I did want to read it.

Gimme more, gimme more!

I don't know how many of you are in the UK, but I am reminded of the way in which the Labour Party glided to the right, while exiling those on the left. They did not burn them at the stake, but they did keep them on the back-benches of parliament.

B

Oh, and they kicked a few of them out of the Labour party too.

B

in this day and age, Bill Clinton would be a heretic, not a sex addict. Sinn Fein are heretics, in the old sense of the word, because they don't conform to social norms. A lot of heresy isn't about belief, it's about perception of belief. Imposition from outside, you see. I'm not a heretic, you just think i am....