I Think, Therefore I Am - An A**hole

April 21, 2016

If you are above the age of eight and you have a basic grasp on reality (I'm being hopeful here) you understand bad things sometimes happen.  Following along this vein, you would also think intellect is the golden, glorious trait of humanity, leading to all good roads.  Yet a quick glance at history quickly proves otherwise (at least on the 'all good roads' part).

That is not to say human intelligence is not a gift.  It is.  It's the thing that got us out of the caves and built civilization.  All good things can be attributed to it: books, can-openers, cat-flaps, flip-flops.  You name it and if it has been built, invented, or created by human hands it was first born in the human mind.  Sounds good, right?  A shining quality.  However, (you knew there was a 'however', didn't you?) "not-so-good-things" are born of it as well.

Case in point: The Burning Times -

Bad sh*t happening

Around the mid-1300’s humanity hit a bad patch.  It was already far left of great, but this was bad.  I mean bad.  Really, really bad.   Given the 14th century was neck-deep in the "Dark Ages", life had gone from shitty to - well, mega shitty.  1 out of 3 babies didn't make it past infancy and chances were pretty good that of the remaining 2, 1 wouldn't live past the age of 5.  Not only did women have fewer rights than donkeys, but nearly 20% died as a result of childbirth.  Life expectancy was only 45 years old (on a good day) and food, clean water, sanitation and human hygiene were scarce (like lottery jackpot scarce).  Add to this picnic the arrival of the Black Death which buried nearly 1/4 the world's population and you've got a whopping great run of "bad shit happens".

Now, ecclesiastics (fancy word for religious leaders) had set themselves up as the uncontested "We Know Everything Because God Talks to Us" group and had put themselves in charge of EVERYTHING.  (And I do mean EVERYTHING)  Having been terrorized against believing otherwise, people of the 14th century turned to the only resource of human intelligence they knew existed.  (Because all others were -of course - evil.)  Always eager to show off their superior minds, Church leaders dutifully promised to have a chat with God.  (For future reference, this was a male-heavy club, as in "No Girls Allowed Unless They're Washing Dishes")  Judging from the results they either caught the All-Father on a bad day or made up shit as they went along (which required the use of - you guessed it - intellect).

The reason (according to the Church) bad things were happening was because the Almighty was irate  Now to be fair, God had been angry since Eden (according to them).  And He was twisted about a lot of things - from pitchfork-shaped eating utensils to the fact that people had to have sex to procreate (a design flaw, maybe?).  But now, He was super-duper pissed and tossing out misery and disease like a ticket-dispenser on jet-fuel because there was veritable flood of Witches running wild in creation.

Making bad shi*t happen...

With such a definitive answer you would think these Sanctified Brainiacs would have an easy time fixing the problem.  I mean, find the culprits and get rid of them.  Quick, simple.  Five, ten years tops.  Suffice it to say - it did not go well.  About 500 years of 'not well'.  Not because they were stupid.  And not the "getting rid of" part.  That they pretty much nailed.  In fact, they made a rather lucrative business of it, founding a financial empire on their ability to 'nail' it (tax exempt, of course).

No, where the Church ran into trouble was in the identifying of witches.  Unfortunately, (it seems) practitioners of the abominable arts were so good at sorcery (they said), they could look like, live like and act like God's 'good' kids.  This, of course, created a huge issue.  But being the dedicated men they were, they attacked the problem with gusto and applied - yep - intellect.

What they needed was information and they deduced having spies would help.  After all, who knew better than your neighbors if you were having a wicked, midnight romp with the devil (apparently heresy creates 'bad shit' for those next door)?  They also tried to work Confession - (Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  I couldn't find my car keys so I rubbed some unconsecrated, human fat on the ol' broom for a jot into town).  While these methods proved somewhat lucrative, as the continuous happening of bad shit showed, they weren't enough to get the job done.

Undaunted by this set back, they pressed forward, pouring copious amounts of thought, research and experimentation into the problem and even created an official office of pious, learned men to address it.  (The Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.).  And - bam - just like that these masterminds hit on the solution.  The use of excruciating, prolonged pain to extract information- Torture.  Starting out with tools and resources borrowed from other cultures, these 'geniuses' added their own touches and even invented a few new ones.  And, given all the subjects available for "testing", it wasn't long before they had agony down to a science.  (And I'm not kidding here.  A lot of what we learned early on about human anatomy and medicine was discovered in the torture chambers of the Inquisition.)  Being the most highly-educated men of their times, they soon amassed a cornucopia of implements to use in their quest to make the bad shit stop happening:

Boiling - (Yep.  Exactly what it says.)
Branding Irons - (We ain't talking ponies here, folks.)
The Brodequin - (Okay, that's just sick.)
Dunking - (So, if you drown you're not a witch?)
Heretic's Fork - (What the hell is their hang up with forks?)
The Chair of Torture - (Spiky fun, especially if you got one with a fire box under it!)
The Iron Collar - (Vampire accessories.)
The Iron Maiden - (Not the band, people.)
The Judas Cradle - (Too disturbing to go into here - just Google it.)
The Pear of Anguish - (For a jaw-splitting, good time.)
Strappado - (Gives new meaning to "just hanging around".)
The Rack - (If you're breathing you probably know what this one does.)
The Wheel - (Of Misfortune)
Thumb, finger, toe -screws - (Think sledgehammer meeting appendage slowly and without end)

Now, given the wealth of information these whiz kids gathered over several centuries of 'investigation' they were able to amass a list of what to look for when one was hunting the dreaded witch - originator of all "bad shit happening".  According to the Church (remember the All-Boys Club?), and the definitive texts on the subject, including the "Malleus Maleficarum", a witch was most likely to be:

A Tea Break from making bad sh*t happen...

1) A woman.  2) A poor woman.  3) A wealthy woman.  4) A woman with one or more friends.      5) A woman with no friends.  6) An outspoken woman.  7) A woman who made eye contact with men.  8) A beautiful woman.  9) An ugly woman.  10) An old woman.  11) A young woman.  12) A woman with a mole, scar or blemish somewhere on her body.  13) A woman who was a midwife or healer.  14) A married woman with too many children.  15) A married woman with no children.  16) A woman with spoiled milk in her kitchen.  17) A woman who had sex.  (Including incest, molestation, or rape)  18) A woman who enjoyed sex.  19) A woman accused by others.  20) The daughter of a woman accused by others.  21) A woman with a pet.  22) A woman with a frog in her yard.  23) A widowed woman.  24) A woman living next door to someone who died, whose cattle was sick, or whose bread did not rise.  25) A woman who went outside after dark.   (Picking up on the theme here, are you?  Bright kid.  While it is true males were also accused, "questioned" and sentenced (between 5% to 17% by some approximations) by far, the majority of those accused and executed were female, some as young as 3.)

It is estimated between the late 1300's to the early-1800's over 8 million suspected witches were “tested” (tortured) or "questioned" (tortured) or "examined" (tortured).  Of these, over 3 million sessions with these Sacred Guardians of Aptitude ended in intentional burnings, hangings, drownings, draw-and-quarterings, and stranglings.  There are no numbers on those who 'accidentally' succumbed during their "interviews" (The 'oops' factor here must be astronomical!).

Taken separately or together, these factoids are horrifying.  And from our lofty modern perch we love to look back into our uncomfortable histories and judge such horrendous events as evidence of the glaring human stupidity which can flourish when 'ignorance' is king.  However, that assumption is more about divorcing ourselves from the idea we somehow share DNA with our diabolically creative ancestors than it is about singing the anthems of intellectually-grounded existence.  In reality, many of the things conceived, invented and engineered during such times are, in fact, proof that we, as a species, are thinkers.  Coupled to our limitless imaginations and our drive towards curiosity and creativity, our ability to think is our greatest gift.  And yet, combined with our fear-based natures, our abundance of bias, innate leanings towards prejudice and our need to dominate, our intellectual prowess is also a fearsome beast because sometimes our capacity for thought isn't what could be called a good thing.  In fact, in a goodly portion of situations, it's the very cause of really bad shit happening.