The Renaissance might have been a golden age in certain fields, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant era in other fields. For example, people started burning "witches" at unprecedented rates. And nobody at the time was even aware that they were in a "golden age" of any kind.
Witch-burning was really a late-16th/early-17th century thing.
It's to some extent true, if you want to really simplify things, that the Renaissance was a golden age only for Italy and the Western Med, and, as it waned, it turned into a dark age for the German-speaking lands of the HRE.
At the peak of the Renaissance, the Germans were producing Gutenberg-style printing, Dürer’s workshop, and the beginnings of a formidable university network... So it was a time of considerable progress in the arts and sciences, even there, even if that progress was soon turned to rather dark ends. (With the printing press, in a sense, directly responsible for Reformation pamphlets -- leading, thus, to the immense carnage of the 30 Years War -- and popular witch-hunting tomes like the Malleus Maleficarum.)
We still have witch hunts both figuratively and literally - we assign blame to innocent parties and jail or unelect them.
And awareness is irrelevant. When I listened to the golden age of punk rock (IMHO) I didn't need to be aware of it: its self awareness changes nothing
And there was no "field" of witch hunting: but even if it is conceded to be so, what's wrong with a good witch burning and hanging now then?
Now we "cancel" or censor (or on HN down vote 'trolls') which is no different. Intolerance and demonizing just takes different forms in different ages.
Destroying livelihoods leads to self injury and death. But yes, Mr. Obvious, they are literally different. Touché.
I'm talking about intolerance and demonization. It leads to false criminal charges which may include death penalties. Is an electrocution literally the same as being burned alive? Nope. What say ye Mr Obvious to that?
> But yes, Mr. Obvious, they are literally different. Touché.
You've been asked before to avoid commenting in the flamewar style on Hacker News. If you keep doing it we'll have to ban the account. Please make an effort to show you intend to use HN the way it's intended.
We can do without the defiance, we just need everyone to remember that this is only a good place for discussing anything because enough people make an effort observe the guidelines. Please do you part to make the place better not worse.
We still have figurative witch hunts. And always have. The term has nothing to do with magic, magick, nor paganism.
We - the Western world, at least - have not had a genuine literal witch hunt in centuries. If you live in Africa, and are speaking locally, you should make that clear.
Otherwise, you are outrightly lying to make your point.
I wouldn't call "treatment of 'witches'" a field, per se.
That aside, I agree it wasn't a "golden age". It was, if anything, a diversion in the flow of the river of Western history: humanism, prostestantism, perspective in drawing, and a noticeable increase in technical invention and scientific formalism truly changed the status quo permanently and markedly.
Renaissance is a lot older than that. Renaissance was over by 1527, merely a decade after the 95 Theses when Protestantism was just getting started, still haven't had any cultural impact - and the rest of the things mentioned not started at all. "Scientific formalism" arguably started with Newton's "Principia Mathematica" whole 160 years later.
That's oddly specific. What's your criterion for "Renaissance over", and why does it fit 1527?
I mean, if you're defining "Renaissance" as "High Renaissance only", and "over" as "sack of Rome", then yes, I suppose that fits. But the High Renaissance is only about 40 years, whereas the Renaissance is much larger.
