a) Germanic peoples carry most of the traits you attribute only to non-continentals. The continent spawned protestantism, and is completely divided in its churches in the north. Likewise in political parties (though I think this is a good thing for a future conservative revolution)
b) You're talking about the collective conscious technical rather than ethnic behavioural traits
c) The English church, before it was destroyed this century, was not protestant, but it's own 'catholic' church. It kept all the ritual, and merely established our own pontifex as King/priest as Alta Imperium. You could compare this to the Eastern Ortho/Rome divide.
...not to mention that the richer Lander in Germany are Catholic and the poorer Reformed, in spite of the supposedly more productive Protestant Ethics of the latter. Truth is the religious split is not even the most salient difference one would think of when thinking about internal idiosyncrasies within Germany.
Also, France is (nominally) Catholic, and yet the French are more stern and unforgiving than their Italian or Spanish Catholic coreligionists. The French Maurras-inspired traditionalist Catholic political fringe also believes very strongly in following Christian principles to the letter, and not as described here as 'baptized Pagans'.
Further, the more robust welfare states in Europe are in Germany and in Scandinavia, where cultures derive from Lutheranism. Nordic people are also much more conformist than Mediterraneans, and that goes against the dichotomy Anglo-German individualist vs Italian collectivist.
There are undeniably shared cultural traits between Iberians, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Southern Europeans in general. The same is to be said of the Anglo-Germans. France culturally in-between, but leaning more to the Germanic side. Poland on the other hand is the last bastion of Catholicism in Europe, yet the people there behave like Nordics, if only a bit more mellow and forgiving, with an outlook to life that at least anecdotally I would describe as positive and relaxed, as opposed to the gloomier German next door.
So that's it really, in the end there is not much to the idea of the religious split caused by the Reformation as the root cause of cultural differences between Latin and Germanic Europe. All evidence suggests this mostly being due to a genetic factor.
Instead, that tendency of Eastern Europeans to cheat and intrigue (except Poles), their "honesty is for suckers" moral tenant, maybe that particular facet of their culture could be ascribed to the Orthodox Church (as well as to have always been generally poorer than the West). After all, Greeks were notorious as slick and duplicitous traders since time immemorial, and Orthodoxy is basically the primacy of the Emperor, now in Constantinople, as Pontifex Maximus, over the claim of the bishop of Rome, which is by the way how Christendom started. Then happened that the Greeks proselytised in Eastern Europe, and brought to these Slavic pagan cultures their less ennobling traits (deceitfulness) in addition to Orthodoxy.
This helps me make sense of why I'm both a scientist and a Catholic. I could never be a scientist and a Protestant. (Or at least not a certain type of Protestant.)There's no way to reconcile science with some strict reading of an inevitably contradictory text written long before science. But Catholicism is a religion of mystery and spirituality, a fundamentally human endeavor. There's intellectualism in Catholicism, of course, but not to the point of excluding the messiness and mystery of being human. And I am a human. I am a scientist, and by that I explore everything that is material of this world that I live in as a human, and as a Catholic I revere whatever is greater than that and beyond that.
I don't literally believe in a flood and a talking burning bush, and I don't know if a hippie literally walked out of a tomb. What I know is that this is the backdrop against which so many around me and before me have tried to make sense of what is greater. And I am one of them so I try the same.
Interesting article, recognising quite a few lines of thought. However, coming from the 'continental' Netherlands (geographically speaking), having close cultural ties with the UK and descending from a long line of Catholics the divide between ‘continental’ and ‘Anglo-sphere’ you are mentioning could probably do with some more nuance.
I wonder if the so-called concept of the Anglosphere stretches across the North Sea and might actually have its origin in the north western lands (Northern Germany, Scandinavia, large parts of the Netherlands and the British Isles and even Switzerland). The individualistic logic I can easily relate to for most of parts the Netherlands, in other words deeply ingrained in Dutch society.
Regarding the divide between Protestantism and Catholicism, I also see this from a somewhat different perspective. During the ‘Rijke Roomse leven’ (the Rich Roman Catholic Life) -a cultural decade spanning some 100 years from the 1860s to the 1960s- social and political life for Dutch Catholics was very well-organised with relatively strict rules with an emphasis on social control and high moral standards. It was said that this cultural constellation had a very much Calvinist approach.
As an anecdote, a Dutch Jesuit (born in the late 1970s) -after having spent quite some time studying and working in Rome- once complained to me that Dutch Catholicism was one of practicalities and had not much in common with Latin mysticism or philosophy.
Additionally, more as a fun fact, Dutch Catholic churches on average look more like Anglican churches on the inside than those in Latin or South Slavic Europe and apparently illustrate a different view on their religion.
In Peru there is Catholicism sharing space with many religions originated in the U.S., with the consequent Protestant mindset of each one claiming to follow literally what the bible says. I am neither, I prefer the native religions. Said that Catholicism made an effort to use syncretism to look for union, so our native original celebrations and sacred hills are now blended with processions and temples and crosses. Catholicism thrives where the Spanish customs survive, while the new religions from the U.S. thrive with the native people in part, and this is curious, because they are taken as magic. I mean magic in the sense that religion usually is thankful to a god, but magic instead tries to get a benefit from dealing with a god. I don't mean disrespect nor I am implying U.S. religions are magic, I only say why people adopt them: when one enters the Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, the Church of the Seventh Day or so most people do it because they see economical success in some people that entered those churches, and that looks quite similar to our native religions in which we make a payment of thanks to the Earth or sacred hill and we expect in return prosperity, so it is a magic of prosperity with those elegant and modern churches that tell you as well about success through a personal choice.
One of the issues with the Puritan mindset, which is rife in the US, is that one can't seek forgiveness by the Church. In its Calvinist streak, there is also the issue of predestinations, looming heavily on the Protestant's mind.
Lacking a solid compass for both righteousness and forgiveness, there's a tendency to transform sins into virtues. E.g., greed, sodomy, abortion, transgenderism, all sort of tampering with the human body, basically every sin related to fulfilling a personal desire o a personal tendency, have all breen transvaluated, to use a Nietszchean term, so to become virtues.
In particular, personal tendencies have been all made righteous, and so the associated behaviors. On the other hand, the Catholic mindset acknowledged that evil inclinations are present in every man, but the sin takes place only when they are acted upon.
Of course, here I'm talking about mindsets, not necessarily about one's confession. There are Catholics with a Protestant mindset, and vice-versa.
Beautifully put. Coming from a muslim household, I could feel the lack of art and embodies experience, along with rigid puritan expectations of behavior, creates a kind of void where the feeling of being a failure only increases and you can not turn to a comunity to help you feel like you are worthy of belonging in the group again, either you are perfect(in practice, this means you know how to hide all your sins really well) or you are pointed at and ostracized. With all this puritanism, I see why you think this other way of looking at christianity could be a solution to the cultural landscape we live in now.
What you're saying is that the Anglo tradition is more scientific and the continental more artistic. I was just thinking about this very thing.
Science is an endless division of things while art is creation through unities, and both are fundamental to consciousness/reality.
Underlying all this is a trinitarian logic in which these two distinct modes of thought are themselves united by the Spirit into the one triune God.
So I'd say your missing one part of the West. If the southern Continental tradition represents the Creator/Father, and the Anglos the Logos/Son, then surely the Germans with Kant, Hegel and Wagner represent the Spirit.
Alessandra ,people who intentionally make false accusations against others should be treated the way they seek those they accuse to be treated.Not just legally but socially.
Very insightful perspective Alessandra. Your articles are always thought provoking and informative. I would love for you to write up your opinion on the Russia -West conflict and how it relates to the Orthodox Christian revival in Russia.
This is excellent.
a) Germanic peoples carry most of the traits you attribute only to non-continentals. The continent spawned protestantism, and is completely divided in its churches in the north. Likewise in political parties (though I think this is a good thing for a future conservative revolution)
b) You're talking about the collective conscious technical rather than ethnic behavioural traits
c) The English church, before it was destroyed this century, was not protestant, but it's own 'catholic' church. It kept all the ritual, and merely established our own pontifex as King/priest as Alta Imperium. You could compare this to the Eastern Ortho/Rome divide.
...not to mention that the richer Lander in Germany are Catholic and the poorer Reformed, in spite of the supposedly more productive Protestant Ethics of the latter. Truth is the religious split is not even the most salient difference one would think of when thinking about internal idiosyncrasies within Germany.
Also, France is (nominally) Catholic, and yet the French are more stern and unforgiving than their Italian or Spanish Catholic coreligionists. The French Maurras-inspired traditionalist Catholic political fringe also believes very strongly in following Christian principles to the letter, and not as described here as 'baptized Pagans'.
Further, the more robust welfare states in Europe are in Germany and in Scandinavia, where cultures derive from Lutheranism. Nordic people are also much more conformist than Mediterraneans, and that goes against the dichotomy Anglo-German individualist vs Italian collectivist.
There are undeniably shared cultural traits between Iberians, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Southern Europeans in general. The same is to be said of the Anglo-Germans. France culturally in-between, but leaning more to the Germanic side. Poland on the other hand is the last bastion of Catholicism in Europe, yet the people there behave like Nordics, if only a bit more mellow and forgiving, with an outlook to life that at least anecdotally I would describe as positive and relaxed, as opposed to the gloomier German next door.
So that's it really, in the end there is not much to the idea of the religious split caused by the Reformation as the root cause of cultural differences between Latin and Germanic Europe. All evidence suggests this mostly being due to a genetic factor.
Instead, that tendency of Eastern Europeans to cheat and intrigue (except Poles), their "honesty is for suckers" moral tenant, maybe that particular facet of their culture could be ascribed to the Orthodox Church (as well as to have always been generally poorer than the West). After all, Greeks were notorious as slick and duplicitous traders since time immemorial, and Orthodoxy is basically the primacy of the Emperor, now in Constantinople, as Pontifex Maximus, over the claim of the bishop of Rome, which is by the way how Christendom started. Then happened that the Greeks proselytised in Eastern Europe, and brought to these Slavic pagan cultures their less ennobling traits (deceitfulness) in addition to Orthodoxy.
This helps me make sense of why I'm both a scientist and a Catholic. I could never be a scientist and a Protestant. (Or at least not a certain type of Protestant.)There's no way to reconcile science with some strict reading of an inevitably contradictory text written long before science. But Catholicism is a religion of mystery and spirituality, a fundamentally human endeavor. There's intellectualism in Catholicism, of course, but not to the point of excluding the messiness and mystery of being human. And I am a human. I am a scientist, and by that I explore everything that is material of this world that I live in as a human, and as a Catholic I revere whatever is greater than that and beyond that.
I don't literally believe in a flood and a talking burning bush, and I don't know if a hippie literally walked out of a tomb. What I know is that this is the backdrop against which so many around me and before me have tried to make sense of what is greater. And I am one of them so I try the same.
Interesting article, recognising quite a few lines of thought. However, coming from the 'continental' Netherlands (geographically speaking), having close cultural ties with the UK and descending from a long line of Catholics the divide between ‘continental’ and ‘Anglo-sphere’ you are mentioning could probably do with some more nuance.
I wonder if the so-called concept of the Anglosphere stretches across the North Sea and might actually have its origin in the north western lands (Northern Germany, Scandinavia, large parts of the Netherlands and the British Isles and even Switzerland). The individualistic logic I can easily relate to for most of parts the Netherlands, in other words deeply ingrained in Dutch society.
Regarding the divide between Protestantism and Catholicism, I also see this from a somewhat different perspective. During the ‘Rijke Roomse leven’ (the Rich Roman Catholic Life) -a cultural decade spanning some 100 years from the 1860s to the 1960s- social and political life for Dutch Catholics was very well-organised with relatively strict rules with an emphasis on social control and high moral standards. It was said that this cultural constellation had a very much Calvinist approach.
As an anecdote, a Dutch Jesuit (born in the late 1970s) -after having spent quite some time studying and working in Rome- once complained to me that Dutch Catholicism was one of practicalities and had not much in common with Latin mysticism or philosophy.
Additionally, more as a fun fact, Dutch Catholic churches on average look more like Anglican churches on the inside than those in Latin or South Slavic Europe and apparently illustrate a different view on their religion.
In Peru there is Catholicism sharing space with many religions originated in the U.S., with the consequent Protestant mindset of each one claiming to follow literally what the bible says. I am neither, I prefer the native religions. Said that Catholicism made an effort to use syncretism to look for union, so our native original celebrations and sacred hills are now blended with processions and temples and crosses. Catholicism thrives where the Spanish customs survive, while the new religions from the U.S. thrive with the native people in part, and this is curious, because they are taken as magic. I mean magic in the sense that religion usually is thankful to a god, but magic instead tries to get a benefit from dealing with a god. I don't mean disrespect nor I am implying U.S. religions are magic, I only say why people adopt them: when one enters the Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, the Church of the Seventh Day or so most people do it because they see economical success in some people that entered those churches, and that looks quite similar to our native religions in which we make a payment of thanks to the Earth or sacred hill and we expect in return prosperity, so it is a magic of prosperity with those elegant and modern churches that tell you as well about success through a personal choice.
Excellent article.
Need to ruminate on it before commenting in depth.
One of the issues with the Puritan mindset, which is rife in the US, is that one can't seek forgiveness by the Church. In its Calvinist streak, there is also the issue of predestinations, looming heavily on the Protestant's mind.
Lacking a solid compass for both righteousness and forgiveness, there's a tendency to transform sins into virtues. E.g., greed, sodomy, abortion, transgenderism, all sort of tampering with the human body, basically every sin related to fulfilling a personal desire o a personal tendency, have all breen transvaluated, to use a Nietszchean term, so to become virtues.
In particular, personal tendencies have been all made righteous, and so the associated behaviors. On the other hand, the Catholic mindset acknowledged that evil inclinations are present in every man, but the sin takes place only when they are acted upon.
Of course, here I'm talking about mindsets, not necessarily about one's confession. There are Catholics with a Protestant mindset, and vice-versa.
Beautifully put. Coming from a muslim household, I could feel the lack of art and embodies experience, along with rigid puritan expectations of behavior, creates a kind of void where the feeling of being a failure only increases and you can not turn to a comunity to help you feel like you are worthy of belonging in the group again, either you are perfect(in practice, this means you know how to hide all your sins really well) or you are pointed at and ostracized. With all this puritanism, I see why you think this other way of looking at christianity could be a solution to the cultural landscape we live in now.
What you're saying is that the Anglo tradition is more scientific and the continental more artistic. I was just thinking about this very thing.
Science is an endless division of things while art is creation through unities, and both are fundamental to consciousness/reality.
Underlying all this is a trinitarian logic in which these two distinct modes of thought are themselves united by the Spirit into the one triune God.
So I'd say your missing one part of the West. If the southern Continental tradition represents the Creator/Father, and the Anglos the Logos/Son, then surely the Germans with Kant, Hegel and Wagner represent the Spirit.
Really interesting
Alessandra ,people who intentionally make false accusations against others should be treated the way they seek those they accuse to be treated.Not just legally but socially.
Very insightful, as always.
Very insightful perspective Alessandra. Your articles are always thought provoking and informative. I would love for you to write up your opinion on the Russia -West conflict and how it relates to the Orthodox Christian revival in Russia.