Feudalism: Life During the Middle-Ages

Diagram of a typical Feudal village

What is it that defines the middle-ages as the epoch that left its legacy on the Western world? When one thinks of the middle-ages, one tends to think of knights on horseback in combat, glorious battles of hallowed significant and decisiveness, clashes of civilizations through various crusades and diplomatic disputes, or even great kings with wisdom and sovereignty. As relevant as these aspects were in providing a description of this era, they simply don't do justice in explaining to the common man exactly how a medieval society orated itself geopolitically and interdependently. The middle-ages, like any age, is a historical period that exhibits more than meets the eye.  It is an age riddled with inflated loyalties, clerical powers of the church combating the invading warriors, and constant threats from neighbouring political entities. Initiated through the Germanic invasion, leading down to humble beginnings of principalities and local political entities, a complex system of relationships between the aristocrats and laymen began to emerge. This would become the standard form of political systems throughout western Europe until the high middle-ages, starting with William the Norman in England in 1066 A.D after the battle of Hastings, in conjunction with the fall of the Carolingian empire; feudalism slowly began to catch on throughout continental Europe and would encompass the early kingdoms of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. As a homogenous mixture of Latin and Germanic traditions, feudalism was the practical and sensible blend of systems that formed the cornerstone of medieval society because of its robust social, economic, and relationship purposes. With this important characteristic of western-medieval Europe, feudalism, a medieval society functioned well enough to govern itself territorially and locally, and assuming that the people accept their natural order, it would continue to be a dominant system of politics throughout the middle-ages which would restore much of the nostalgic post-western Roman world to order through its prevalence.

Common Logical Fallacies part II

My apologies for not making a blog post in such a long time. Truth be told I've gotten somewhat lazy with it, plus I am always busy with work these days. But so long as I can keep this blog at least somewhat active, maybe it will be of benefit. In short, I've decided to post an addendum to my previous blog post on common logical fallacies. I won't describe various obvious ones such as Fallacy of Composition or Ad Hominem because I trust that even laymen can discern the obvious faultiness of those arguments. Sadly I only wish to outline one fallacy today, I will do more in the future. But let's not waste anymore time and continue to observe some of the fallacies that have peaked my attention over a few months.

6) Post hoc ergo propter hoc: Don't let the Latin fool you into thinking that this something very technical and formal. It translates to "after this, therefore, because of this" or simply put "correlation =/= causation." In an expression, it would be "A happened, then B occurred. Therefore A caused B." It simply means that because there is a correlation between A and B, does not mean that therefore A caused B. To prove this conclusion there needs to be solid evidence to support the sequence. But too often there is no such evidence present because it often looks like the correlation between two events are synonymous, therefore one HAD to have caused the other- meanwhile disregarding other factors that can potentially rule out the connection the two variables possess. An example that I come across way too often that shows the radical nature of this fallacy is as follows:

-Christianity legalized throughout the Roman empire around 313 A.D
-The fall of the Roman empire happened shortly after, thereby commencing the   Dark Ages
-Therefore Christianity caused the Dark Ages

Many historians and amateurs feel a great sense of frustration when they read something like this. This is because the people that are proclaiming this as clear reasoning, don't ever take into consideration the numerous factors that insinuated the cause of the Dark Ages. For example the Barbarian Invasion of Rome,