Links between Indian and Greeks sceptics

Following up on my interest on the links between the Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, I discovered the Indian origins of the Greek philosophy of scepticism.

First, I would like to state that I think there is a fine line between religions and philosophies. I would like to find an good umbrella term for this, but in the meantime i'll use 'beliefs' (or the longer form 'systems of beliefs').
Both religion and philosopy boil down to define what is good and what is bad, and, to be able to tell one from the other, most systems will ask you to look for the truth. Truth, in turn, lead philosophies and religions alike to look for knowledge (ultimate knowledge, omniscience). If not knowledge per se, at least, as the Bible puts it in Genesis, "knowledge of Good and Evil". Plato, for another example, says that the Form of Good is the aim of Knowledge, and from the Good thus known, objects get their usefulness and their value.

So here I was reading about the śramaṇa movements, the ascetic movements that steered away from the Vedic traditions in India, and which I had already read about. Among these sramana, Buddhism and Jainism are the most famous.
But there were others. Namely, Buddhism acknowledged the existence of six competing beliefs in its early days, six competitors that it tried to fight out (and mostly succeeded).

One of these systems of beliefs was the Ajñana of Sañjaya
Belaṭṭhiputta, the 'doubt' , or 'absence of knowledge' .
See, the premise is simple : some say such, with a lot of proof and logic and assertiveness, but some others say otherwise, with the same amount of proof and logic and assertiveness. One can then infer that one side of any debate (philosophical or religious) must be wrong, without being able to tell which is right. Hence, one cannot know what is true.
Not only one cannot ascend to (ultimate) knowledge, but as knowledge aims at telling Good from Evil, one of the side, noone knows which, is doing wrong without even knowing it. As a consequence, absolute knowledge is not only impossible to attain, but moreover imperfect or incomplete knowledge leads to evil and wrong.
And actually, if somebody, somewhere, had true omniscience, and he was the only True prophet or philosopher, he couldn't be differentiated from the other ones because no one would know that he is, nobody being omniscient but him.
Finally, Sceptics reminded the impossibility to know what's in others' minds, owing to the singularity of human experience, and hence the impossibility of participating in one another's omniscience, if it was at all possible, and they underlined the difficulty in reasoning from others' reasonings.
From all these reasons, they affirmed that it is best, most virtuous, to not know. To remain in a state of eternal un-knowledge.

This being said, and however violent buddhist commentators and jain gurus were against the Sceptics, they, the Sceptics, actually held to some knowledge.
For example, they knew that they didn't know. They also knew that it's evil to know ; which is a contradiction that was ridiculed at the time.
Moreover they knew that it's evil to do evil. That there's a good on one side and an evil on the other side, and that the two are mutually exclusive.
So eventually, being Sceptic was not being devoid of reflection, philosophy, or even devoid of a hold on anything. They were relatively uncognisant. In stark contrast to other systems of the time, they didn't pretend to nor look for omniscience.

But there was more to them.
They knew one thing, at least, in that they looked to not be in moral danger. Moral danger was the state of not doing what's right, which is, as I stated first, the basis of any philosophy or religion. Moral danger, to them, stems from bad (personal) feelings, like remorse, anger, or worry. Anguish, in a word. They looked, as others did, most famously the buddhists, to stay in moral tranquility, harmony, and un-change-ness.
Moral danger and anguish, according to different schools of sceptics, would come from one of these :
- being wrong in one's reasoning, owing to personal objectivity, or the "transcendental uniqueness of being". In a word, the fear, and rejection, of being wrong, lead them to wanting to not know. I might be wrong by feeling that i know, and there is no universal authority whatsoever lending credence or discredit to what i think i know, thus i don't want to hold anything for true.
- being 'entangled' by one's objectivity. I don't quite get the distinction between this one and the previous one, except it seems it relies on the meaning of 'entanglement' in Indian philosophy. But this school had moral grounds, more than logical grounds, for not holding anything as true knowledge.
- the third reason was that debate with people that pretended to omniscience would never lead to any agreement or mutual understanding. There, the position of being a sceptic, would in itself bear the impossibility of being right in a debate. The impossibility of convincing, debating, or being right while not holding to any absolute knowledge would only lead to frustration, moral defeat, and anguish. Basically, saying that you don't pretend to have the Truth makes you unable to debate with people who do.
- the fourth school of Sceptics was even more sceptical ; whereas all the previous reasons were aimed at attaining peace of mind, and good deeds through not doing evil, the fourth one was sceptical even of any good and evil. It argued : is their a possibility of knowing that there's a good and an evil ? Is there a possibility of being no good nor evil ? Failing to do so, they stated that even saying there's a moral high ground to begin with starts the process of anguish.

So where's the Greek in this ?
Well, as it happened, Alexander conquered all of the Achaemenid empire, and it meant also the then-Indian-leaning regions of today's Afghanistan and Pakistan that had been Indian territories conquered by the -Persian- Achaemenids. Alexander famously battled elephants in Punjab in 326 BCE.
There was a Greek painter along with the army, Pyrrho, who came back to Greece shortly afterwards and adopted an ascetic way of life upon his return. He professed that philosophy's aim was to reach a state of personal ataraxia, or absence of worry, much like the Indian religions and philosophies he had learned about, and that the way to attain ataraxia was to not believe in any belief. It is from him, and his followers, that the Greek scepticism was born.
From quotes of quotes of quotes, we kind of know that his beliefs were the following :
- one must lead a good life
- to lead a good life, questions are to be asked.
- these questions cannot be answered with absolute certainty (the various answers are without difference between one another, not measurable, and not decidable)
- the best possible way to live is hence to stay unenclined, undogmatic, and unwavering in the denial of beliefs
- in the absence of certainty, ataraxia must come from rejecting all dogmas and conclusions
He may as well have been influenced by older Greek philosophers. Plato quotes Socrates saying that he knew he was unknowing, and that it was the basis for his knowledge. The Eleatics of the Vth c. BCE had used logic to undermine the knowledge from perception, and dialectic to try and destroy their predecessors' philosophies.
Pyrrho held that perception, thought, and even reality, were indeterminate, unknowable, and could lead to the truth. He didn't write anything, though, and his philosophy was written by his pupil Timon, but we lost that too.

What can be said, however, is that his followers did not fully agree with him. Indeed, Pyrrho still held to some knowledge : he knew that perception, thought and reality were such and such. Not using the fourfold logic Indian Sceptics and Greeks after them had used, he didn't say that he couldn't know whether reality was or wasn't such and such. He held a negative dogma, but that was still a dogma.
Centuries later, in the 1st c. BCE, his teachings were revived by a school of scepticism in Alexandria. This school of Pyrrhonists held that one can't find truth through perception nor thought, and that the followers of any other philosophy is at the same time ignorant of truth and reality, but also ignorant of their own ignorance. It is a view that Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta could have said 500 years and 6000 km away.
More to the point, this school asserted that you must keep your judgment in suspension, or epoché, because of the lack of certainty in your perception and your thought process. They strove to stay above reproach or evil by determining nothing. They also held the moral high ground, since doubting themselves, they didn't conflict with themselves, whereas the others argued that some things were incognitive, being absolute, but argued so from there own cognition.
However, as you might have noted, holding that judgment is still a judgment in itself, by not doubting that you are right when you doubt.

This epoché had a lasting impact on philosophy, and actually the scientific method.
René Descartes, in the XVIIth c., doubted everything as a method : this is the Cartesian Doubt. He actually found two arguments to put in disbelief all of our perceptions and cognition (namely, that we are living in a dream, or that an Evil Demon is controlling our environment and we're living a lie). But this in turn led to the famous cogito, ergo sum. Since you are, you think, and since you think, you know that you are. This was his base for not doubting your existence, and hence starting the construction of knowledge.
This doubting everything in turn led the scientific method to advance hypotheses and predictions to be verified by proof, and not the other way around, that is advancing proofs to come consolidate a previously held, unproven knowledge.
Edmund Husserl, in his phenomenology, methodically blocked biases and assumptions to observe a phenomenon in and of itself (in phenomenology, everything is a phenomenon). Husserl's work influenced such big names as Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, the Pittsburgh School of Wilfrid Sellars...

But there I was reading all of this and I thought, man, this theory of scepticism smells like a lot of people would think today.
Let me first say that I'm not a sceptic. I accept the scientific method, and apply, you might have noticed, a lot of doubt in my own analytical approach of things. But I believe in holding some knowledge, maybe some axioms, a scale of values, maybe not ones set in stone, but allowing for structure and thoughts to be built upon them and refined, and corrected, over time.
But I found myself thinking of all the people who would rather shrug every theory rather than face the prospect of taking a side or holding to a belief. It's fashionable to doubt every belief, or to turn everything in a belief you have to doubt. Talk about politics and it's "all the same all over the place, the powerful want money and that's all there is to it". Talk about philosophy or merely values, and it's "I don't know, I don't understand, and I think it's not worth the effort". Say you have some faith, or some kind of faith, and you hear that "what's the point, we'll never know". Even science are objects to universal doubt : talk about the meteorological services, and "they don't know shit, they're always wrong". Talk about dietetics and it's "everyday the same and its contrary". Say you want to think and people answer "you're only hurting yourself, it's pointless because in the end, we're all clueless".
It is healthy, of course, to doubt. Not doubting anything is worse than doubting everything. But doubting everything leads you to holding on to nothing, and holding on to nothing leads to grab and grip indiscriminately to anything, after a time. That's why strong leaders are seducing to lost souls in times of social or personal stress. And it's true for societies as well as personalities.

Slavonia 920-928 : The Bans Alliance

April 920.

The Khanate of Hrvastka has fallen under the blows of the Magyars, leaving behind it the Banates of Slavonia, Hrvatska and Bosna, and a streak of smaller polities : Gyòr and Somogy in the North, Knin, Cetina, Omis and Hvar in the South. It made little doubt that the territories in the North would soon fall to the Magyars. The question was, to each of us Bans, how to escape their fate ?

The alternatives were either to go on on one's own, trying to grab territories in the process, submitting to the Kíraly before being invaded, or swearing fealty to a powerful neighbour. To the West, the Kingdoms of Burgundy, Lotharingia, Bavaria and Germany were good candidates, but their incessant rivalries made their help uncertain. To the East, the Roman Empire was the strongest of the candidates, but they were far away, and Orthodox. To the North, the Czechs had a powerful Tribe, and they were Slavs, but I doubted their capacity to face the Horde.
I decided to temporize before deciding.

In April 921, I had subdued Kadram of Gyòr, an old rival from the Khanate's time, plundered his lands, vainquished his troops, emprisonned his family. In May 922, I had given back to my former liege, Bihor who now styled himself King, a tribe of the Avar in the Somogy plains.
By that time, the Czechs had lost a war against the Magyars and Gyòr was a new addition to Bavaria. My options grew fewer.

Natalija was sent to the Eastern King of the Khazars, the bane that had made the Magyars invade the Pannonian Plain in the first place, and secured an alliance from them, at the expense of her wedding to a yil-tawar of his, Barjik.
I also sent my little brother Dujam, who was meek and a bit clueless, to meet the daughter of my good friend Domagoj of Bosna. Promises of a future mareiage were made. Same with Ulfo, one of the twins, sent to my cousin Zvonimir to get to know his eldest daughter Antonija, 9.

I secured the whole of Somogy as vassal the next Autumn with the help of Zvonimir of Croatia, killing the old Count Zavis in battle.
I also installed an old woman from the Somogy at the head of the County of Cetina for the sole purpose of depriving the family of Besar Hrvatinic, who had ordered the murder of my father.

In 925, a small war I had started against an offshoot of the Magyarország degenerated when the Kíraly died, which made the child I had been attacking the new Kíraly of all the Magyars. They'd been brothers and I had overlooked that fact. In front of the Horde, i had to demand a shaming peace and to send my allies back home.

Back at home, my friend Domagoj had died eating too much, leaving his banate parted between Branimir II, with most of it, and Ljudevit, with the richer country of the Rama river. I immediately declared war on Ljudevit, to install my brother Dujam on the throne of Bosna, through his wife, big sister to the two brothers. Instead of calling my allies, this time i hired the Rus' Band. I also formed an alliance with Branimir II and helped Zvonimir of Croatia subdue Knin and Bribir.
I was still allied to Zvonimir when he had to defend Usora from the Strategos of the Serbs. In 927, we finally managed to beat the Greeks around Srebnik, and again in 928 in Usora and Debrc. There were many dead soldiers from Ionia, from Athens and Serbia on the field, and all were put to flight in front of me.

Slavonia 907-920 : Twilight of the Khan

September 907.

The whole of Hrvastka had been bled dry. Castimir, my personal chaplain and doctor, still held the head of my armies as an old man, using a special chair to ride his horse, and holding on to his sword by his one valid hand.

There was not a village whose men in age of fighting hadn't been killed or wounded in one of the battles against the Magyars or the Czechs. But the Khanate, now confined to the Western bank of the Danube in Pannonia, had survived. The Khan had allied himself with the King of Lombardia, who happened to be at that time a Frankish grandson to one King of Lotharingia, from the faraway Brabant, who was not a descendant of Charlemagne, as had been all the Frankish kings of Lombardia and Bavaria before. In this alliance, the Frankish knights came to blow with the Magyars horsemen for the first time in History.
The wars were not over yet, but thanks in no small part to Venetians troops, the local Hungarian potentates had seen their ambitions frustrated and their armies sent packing home.

In 908, I promised my Natalija to the teenage Ban of Croatia, Zvonimir son of Besar. It was a bet on the future as the wedding would be held eight years afterwards, but I needed support at the court.

[as Braslav III]
My father was murdered on the orders of the Ban of Bosna before he could murder him. I took charge of the Banate of Slavonia on the 25 March of 908. My brothers hated me, because my father had instituted the elective banate. I gave the seat of Zagorje to the eldest Vid, and betrothed the youngest, Dujam, to a daughter of the old, weak, and proud Svatopluk of Morava.
I assembled an army right away to be able to arrest the treacherous Mayor of Gradec. This was quickly dealt with, and, as Khan Täbär tried to defend the coastal town of Rijeka from the Venetians, I could ally with both the Ban of Croatia and the Ban of Bosna.

In 911, Khan Täbär was deposed for his child brother Bihor, who was more a Slav now than an Avar. The Venetian left without a conquest but came back the next year. By then, Hrvatska could assemble a much more powerful army and, after a lull, could crush the Merchants at the battle of Somogyvár in April 914, occupy the City on the Lagoon while repulsing yet another Magyar invasion from Fejér.
I promised my slow little brother Ratimir who was just back from Venetian gaols, to a daughter of the previous King of the Magyars, who had converted en masse not long before. With this, i could make an ally out of the Savage Horde instead of an endless plunderer (1).
I myself married my long-time fiancee, Dubravka, by the day she turned 14. I was 27. She got pregnant that same year, and the twins Besar and Ulfo were born on March 9, 915. In the same year, I looked into marrying my sister, Natalija, whose betrothal to Zvonimir Ban of Croatia had been broken by him. Among the suitors were the King of Alba, the King of Western Francia, the King of Northumberland, the King of Navarra, a King of the Georgians, another of the Northmen, and the young king of Lotharingia. I sent her to the latter, and the family's fate was once more intertwined with those of the Heirs of Charlemagne.

In a glorious moment, Zvonimir of Croatia and I went to war against the nasty Ban of Usora, while my best friend the Ban of Bosna was attacking Usora from the South. We cornered and defeated the Usoran several times without even trying, and I chased after the Count of Certina who had, I'm sure, had a hand in my father's murder. Unfortunately, I was attending business at the Khan's yourt, and I couldn't kill the bastard.

A new enemy emerged in late 917, in the person of Kyprinos, a Greek that had replaced the Serbian strategoi as ruler of the Serbs (for the Basileus). He was a good leader of troops and had so many of them he could have swallowed Hrvatska without skipping a beat. We lost battle upon battle, losing a rich county in the process. But for the first time, an army of Croats had fought and conquered on the coast of Asia.
Then the Magyars attacked us again. And again, it was impossible to stop the tidal wave of their horde. My mother, my wife and three children, my youngest brother and my surviving sister all went prisoners of the Király of the Magyars. Along with them Khan Bihor and much of his court.
In this unfortune, the Khanate of Hrvastka was dissolved.

Each Ban was, again, the master of his own destiny.

Notes :

1. the Alliance would break down in October of the same year, when Ratimir decided to take a walk in the night rain, wearing only his belt.

Bonus :

Resisting conversion and fighting the Pagan Magyars can prove sexy.

Slavonia, 893-905 : Braslav's consolidation

[as Braslav II's]

In November 893, a faux pas of  my rival, Branimir of Bosnia, who had taken the seat of Zagreb from my defeated grandfather's hands, allowed me to chastise the culprit, taking for occasion a war on him by the Khan about his possession of a southern land. While the Khan was busy occupying and plundering the Ban's (1) main possessions, I had to hire mercenaries from the Rus' (2) to get the main job done, which cost me a lot of money. In the meantime, our Khan, Tuniq Khunzakhal, converted to the Christian faith and changed its crest to the chequered one most associated with Croatia.

I had a fourth child, a boy named Ratimir, in the winter of 894.

Branimir was still holding Serbia. I had to strike at the dragon's head by bringing war to his lands, head to head, accompanied by my Russian mercenaries and the Khan's whole army of Avars, White Croats (3), and Moravians. We flatly beat them, took Zagreb back, and then I could even snatch another victory over a fleeing Branimir in neighbouring Merania (4). By October 895, I was back in my castle meditating on my empty coffers.

After the war, Dizeng, then natural candidate to be elected in case of the Khan's demise, had fell out of favor. My lot, as one of of the Khan's chiefs (a yil-tawar (1) in his khanate and his personal cup-bearer), went to his eldest surviving son, Baghatur, already disfigured by age 18. His elder brother, Çorpan, had died at 13 from an infected wound, and the next brother, Täbär, was horribly scarred too (I eventually had to switch my patronage to this one, and he was the one to get the crown).

To prepare for my war against Branimir to get Zagreb back, I had to build alliances. I betrothed my eldest daughter, Zvonimira, to the Khan's nearest-aged boy, Okhsi. I also betrothed my second-born boy, Vid, to the eldest daughter of the Avar yil-tawar of Balaton (the banate my grandfather had been looking to control), which was called Somogyország in Turkic (5). Finally, i betrothed my heir, Braslav, to the twin sister of the 12 years old markgraf (1) of Verona, Otgotz Unruochinger, who was my cousin by my mother Judith.

Then, in late 895, I could go to war .

In December 896, this war was interrupted after my ally, Organ of Somogyország, had joined Branimir in the Khan's war against a southern neighbour, as both were bound by oaths to join under their lord's banner. I had to wait for the end of this short set of operations to resume the hostilities on the Ban of Bosnia, but as Organ was weaker now, and Branimir stronger, I recruited the Rus' mercenaries again. The whole thing was wrapped up in November 98 and i gave the county of Zagreb to my elder Braslav. If he, for whatever reason, would lose the -elective- seat of Slavonia, he would still hold counties.

In 900, the Khan, freshly converted, declared war on the Basileus (1), Leon VI, to liberate Serbia from his Orthodox overlords. It was ill-advised, as Leon VI had retaken a whole lot of territory to the Varangian invaders from the Rus', who had had control over much of the old Bulgarian Empire since 881. He was powerful, well-armed, and without an enemy.
The Khan was thoroughly defeated in less than a year, and during this period of rout, the Khanate had to suffer attacks of the Magyars, wanting to grab all the counties in the East of Hrvatska (6), and of the Czechs, willing to conquer the northern tip of the Khanate along the Danube (it was snatched the next year by the Magyar King Árpád).
I had to recruit the Rus' Band again, with which I managed to edge a bigger Magyar army, and then waited for my liege to come to my rescue as soon as my coffers couldn't pay the Varangians anymore.
We were slaughtered left and right, the Khanate got pillaged and quartered for years, and in 905, Hrvatska had lost all of its possessions East of the Danube, but for a small part of White Croatia. It also lost its old Khan Tuzniq, who met his fate on the field. We barely kept Vukovo (7), my own Easternmost possession and my capital county, thanks to a chance alliance with the Venetians.

In 895 :

In 905 :

But I, Braslav the Hunter, was a captain of the young Khan, the leader of the strongest faction in the khanate, and the ally of both the young Khan, and the Ban of Croatia, great-grandson of the Domagoj who founded the short-lived Kingdom of Croatia thirty years before.

Notes :

1. a duke. For game purposes, territories and their respective lords are tiered into Baronies, Counties, Duchies, Kingdoms and Empires, with an immediate hierarchy between them (ie a County includes several Baronies and so on). Depending on their nature and culture, however, these territories and lords are named along a series a titles : Mayors, Lord Mayors, Heads of Family, Thanes, Rì, Basileus, etc. The Turkic term equivalent to Duke, in-game, is yil-tawar. The equivalent South-Slavic term, in-game, is ban. In East-Germanic, a Duke is a marksgraf, 'a marquess'. Any Greek Emperor is a Basileus. Of course, the similarity between the concepts and terms is not historically valid, as is the strict hierarchy.

2. many Vikings had gone East to settle in former Baltic, Slavian and Bulgar territories, and formed kingdoms there. They were known to the Byzantines as the Varangians. The Rus', one of these kingdoms centered around Kiev, was to grow into Russia.

3. White Croats were Croats who didn't take part in the migration to the Southern lands, present-day Croatia, but stayed with the Poles, the Moravians and the Ruthenians. Their land lied to the North of the Pannonian Plain.

4. in-game Istria. Its historical extent remains unknown, although it was necessarily a Slav land along the Adriatic coast.

5. the game is a bit flawed, in that it changes the names of provinces according to their lords' cultures ; but these names remain in a limited list of names these provinces were historically known by ; that is to say that as 'Balaton' was a Slavic name which corresponded to its (in-game) Carantanian lord, it switched to the Hungarian name when it came under the (in-game) domination of an Avar lord, although Avars and Magyars most likely didn't speak the same Turkic language ; name-given entities and cultural/ethnic affiliations are not quite simple among the horse-lords of the Steppe.

6. 'Hrvastka' is simply 'Croatia' in Croatian. The game tries to use culture-specific names for locations. However, I prefer to use 'Croatia', on its own, for the present-day country, and 'Hrvastka' for the -changing- polity in the game.

7. the game has got to name locations, and with a limited set of names, even when these names were not chronologically or geographically sound. The county of Vukova is not historical, it's only the game-area around the city of Vukovo, present-day Vukovar. The city itself was first mentioned only some five hundred years after the current game-date.

Bonus :

The game is full of tragic stories. Here's Queen Heilka's family, with the fate of the dead in a ribbon under their face (a bit on the right) :

- his father, died a prisoner (probably murdered there)

- her three brothers died in battle, at ages 17, 19 and 19, in five years' time. All four were Kings of Lombardia or Bavaria one after the other.

Also, doggo happened.

Orsay setting the sun right

This happened last night. Mom called me at 5:20 to tell me there was a beautiful sunset. I didn't wait for it to redden because I was thinking it would sink too fast behind le Bois du Roi, which is where Audrey and Christophe live.
It's not rétouché at all. The mobile pictures I took at the same time where shitty, blurring the sky in a white-hot molten metal blob. I should put some effort in the direct-to-PC pics I'm taking, like rebalancing and shit, but this is beautiful enough raw.

Slavonia 867-893 : Under the Avars' yoke

Yeah so today in History,

The young Croatian Kingdom (est. 874 by Domagoj, Ban of Croatia, right befire submitting Slavonia into vassality) was under the threat of two eastern, turkic superpowers : the old Avar Khanate, which had settled in the northeastern edge of the Pannonian Plain since Roman times, and were trying to keep in check the migration of Slavs into their dominion, and the young Magyar horde, which had decided to migrate westwards after being roughed by their Khazar overlords.

So when the Magyars swept through the lands of the Slavs around the Avars, it seemed Croatia wouldn't stand in the path. Suprisingly, the Magyars contended themselves with one northern province, and it was the Avars that declared war and subjugated King Domagoj's heir.
This is how I, the Ban of Balaton to the North of me and the Ban of Croatia to the South, became all subjects to the Avar Khanate, who soon enough settled [ie in-game, it became a regular country and not a horde) to be the Khanate of Hrvatska (Croatia).
After this point, it was just a matter of time before the Magyar eventually came round to conquering one by one the eastern provinces of the Khanate, which is to say the region where the Avars used to prosper before the whole affair.

On the interior side, during all this chaos, Ban Braslav I died, and his grandson Braslav II inherited after a short regency. Braslav II had been shortly betrothed to a Burgundian princess, then to a Lombardian Princess, Heilka, while his grandfather had his sights turned to the West.
Now that he had been Croatian, then Avar, then Avar-Croatian, and had had to defend his title against plots in his own surroundings, Braslav II decided to focus on his Pannonian ambitions, for which Queen Heilka was of little interest. As his grandfather had sequestrated two daughters from Slavomir, the Pannonian chief of Tolna, immediately to the North of his own capital of Vukovo, he schemed to have his queen murdered to be able to marry Slavomir's elder daughter, Brzieczislawa, who was of a deceitful nature like himself, while offering the younger sister Przybislawa to a young vassal, Baron Dragan.
The scheme seemed even better off when the queen, along with her two children, was abducted by revolting Christians (the Avars follow the old Turkic faith, centered on their god Tengri) who couldn't bear the pagan yoke.
They were not the only ones, eventually, as all the former vassals of the Croatian King rose in rebellion against the Khan. I chose not too, counting on the Avar might to slaughter my fellow Croats, who had been wiped out easily in the first place. They turned out to be many more than i thought, and the victory of the Khan (and my hundred warriors) held to a strategic error by the rebels. They soon submitted and all went back to feebly resisting the Magyar multitude snagging territory after territory.
In the aftermath of one of the invasions, the chiefdom of Tolna had passed to another lineage and Brzieczislawa's claim seemed a lot less promising. Meanwhile, Queen Heilka had born a third child to Braslav, and he resolved to drop his scheming, and go on living with her. It was the year of the Lord 893.

The poem uncalled for

I know you don't like poetry, but i've been writing a little again, recently. A very little. It's part of Rural-me, i guess, or more probably i consciously want to write poetry again and it sips down into my mind.
And i know how out-of-place and irrelevant, and quite ridiculous poetry can be, especially when you don't particularly like it. It's awkward. Socially and intellectually awkward nowadays to hear, or even worst to be told poetry.
But i want to share it with you. Needless to say, nobody ever reads any of it. But i've got to open up, i guess, and i can't think of anyone i would love to being read than you. Of course, i would like for you to like it, too, but i know it can't be force-fed to one's senses, much less forced-fed to their liking.
So instead of sending it as a message, that you'd have to go through to some extent, i've made it a post. You can read it whole, in chunks, over the course of several decades, or not at all.

I don't have a title yet. I don't like titles much.

Odeur du soleil à deux heures, et qui danse.
Lumière du café dans l'air, et qui danse,
Qui baigne le salon de bois et de velours,
Qui baigne mon souci du calme de l'enfance.
Avec eux je suis à nouveau en vacances,
Ces après-midis où il n'y avait pas cours,
Où il n'y avait rien à faire d'autre que vaguement somnoler
Et écouter la télé ronronner avec mémé.
Ça c'est à moi, c'est en moi, c'est à moi,
C'est comme la choucoute le soir quand il fait froid,
Ce n'est pas quelque chose dont on peut être fier,
C'est un lit de confort imprimé dans les nerfs.
C'est la bière qui attend le gars qui vient de loin,
Souvenir de famille qui fait sourire en coin ;
C'est la lumière du jour quand on s'est levé tôt,
L'éclat jaune du verre qui adoucit le soir,
Le toucher de la pluie sur la laine d'agneau,
Le nuage de cannelle qui vient du samovar ;
C'est le bois et le cuir et le frais et le chaud.
Odeur de ses cheveux quand il est un peu tard,
Lumière d'une bougie dans l'œil du corniaud,
Le craquement discret quand t'attrapes ta guitare.
Il n'y a rien à décrire qui tienne en peu de mots,
Mais étrange, étranger, familier, et idiot.

A further note on off grid living

I watched a video on lowtech, sustainable devices, which is a bit frustrating because these happy idiots overlook some of the most blatant shortcomings of some designs : "yeah, this anaerobic digester doesn't smell at all because of the air-sealed lid", but how about once a week when you open the lid to fill the bucket with organic matter ? You just get a real good whiff of the bacterial colonies you just told decompose this matter. Or "this solar water heater is real easy to make, look, we just scrapped an old fridge to use the door and the back tubing". Yes, and don't mention the ten feet of copper tubing which is ultra expensive, and which you have to bend in a coil inside the tank to heat the water.

But that was okay, i mean, there was some ideas you could pick up.

Then i started this video about a thirty years old who bought 74 ha for 230 000€ and has lived on it ten years doing everything by himself.
First, i was surprised how he could describe himself as a web illustrator fed up with city life, if he's lived in the countryside for the past ten years. This would make him a 20 yo seasoned professional (?) with a good knowledge on how the rat race works.
Then i was quite puzzled by how he quickly brushed off how he lives on a 230 000€ plot his mother bought. And then proceeds to tell everybody how they should live their life (to his defense, he says to not buy the same kind of plot he did).
Then he goes on to tell the camera how society is so bad and so evil, and he advises all young people to run from their schools because "arrêtez d'aller à l'école (...), tous les jeunes qui font école d'agriculture, tout ça, tout tout tout tout est inutile. Donc ça va inquiéter les parents, c'est sûr, mais vous perdrez pas votre temps, y'a tout sur Internet, y'a tout dans les bouquins, vous saurez bien plus que vos profs (...) Juste la liberté du pouvoir d'achat... Tu t'insères dans ta petite case, tu fais ta petite activité tous les jours, puis tu peux acheter des choses. C'est ça la grande liberté, super... Mais au fond voilà, les mecs ils savent rien en mécanique, ils savent pas construire une maison... Bref faut savoir tout faire, hein, souder, machin, et bon, faut tout réapprendre parce qu'on a perdu notre temps toutes ces années à l'école. Sinon ben voilà, on est dépendants de demander des services aux autres. D'une société de service et d'achat et de revente (...)".
And it... enrages me. How does he think the internet is working right now ? How does he think the knowledge is out there for him to cherry-pick ? Who made the machine that polished the buttons on his obviously expensive "nature-consciously" woven shirt ? How would exist the juridical status he says earlier you've got to apply for ?

And when all the rich kids will have bought all the 74 acres, where will us all go ?  And once all the young people will have flocked to the countryside living off of society, how will society evolve and still produce knowledge ? Where will the scientists train to tell him how methane is balanced and sulfur filtered in his biogas digester ?
I held fast for five minutes, then stopped. (and then re-watched it to correct what I had first written to you, to be fairer to the guy)

See, that's exactly what i blame Thoreau for (i dunno if you read the post) : accusing modern society to be evil, and underlining how stupid it is to live, support, or justify it, while completely ignoring its necessity to one's own way of living.

It's mind-boggling. The negation of the whole of society's value to a man. The only fact he can speak distinctly and I can watch him and I can talk about it to you in another language is a direct consequence of occupation specialization in society.
These people are parasites, and tell others "you so stupid still living in this society, man !". Because yeah, if everything is on the Internet, if looms make your cloths that you don't have to weave them on your own, if the wool comes from New Zealand with you paying as much as if it comes from Tyrol (and there's not enough sheep in Tyrol to clothe every people in Germany alone), it's because of hundreds of year of societal, scientific and engineering progress, industrialization ; and people are still out there in the thick of society allowing him to live in his precious bubble. If he had to get the iron ore, smelt it, refine it, mold it, forge it and sharpen it just to make the scissors he's using to cut his beard and hair so fashionably, maybe, maybe I would listen to him. And this is just one tiny example.
But since he's not, I don't care for his judgement on society and on people getting regular jobs.

See, it's one thing, as i want to, to live with as low an impact as possible, and as low a budget as possible, on the margin of society.
It's another to condemn it and all the things that make it possible to actually free yourself from barely surviving in the wilderness.

It's what I hated about Into the Wild main character, his arrogance and ignorance thinking he was ready to deny society's gifts and services (and i'm not merely saying "modern living" here, but also the society of men with their helpfulness, their inherited wisdom, their personal experience).*

It's also what i don't like about Zoufris Maracas' Cocagne lyrics :)

There was this sentence in a rap song I really liked, and i really thought was profound, which i still stand by and means a lot to me :

Un homme seul est viande à loup.

It hasn't always meant this to me, but today, here's what i would get from it : try to live without society's services and we'll see how you fare being an animal. We have tens of thousands of years worth of unlearning that. Believing our personal intelligence will make up for this loss is arrogant and foolish.
Even actually surviving alone in the wild, like the old man in the Colorado weather station, is sitting on the shoulders of giants.

* I just read that he must not have been so ignorant after all... My argument still stands.