corey posted:

im reading shah of shahs. later i might buy a kindle

good book

He had only hatred and contempt for ornament an the pleasures of the table, at least when those pleasures emanated from the Church . . . He was hostile to the Minorities, whom accused of feasting, against all the rules, after a funeral. All these roisterings and gormandizings, he said, were harmful to the dead person's soul, and prevented it from reaching Paradise . . . This is evidence of a certain degree of evangelical culture, which had reached him through the good-men or through the preaching monks to whom he listened despite his gibes . . . We can guess one of the reasons for the shepherds' attitude to poverty, acquired through experience and accepted quite simply. This reason lay in the fact tht they were nomads. The shepherds might well, from time to time, have a mule and a muleteer to go back and forth with wool and food, and to carry some luggage during the migrations. But basically the shepherds carried their fortunes on their own backs. Their physical strength and endurance were such that the burden might sometimes be quite heavy . . . Pierre Maury ad his like lived outside the purely subsistence economy on which the residents of old Montaillou continued more or less to thrive . . . Pierre Maury, a wage-earner, not alienated, informed, informal, and sociable, enjoyed parties and entertainment, and even just a good meal among friends . . . Filial, fraternal, compaternal and associative friendships combined with ordinary friendships and complicity, heretical or anti-heretical, to form each individual's and each domus's circle of friends . . . The shepherds' attitude towards the rest of the world was easy-going, often friendly . . . This ida of ineluctable fate pursued Maury in all his subsequent travels, even as far as Spain . . . If we set the Albigensian influence aside, we may easily compare Pierre Maury's idea of fate with similar notions popular among the various cultures of the western Mediterranean . . . medieval Christianity (influenced in this by the pre-Islamic North African, Augustine) possessed a very comprehensive theory of Grace, which in its crudest versions might also be regarded as destiny . . . Pierre Maury's sense of fate was thus not vulgarly magical but loftily philosophical . . . Pierre Maury's awareness of fatum also reflects a deep sense of occupational continuity. To fulfill one's destiny is to keep one's place and not depart from one' condition or profession. And one's profession is seen as a source of interest, a fount of vital energy, not a cause of unhappiness and alienation . . . Fate, which underlies this phrase as it does so many others, is thus seen as the shepherd's vocation; and mountain liberty is the happy counterpart of the migrant's destiny, even if he has to sleep under the trees, to freeze almost to death in winter and be soaked to the skin by autumn showers.

Maury and his peers, great voyages, had neither wife, nor children, nor household. Despite their comparative wealth in terms of money and flocks, they could not accumulate much in the way of objects, limited as they were by considerations of mobility which prevented them from acquiring all the possessions with which those who were sedentary systematically surrounded themselves. So Maury chose instead to desire few objects, and to transfer his wants to other kinds of wealth, which for him took the place of family: temporary unions with mistresses in the pastures or the taverns; a full network of human relationships based on both artificial and natural fraternity, on compaternity, on pure friendship or friendship through association. He liked his life-style, based on fate freely accepted - but is this the very definition of Grace? His destiny was a destination. For him, sheep meant liberty. And he would not trade that liberty for the plate of gritty lentils often held out to him by friends, employers and parasites, offering to marry him, to help him settle down, to have him adopted into a rich family. But he saw his destiny as travelling over hill and dale, with friends everywhere and temporary sweethearts. Material wealth would literally be a burden to him. Maury had few possessions, but he was not destitute. And when he lost those few possessions he lost them with a smile, for he knew that by working he could easily get them back again. Well shod shod for his long journeys in a pair of good shoes of Spanish leather - the only luxury he allowed himself - detached from the goods of this world, careless of the almost inevitable certainty of being arrested at some time by the Inquisition, leading a life that was both passionate and passionately interesting, Pierre Maury was a happy shepherd.

Bablu posted:

i just got done with the book shennong posted that's about state avoidance in hill s.e. asia

post ur thoughtjs in the thread and i will paypal u USD.02

toy posted:

anyone have suggestions for a history of the french revolution? looking for one that focuses on structural factors, rather than personalities. thanks. thanks a million.

the french revolution: a history by thomas carlyle

reflections on the revolution in france by edmund burke

aerdil posted:

lol he dead now, fucker. what a cunt. aboobaboobaboob god isnt real *dies, is condemned to nonexistence* lmao owned u dirtmuncher fuckin hell

toy posted:

anyone have suggestions for a history of the french revolution? looking for one that focuses on structural factors, rather than personalities. thanks. thanks a million.

john cHrist's forthcoming marquis de sade novel

redfiesta posted:

so this is a bit off topic but fuck it because i think i'm going to lose my mind while trying to make pdf books readable in my 6" e-reader. cropping the margins doesn't help. converting to another file format never works. fuck pdf. fuck adobe. how do you guys deal with this?

download calibre, use its converting t0ol. if u still have problems, learn regular expression. good luck. your gonna need it.