The loss of much of the Romans’ practical skill, especially their administrative abilities, kept Europe from growing dominant worldwide until the Renaissance. At that time, these more worldly values that encouraged trade and invention were reborn due to a number of factors familiar to scholars (e.g., the fall of Constantinople, the rise of science, the discovery of the Americas, etc.). Or perhaps, in another more causally focused view, we could say that the Christian way, which required every citizen to respect every other citizen, built Western society’s levels of overall efficiency up to a critical mass that made the flowering of Western civilization now called the Renaissance inevitable. The new hybrid value system worked: Greek theoretical knowledge and Roman practical skills in a Christian social milieu synthesized into a single, functioning whole. (This synthesis is clearly visible, for example, in the cities that formed the Hanseatic League.)

                 

   

                                 Map showing cities in the Hanseatic League (credit: Wikipedia)

It took over a thousand years for people whose lives focused on worldly matters, instead of on seeking salvation in the world after death, to be seen as good Christian citizens. Architects, artists, and even merchants, explorers and conquistadores finally could do what they had always done, but now as ways of glorifying God. From the perspective of the life of a single human being, this transition seems so slow, but in evolutionary terms, a thousand years is almost nothing. Fifty generations. Insects do that in a summer. Germs in a day.

It is interesting to note the intricacies of the socio-historical process. Even societies that seem to have reached equilibrium always contain a few individuals who restlessly test their society’s accepted world view, values, and morés. These people's disciples are often the young, which suggests adolescent revolt plays a vital role in the evolution of society. Teenagers make us look at our values and, once in a long while, they even make us realize that one of our familiar values is due for overhaul or retirement. Surprise, surprise, adult world: teenage revolt serves a larger purpose in the evolutionary process of cultural change.

However, it’s more important to understand that many people in the rest of society see these new thinkers and their followers as delinquents, and only very rarely are they seen as valuable. It is even more important to see that the numbers involved on each side don’t matter. What does matter is, first, whether the new thinkers’ ideas attract at least a few followers and second, whether the ideas work. Whether the followers then live better, healthier, happier lives than the rest of the society.

A society, like any living thing, needs to be opportunistic, constantly testing and searching for ways to grow, even though many citizens in its establishment may resent the means by which it does so and may do everything in their power to quell the process. Most often, they can. But not always. For Western society, until the practical features of its Roman beliefs were integrated with its more humane Christian ones, most Europeans did not support people whose ideas and morés focused on life in this material world.

Artists, scientists, inventors, explorers, and entrepreneurs are eccentric. They don’t support the status quo, they threaten it. But the dreamers are the ones who move the rest forward toward newer, better ways of doing things. They only really flourish in a society that not only tolerates its eccentrics, but takes pride in them. In a dynamic society, cleverness is melded with tolerance, acceptance of those who are different. In short, European culture needed a thousand years to “get its act together” and meld all its values into a single functioning whole.

   

                     Gutenberg inspecting a press proof (circa 1440) (engraving created in 1800’s)  

                              (credit: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johannes-Gutenberg)