Why it matters that pluralism was the biggest innovation of the Renaissance

Episode Summary  We live in an uncertain age, one in which wealthy and powerful forces are working tirelessly to overthrow democracy, turn back the clock on human progress and destroy the middle class. The sheer magnitude of the West’s crisis of democracy can be overwhelming, however, and that’s why in this episode, I wanted to take more than a few steps back to explore the Renaissance, a period of world history that is much discussed in popular media, but often in a way that overshadows the real people and their actual intentions. Where did the Renaissance come from and what exactly were the people who made it hoping to achieve with their efforts? And are there any lessons that we can take from that time period for today?These are very big topics, needless to say, and I could think of no better person to discuss them with than Ada Palmer. She’s a historian who teaches at the University of Chicago, and she’s written a fantastic review of the entire time-period called “Inventing the Renaissance,” which also discusses the historiography of one of humanity’s most written-about eras.Besides this and other history books, Ada writes science fiction as well, which we get into at the very end of our conversation in the context of what lessons modern people can take from the Renaissance.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are listener supported. We need your help to keep going. Please subscribe to stay in touch!Related ContentAncient Greek Skepticism is surprisingly relevant in the social media ageInside the demon-haunted world of Christian fundamentalismAuthoritarian epistemology is as old as humanity itself 🔒The forgotten story of how the “religious left” birthed American superpowerIn the digital age, reactionary Catholicism is making a comebackAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:53 — Tupac’s continued global resonance09:14 — The origins of hip-hop and its commercialization11:35 — Tupac’s legacy of contradictions18:41 — The Black Panthers’ influence on Tupac’s mother23:50 — Masculinity and gender within hip-hop29:06 — Gender and sexuality in the Black Panther Party35:56 — Obama and Trump in rap39:12 — Former Panthers still have hope for the future despite Trump41:31 — Trump’s 2024 campaign reached out heavily to hip-hop artists46:22 — ‘Coolness’ as a non-political voter persuasion method50:22 — How Van Nguyen brought oral history into his book58:19 — Eazy-E, another political West Coast emcee 01:01:55 — The meanings of ‘thug life’Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So your book is called Inventing the Renaissance; before we get into the stories that you tell in the book, let’s just get into the larger question of the myth of the golden age. Because I think a lot of people may not be aware that a lot of this was kind of concocted by Protestant fundamentalists, which was then ironically picked up by atheists. There's a bit of an irony there.ADA PALMER: Yeah, I mean it's a myth that begins and has its earliest roots in the Renaissance itself and the invention in 14, 12, 14, 15, basically of history into three parts with ancient, middle, and then modern, which begins in the Renaissance itself, gets reinvented very heavily in the 18th century and the 19th century, and then many times [00:03:00] in the 20th century.Because once you have the idea that there is a golden age, you want to be able to claim that what you're doing is like that golden age, with the Renaissance, what we really mean by the Renaissance is the theory that there's some transitional phase at which the way things were pre-modern world suddenly gets changed by the arrival of something that changes it and makes the world start moving toward modern.And world begins to become more modern somewhere in the 14 hundreds or 13 hundreds or 15 hundreds, depending on when you center the Renaissance. And eventually it's to us. so the myth of the Renaissance is really about claiming what defines modern and then claiming that it comes in at a certain point and that this modern process is somehow good.Right. And that the Middle Ages are somehow bad, or the pre-modern world is somehow not as good or not as correct or not on the right path and trajectory of progress that [00:04:00] modernity is on leads to the utility of being able to claim it. And if you can say, X caused the Renaissance and we are continuing X, then that makes we good.And in the 18th century and in the 19th century, there kept being moments when people could claim X caused the Renaissance and then for some reason X stopped dominating in Italy and Spain and where the Renaissance sort of started.But we, whoever we ...