Last night ended up cloudy so I ended up watching old Spencer Tracy movies on TV. The second was Inherit the Wind, about the 1925 Scopes Trial (I figured Scopes..AM, 
).
So anyway....this dramatization was a bit on the extreme side, heavy on the notion that somehow unleashing religious prejudices by ignorant townspeople would bring back Middle Ages-style repression of free thought, and reinforcing the idea that southern country bumpkins feel that northern city folk are the ones responsible for the decline of morality.
Doesn't sound like much has changed since this movie came out 47 years ago. I wonder, though, whether this merely reflects the fact that cities tend to have centers of learning and also attract those who eschew traditional lifestyles or manners of thought- scientists, artists, performers, and so on. There would thus always be a sort of tension between such centers and the more traditional regions, and not just in the marketplace of ideas- city life also tends to be a bit less 'nice', or intimate (except when economics makes people live like sardines in a can). Almost a left (city) versus right (country) brain thing, with all that would entail- including technical versus social mindsets, with the former more interested in whether ideas actually make technology work better, versus the latter more interested in whether ideas make society work better, or seem to (in theory or practice).
Thus Christianity and Darwinism really wouldn't be the deepest issues at all- just particular configurations of more basic notions, though their protagonists might not realize this. Throughout the ages the faiths and philosophies, and creation myths, keep changing, but the city/country polarization would remain, in all its guises.
It would have been fascinating then to see whether similar 'battles' existed in earlier societies outside the Judeo-Christian-Roman framework, or whether the scale of development (chiefdoms, city-states, empires) made a difference in the degree of polarization, given the depth of hierarchicalization or stratification and specialization, and raw numbers of persons (and their ideas) involved.
Does it all boil down to a contest between 'less filling' and 'tastes great'?
Jess 'Deep Thought' Tauber
).So anyway....this dramatization was a bit on the extreme side, heavy on the notion that somehow unleashing religious prejudices by ignorant townspeople would bring back Middle Ages-style repression of free thought, and reinforcing the idea that southern country bumpkins feel that northern city folk are the ones responsible for the decline of morality.
Doesn't sound like much has changed since this movie came out 47 years ago. I wonder, though, whether this merely reflects the fact that cities tend to have centers of learning and also attract those who eschew traditional lifestyles or manners of thought- scientists, artists, performers, and so on. There would thus always be a sort of tension between such centers and the more traditional regions, and not just in the marketplace of ideas- city life also tends to be a bit less 'nice', or intimate (except when economics makes people live like sardines in a can). Almost a left (city) versus right (country) brain thing, with all that would entail- including technical versus social mindsets, with the former more interested in whether ideas actually make technology work better, versus the latter more interested in whether ideas make society work better, or seem to (in theory or practice).
Thus Christianity and Darwinism really wouldn't be the deepest issues at all- just particular configurations of more basic notions, though their protagonists might not realize this. Throughout the ages the faiths and philosophies, and creation myths, keep changing, but the city/country polarization would remain, in all its guises.
It would have been fascinating then to see whether similar 'battles' existed in earlier societies outside the Judeo-Christian-Roman framework, or whether the scale of development (chiefdoms, city-states, empires) made a difference in the degree of polarization, given the depth of hierarchicalization or stratification and specialization, and raw numbers of persons (and their ideas) involved.
Does it all boil down to a contest between 'less filling' and 'tastes great'?
Jess 'Deep Thought' Tauber
