#medieval attitudes to (homo)sexuality

[adhd-merlin]

Can I interest you in some Merwenthur on this fine day?

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Call It Anything We Want (15k words)

Summary: After Gwen and Arthur's fantasies about Merlin turn into reality, they are left trying to navigate their new relationship with him. It isn't easy.

(The unofficial sequel to Choose and Choose and Choose by fleete.)

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“How much longer, do you think?” Merlin whispers into Gwen’s ear.

They’re sitting on the edge of Gwen and Arthur’s bed, Gwen in Merlin’s lap, her breasts peeking out of her half-unlaced bodice.

It’s something they like to do when they are kissing like this — this private talk. What started as small encouragements and kind reassurances has, over time, turned into remarks of an entirely different nature.

Even with her husband watching it feels illicit and daring, and it excites Gwen to no end. She loves to feel Merlin’s hot breath against her ear, the way his chest rumbles softly under her hands when he speaks.

And oh, the things he says.

That Merlin could think such things — let alone say them — is shocking. That Gwen would love to hear them, even more so.

[historic-old-guard-lover]

Do you have any headcanon on the cast’s sexuality ? ( I really like the demisexual Yusuf one )

I've been meaning to get around to this, so thanks for asking! Its important to keep in mind that Nile (and maybe Booker) is the only member who doesn't predate modern identity terms. Consider that the obligatory most-historians-frown-at-anachronistic-labeling plug, though my response is (as I point out here a little bit) that this just seems to serve to make queer history more difficult and it can be done respectfully.

TL;DR: Lykon as aro-spec bi/pan-romantic, Andy as chaotic bi/pan-sexual, Quynh as bi/pan with a slight femme-aligned preference, Yusuf as demi-sexual bi/pan-romantic, Nicolo as homosexual/gay, Booker as the token heterosexual, and Nile as queer. Scroll to the bottom for a free (trans)gender headcannon that no one asked for but that I’m handing out for free.

I personally headcannon that the oldest members are both too old for rigid social sexual norms and too old to give a damn otherwise. We know canonically in both the film and the comics that Andy is openly attracted to and having sex with multiple genders, so you can pry bi/pan Andy from my cold, dead hands. I put Lykon and Quynh in the same never-monosexual category as well. I have the totally unsupported concept of an aro-spec (bi/pan-sexual) Lykon mostly because I don't want his life traveling with two love-sick warrior women to be made worse by his #forever alone status he seems to get. It’s a choice and he’s not into romance. I also cannon Quynh to have a slight femme-aligned preference to Andy's true-chaotic-neutral bisexual energy. Yes, it's for angst purposes as most things in my life are. And it fits in with the Special Bonus Gender Headcannon at the bottom of this post. Oh, and I think that they all have poly-amorous inclinations because monogamy is overrated. Guilt and shame around sex and relationships are just not in their vocabularies.

Our Immortal Husbands are from a time where homophobic attitudes are starting to become a thing, so I don’t hand them the bi/pan-by-default card that I do for the older members’ attractions. I too like the idea of a demisexual bi/pan-romantic Yusuf, though I am totally open to him being homo-romantic as well. My issue is that I find it unlikely that a merchant in his 30s would not have already married a woman, especially if he is the first-born son or his family is particularly wealthy. There are definitely story lines where that doesn’t happen, though they require a bit more careful planning and Yusuf having nerves of steel. I’m all for the angst of a political marriage, but I worry about how the spouse might get depicted if people go for a totally homo-romantic Yusuf and she deserves more than his contempt. I assume that Yusuf values honor/righteousness (he ends up fighting in the siege of Jerusalem despite being from the Maghreb), so he would not be the kind of man to cheat on his wife even if he was not hetero-romantically inclined. They would build a relationship of mutual respect for certain.

I know I just said that homophobia is starting to become a thing, but the medieval church and knighthood was hella gay. I have absolutely zero qualms about cannoning Nicolo “that feral gay priest” di Genova as 100% certified homosexual. It’s up to any fanfic writers whether they make him internalize homophobia, but I will just point out again that monks having gay sex was a problem that the Catholic Church purposefully overlooked back then. Mix and match your angst to your own delight. Maybe he’s a tortured soul who joins the priesthood once he figures out that he could never marry/love a woman and then realizes that he’s not alone. Maybe he’s a quiet pining mess in the priesthood. Whatever route you take, please make him gay.

This brings us to Booker who grew up with good old-fashioned religion-induced homophobia. We know canonically that he married a woman and had multiple children, so I’m down for Booker as the token heterosexual of the group. I also like that it gives him the chance to reach full himbo potential and not realize he’s surrounded by three queer icons. Just imagine him thinking for decades that Andy is sad because she lost her “gal pal” Quynh and then at some point as he’s amassed details he starts realizing that they were Our Immortal Wives... It makes the Western erasure of female homosexual behavior into comedic gold.

And finally, the new kid on the immortal block. I like to think that Nile would strongly identify with the label queer and be uninterested in more specifically labeling her sexuality. Am I projecting? Maybe so, but it has value as a shared bonding experience with Andy. Also, a queer Nile brings history full circle, so to speak, from a time where sexuality labeling was unimportant to a time when people are starting to realize that it’s not always important to them. The heart-warming poetics of it all!

The Super Special Gender Headcannon That Lives in My Head Rent-Free: Transgender Andy

In a previous post, I discussed the existence of a third-gender/transgender shaman role in Scythian cultures called Enaree or Enarei ( ἐναρής ) which allowed individuals assigned male at birth (AMAB) to undergo possibly the earliest hormone replacement therapy (HRT) process. We know that the name “Andromache the Scythian” is weird for Andy because her supposed ~6,000 year old age predates the Scythian culture for a while. Consider, however, that an AMAB Andy chose to take the name of the Scythian culture because they helped her medically transition! Obviously she can find acceptance and support long before then (and I’d be mad if anyone tortured her for literally three thousand years without love and support), but I think that it would be a way for Andy to honor a people who helped her achieve something that she didn’t think was possible while simultaneously cleaning up a glaring cannon issue. It also makes the whole femme-preference bi/pan-sexual Quynh that much sweeter because Quynh would 200% see Andy as a woman regardless of whether she has access to medical transition.

[cold-war-essay-blog]

Essay Homosexuality

standard of a analytical essay on Social yield ups closely:\nresources\n \n \n\nIntroduction \nhomoeroticism finished come on the register\nChristianity or the occlusive of transaction\nThe integrity about the stance to wards queerness\n purification\n \n\nIt endlessly seemed to me a bit ineffectual to disapprove of homo end upual activity.\n\n Its like pass judgment of rain.\n\n Francis Maude\n\n \n\n1.Introduction\n\n \n\nWhat is crotchet? According to the Websters New gentlemans gentleman medical on- occupation(a) dictionary it is delimitate as versedity directed toward well-nigh adept of the alike sex. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary it is the quality or posit of cosmos queer. world paed date of referencestic in the loving office nowadays causes accredited responses that are all extra-positive or extra-negative. The friendly middle has zipper to do for oddity as a cordial serve well and that is its curse. The post of th e ordering to oddity has of all cartridge holder been affected by its the amicable, economic and semi governmental order; it is dead impossible to witness the Greeks persecuting homosexualism which they believed cause force of its art, medicament and literature. Homosexuality for the straighta means clubhouse was confirm still during war or in prison. It becomes obvious that this bridal was incessantly a consequence of a set of explicit social localisationors. n championtheless subconsciously, the society neglects homosexuality collect to the fact that homosexuality is machine-accessible with degeneration, because this hunch dissolve non ordinate or clear look. And in its exploit the reproductive swear out is angiotensin converting enzyme of the jumper lead instincts of the society. The responses to homosexuality as a sexual variation bunghole be diverse and these responses should be dumb as reflections of the sociological grammatical constituent s that operate the information of this sexual phenomenon. enkindle A. Blackmun stated: admonition of homosexuality hobonot loose invading the houses, police wagon and minds of citizens who choose to stretch forth their lives variedly. Of running thither invariably were and stand by out be social groups pass judgment this n ever so sotheless it is prerequisite to admit that this neglecting is perfectly and entirely establish on the image of society, which is evaluating homosexuality.\n\n \n\nHomosexuality end-to-end the invoice\nThe member homosexuality has as its base a Greek discussion homo meaning the same and therefore implies affectionate relations of the members belonging to one sex. It is for the affectionate dampen the representatives of this phenomenon suffered so practically throughout the air of human history. Luis Crompton reveals the proof indorser the tremendous achievements that were ever make by homosexual representatives of the social str ucture. But his disk in any case reminds the reader something he genuinely knows - the persecutions such heap re playing hitch experiences throughout the historical judgment of convictionline. During some generation homosexual muckle were seen as a capability threat during communication. And in other times homosexuality was perceive as a vice of the dexterous. This is not particular proposition to the society of one come apartn country, provided to all the countries which ever existed all all over the world: antediluvian patriarch Greece, quaint Rome, the due west with its Christian wreak and some more than. For instance, antique Greece was basically the lonesome(prenominal) culture that openly did not notwithstanding accept homosexuality that alike declared it to be the moralisticly appropriate. The same was made by lacquer through its samurai tradition. The homosexual line can be traced throughout the masterpieces of the ancient Greece, which did n ot only resemble this topic, exactly also were brought to life by homosexuality. This is no surprise due to the fact that the Greeks had a lot of gods to godliness and in enkindle of all the acquaintance given by this race its moral constructs were instable and did not have one prevalent route. In pipeline it was in the sixth century B.C.E. when the Judaic church made the declaration that homosexual Jewish spate destroy the in loyalty essence of the Jewish religion and the Sodom hellhole cannot be swayd. The Jewish by that time were a sort of socially demonstrable nation. Greece, in its turn with its pagan gods was firing still the ill-bred social stage. The roman type Empire world a rattling developed social and stintingly state besides with the intromission of religion subjugate homosexuality, as a scar of weakness.\n\n2. Christianity or the period of execution\n\nIt is necessary to honor that the church service had the rule power at some times and was the social, cultural and economical engine for galore(postnominal) courtiers. The Inquisition became the scratch base for some(prenominal) executions of homosexuals and became the strongest social factor for restricting the sort of people. But there also was some other side of the issue - as the homosexuals were often the ones who possessed a great bar of power and specie by kill them the perform could farm all the properties for its let implys. As homosexuality was considerablespread in the periods of Renaissance and in medieval France many people were taken away from the governmental stage as homosexuals leaving simplyt only for one power the Christian Church. A genuinely remarkable period to mention is the Italian Renaissance. Its cultural voice is immense and also with a exalted homosexual signs. The existent cause of such specific culture was the sublimation of the homosexual conquering into it. The great name of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello dedicated a large measuring of their works to the Christian Church as the reflection of the influence it had of the social, economical and governmental life of the society. The more the Church loaded homosexuality, the more wide spread it became and there was no munificent palace without intrigues tie in to this theme with the or so bright fashion model of Henry leash of France. Christianity in this typeface revealed itself, as a rather condemnable structure forgetting how eventful is to pick out. The reason antiquated Greece and Japan had a real fussy positive place towards one-sex relationship was their sentimentalist background as it was considered to be love, too. It goes without saying that there is no need to stimulate its development but not to practice people who love but in a contrastive way.\n\n \n\nThe truth about the bearing towards homosexuality\n zillion of people throughout the human history were homosexuals. And this is the truth, which does n ot need any arguments. scarcely one main(prenominal) point can be pointed out the appearance of the Christian Church salmagundid the way of life of many people and born-again them from different people to perverted animals. European Christians tried to resist every sign of homosexuality because they were so afraid of it that did not know what to do. The bulk of the population ever so had and always pull up stakes be conformists and will be passing influenced by social, economical and political factors without analyzing their veritable essence. As homosexuality undermined the Bible readings and this became the flake the Europeans decided to modification the positions for instance of Japan and mainland China towards homosexuality. They converted it into a plant with burning bodies and reprieve people. If it was not for the interests of the Christian Church many things would have been different and especially that way out of homosexuals. The more they forbid one-sex r elationships the more they appeared a simple social reaction.\n\n3. Conclusion\n\nThe attitude towards homosexuality has always been highly influenced by social, economic and political factors without the conscious abstract of the society. These factors in their turn have always been dictated by the ruling ships company. For a very long time the Christian Church was the strongest ruling company and its positions were formed the position of the whole society and changed its perception of this phenomenon. For many centuries people of Japan, China and France lived with homosexuality and did not know it was something unmoral. They lived in harmony but then something changed and this change of perception produced lucid social responses and resulted in the oppressions of same-sex love heavy(p) the start to the era of homophobes. Yes, homosexuality cannot give start to a new life, but nevertheless it can give a start of a new love and that is what the Christian Church forgot abou t.\n\n \n\n If you want to get a broad(a) essay, order it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '

[raglanphd]

Man and His Symbols-Carl Jung

Symbols express something unknown to us. They are meaningful in themselves, and not purely representative. They aren’t signs as conscious thought is under the influence of the unconscious, which is always present.

The unconscious presents the thing (object) from sense experience without a word, language being necessary for self-conscious awareness. The unconscious is intentional, the content is repressed with an expenditure of energy for the purpose of being unconscious. Association with the word would remove our ability to think, use language, without bringing up unwanted thoughts.

The unconscious can be brought to conscious awareness by use of symbols. Ordinary discourse can distract from what is motivating our actions by introducing resistance. Free verbal association without resistance from the analyst can bring out what is repressed by concentrating on the meaning behind words, without forcing the meaning into another metaphor.

The unconscious does not afford exact localization in space. We are free to use concepts from natural science as metaphors, but should not reduce the unconscious to the physical metaphors.

The unconscious is not just a repository for archaic ideas from our personal past. The symbols we use in conscious interpersonal discourse get their power from a shared unconscious. Such inherited forms allow us to understand one another at a deeper level in discourse, symbolically, than as signs representing something else in the world.

Dreams are our best way to explore the meaning of symbols, of exploring the unconscious. Dreams occur regularly and their content is the least regulated and restricted from awareness.

Dreams have their own meaning, they must be interpreted as they are. Dreams are fantastical and should not be reduced to the day’s events or taken as literal truth but for their symbolic relation to the unconscious.

“The main task of dreams is to bring back a sort of "recollection” of the prehistoric, as well as the infantile world, right down to the level of the most primitive instincts.“

This is where we begin, with the individual to their personal history and then to deeper instinctual drives in the unconscious.

Jung’s dream: "I dreamed that I was in ‘my home,’ apparently on the first floor, in a cozy, pleasant sitting room furnished in the manner of the eighteenth century. I was astonished that I had never seen this room before, and began to wonder what the ground floor was like. I went downstairs and found the place was rather dark, with paneled walls and heavy furniture from the sixteenth century or even earlier. My surprise and curiosity increased. I wanted to see more of the whole structure of this house. So I went down to the cellar, where I found a door opening onto a flight of stone steps that led to a large vaulted room. The floor consisted of large slabs of stone and the walls seemed very ancient. I examined the mortar and found it was mixed with splinters of brick. Obviously the walls were of Roman origin. I became increasingly excited. In one corner, I saw an iron ring on a stone slab. I pulled up the slab and saw yet another narrow flight of steps leading to a kind of cave, which seemed to be a prehistoric tomb, containing two skulls, some bones, and broken shards of pottery. Then I woke up.”

“The dream is in fact a short summary of my own life, more specifically of the development of my own mind. I grew up in a house 200 years old, our furniture consisted mostly of pieces about 300 years old, and mentally my hitherto greatest spiritual adventure had been to study the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer. The great news of the day was the work of Charles Darwin. Shortly before this, I had been living with the still medieval concepts of my parents, for whom the world and men were still presided over by divine omnipotence and providence. This world had become antiquated and obsolete. My Christian faith had become relative through its encounter with Eastern religions and Greek philosophy. It was for this reason that the ground floor was so still, dark, and obviously uninhabited.

"My intuition consisted of the sudden and most unexpected insight into the fact that my dream drapes the myself, my life and my world, my whole reality against a theoretical structure erected by another, strange kind for reasons and purposes of its own. It was not Freud’s dream, it was mine; and I understood suddenly in a flash what my dream meant.”

Dream analysis is individualistic, there are no ciphers.

“The individual is the only reality. The further we move away from the individual toward abstract ideas about Homo sapiens, the more likely we are to fall in error…but if we are to see things in their right perspective, we need to understand the past of man as well as his present.”

We must understand the patient’s predilection and forget our own prejudices.

“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analyzing a dream”

Dreams have a compensatory role for individuals. The same dream can have different meanings.

Dream analysis is a dialectical technique between persons.

How well an individual functions is partly determined socially, through relationships.

Obsessive and emotional dreams are of a different nature, relating to needs more fundamental than those of conscious origin.

Elements occur in dreams that aren’t individual and not derived from personal experience. Aka archetypes, primordial images.

Motifs are not archetypes, as they are conscious representations. Not inherited.

“The term "archetype” is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited.“

"The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif-representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern.

Freud hinted at this with archaic remnants: "mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual’s own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind”. Freud however linked them with the biological drives of sexuality and death, reducing mental life to representing only biological imperatives. Archetypes represent needs beyond love and hunger owing to their inherited innate nature. They are self perpetuating.

Collective symbols are chiefly religious and both human and inhuman in origin, owing to the common descent of the species but also common descent of different peoples.

“If archetypes were representations that originated in our consciousness…we should surely understand them”

Instincts are physiological urges perceived by the senses, having a mental as well as a behavioral aspect. They manifest themselves in fantasy and are revealed in symbols. Their manifestations are archetypes. Without known origin, reproduced across time and place.

“It is even conceivable that the early origins of mans capacity to reflect come from the painful consequences of violent emotional clashes…the shock of a similar emotional experience is often needed to make people wake up and pay attention to what they are doing.”

Our consciousness is an ephemeral adaptation to the needs of the unconscious self.

“The unconscious, however, seems to be guided chiefly by instinctive trends, represented by corresponding thought forms-that is, by the archetypes.”

The unconscious is more descriptive of our mental life and our self than the conscious is.

Dreams can be predictive. It doesn’t ignore like consciousness does. It can be guided by trends, corresponding to known archetypes. Archetypes are dynamic.

“Something that is of a more or less unknown nature has been intuitively grasped by the unconscious and submitted to an archetypal treatment. This suggests that, instead of the process of reasoning that conscious thought would have applied, the archetypal mind has stepped in and taken over the task of prognostication. The archetypes thus have their own intuitive and their own specific energy. These powers enable them both to produce a meaningful interpretation (in their own symbolic style) and to interfere in a given situation with their own impulses and their own thought formations. Complexes compensate for faulty attitudes, myths compensate for the sufferings of mankind in general.”

Complexes are compensations in the personal unconscious, myths are compensations for the collective unconscious.

The self is the totality of our conscious, personal unconscious, and the shared collective unconscious which are made manifest through the ego. The shadow self is what isn’t reconciled into our self and remains in opposition, closest to our irrational and more primitive instincts. In the collective unconscious the self and the shadow are the hero archetype and the villain archetype, protagonist and antagonist.

Individuation reconciles opposites within the psyche. Life is the process of becoming an individual.

Individuation reconciles opposites within the psyche. Life is the process of becoming an individual.

“These four functional types correspond to the obvious means by which consciousness obtains its orientation to experience. Sensation (I.e sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going”

There are also extrovert and introvert personalities. Extroverts are driven toward the outer world, toward others, while introverts have their energy directed inward, toward mind and feeling.

The persona is how our ego presents itself to the external social world which adapts the ego to the outer world instead of reconciling or accepting the deep aspects of the self, what becomes manifested in the shadow self.

Personality relates to the persona, character relates to the self. Personality is our conscious relation to the world, by sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition, extroversion or introversion. A composite type is presented to the world to meet our instinctual needs. The complexes compensate for what is missing in conscious life and remains in the unconscious, personal and collective.

The anima and animus are the respective female and male aspects of ourselves. These feminine and masculine aspects remain in the personal unconscious because of our species’ bisexual constitution, our birth from a mother and a father.

Fundamental to the anima/animus is the passive/active orientation toward the world developed during youth, during the anal stage, which relate to the introvert/extrovert orientation towards the world. We strive for self-mastery as we separate from others early in life and must provide for our needs. We learn to receive as well as to provide. In potty training, when to withhold and contain and when to expel and direct.

The Mother Earth and God the father are manifestations of anima/animus from the collective unconscious relating to the metaphysical division between matter and form, the ovum and the sperm, the passive-receiving (feminine) aspect and the active-providing (masculine) aspect of the world. The demiurge master craftsman forms the earth from preexisting matter.

[raglanphd]

The Ice Age and Human Civilization

Written July 4 2016 The oldest human societies don't go back much further than 10,000 years from the present. Six civilizations developed independently: Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, Peru, Mexico, and India. The earliest, Egypt and Mesopotamia, don't go back before 8-10,000 years. I've always wondered why this took so long if anatomically modern humans developed over a hundred thousand years ago and control of fire, to make tools, thousands of years before civilization. For most of our existence we were hunter gatherers, coexisting with other hominids and large land mammals as competition. We had bipedalism, tool use, and intelligence, but didn't make the leap to "civilization." What is civilization anyway? One could describe it as "a place for my stuff", invoking comedian George Carlin's routine. One day we had so much stuff that we couldn't walk around without leaving some behind. And another day we had so much that we couldn't just pack up and go from a campsite we had to settle more permanently, to get more stuff. Being bipedal slowed us down as does the long time it takes for children to develop their big heads, which increases the investment from male hunters, to come home and share, and prevents female gatherers from going too far from camp, where the most important stuff is. Civilization in a general sense is a situation where humans gain some command over nature so that they can remain in the same place and get used to the area to learn more methods of control. Culture comes from Latin cultus; to cultivate, to till. Sedentary existence, agriculture, domestication of animals, prediction and expectation of weather/climate, and some common social expression and communication are basic markers of society from this definition. For society to get growing, there had to be security that we could reap what we sowed. Protection from marauders, natural calamity like flood or drought, storage of surplus production which would enable greater division of labor. Why did it take until about 10,000 years ago for some of us to settle down permanently? Humans spread all over the Earth from presumably a small single population, until some people stopped leaving or never came back to where they came from. The answer I think is the environment itself, the last ice age 2 million to 12,000 years ago, the Pleistocene and the Paleolithic. The last ice age was when we learned to live together after we transitioned from ape to human. It was by the end of the ice age that we learned to control fire, domesticate our first animal the wolf, other hominids went extinct, large land animals provided our opportunities for hunting and eventually went extinct, and Homo sapiens moved from Africa to Europe, Asia, and North America. Neanderthals in Europe disappeared around 30,000 years ago. Necessity caused all these factors and by the time the climate warmed, we were triumphant in our new environments, with the preconditions to settle down. Our transition to hunting ape was perfected during the ice age, marking our transition from ape society. Colder temperatures began back in the Pliocene 5 to 2 millions of years ago when the trees began to disappear, forcing our ancestors to adapt to life on foot in the savanna. As the climate got colder and trees fewer, having a diet of some meat would have been adaptive. Rather than being dependent on nature, we could take the prerogative of finding our own food. Eating meat along with cooking it shaped our complex social organization, sharing food and greater parental investment in young, and enabled a big brain, providing lots of energy and decreasing our jaw size relative to the nut and fruit eating primates. This change to hunting precipitated a social change from primate society, away from a dominance hierarchy with an alpha male on top to one with more equality between males as well as more investment in offspring. The alpha male had primary access to females, probably taking a few mates for himself. Hunting to the contrary was most likely a cooperative venture of acquisition with primitive tools, against large animals. A system of either sexual promiscuity or serial monogamy guaranteeing individual sexual access would have been more advantageous to male loyalty, and so the alpha ape had to die. During this time, a forced egalitarianism in small groups would develop to ensure the sharing of meat. Attachment to multiple females, by confusing paternity, or a single partner, guaranteeing paternity, would guarantee such paternal investment. Sandor Ferenczi the Hungarian psychoanalyst made a connection between Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stage of latency and the last ice age. "Having ventured so far beyond the knowable, we have no reason to shrink before the last analogy and from bringing the last great step into individual repression, the latency period, into connection with the last and greatest catastrophe that smote our primate ancestors...,i.e. with the misery of the glacial period, which we faithfully recapitulate in our individual life." Sandor Ferenczi, Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality 1913 Freud himself mentioned the theory in The Ego and the Id 1923. "According to one psychoanalytic hypothesis [by Ferenczi], the last mentioned phenomenon, which seems to be peculiar to man, is a heritage of the cultural development necessitated by the glacial epoch. We see, then, that the differentiation of the superego from the ego is no matter of chance" Latency is the period after age 5 or 6 and before puberty, around age 12-13. Sexual identification has already occurred during the previous genital stage. During this period sexual urges are held back and the child is able to make social relationships with fellow children of the same sex and through education take in the morals of adults, fully developing a superego. The sexual instinct is chilled during this cool off period so we can live together. The ice age would have been miserable and therefore formative on our social character for two major reasons; climate and large predators. The former is obvious and is connected with the latter. Bergmann's rule states that a more massive organism has a smaller surface area to volume ratio (short and stocky), the effect of which is less heat loss. This means larger animals fare better in cold environments, also due to storing more fat. Woolly mammoths, giant beavers, saber tooth cats, mastodons and other megafauna roamed the Earth. To survive we would have to work together, hunt the megafauna together. Closer look? When the climate changed and the Earth warmed, humans emerged as one species. Humans do much better in warm climate it seems, having already learned to survive in various climates.Warmer temperatures open up new land for agriculture, the viking colony of Greenland during the medieval warming period as well as wine being grown in Britain as examples. The industrial revolution occurred soon after the end of the "little ice age" around the 19th century and temperatures have risen since along with massive population growth. There were 1 billion people in 1800, 1.6 billion at the start of the twentieth century, and 6 billion by the end of the century. The last two centuries have seen exponential growth, occurring along with the end of this little ice, lowering poverty rates and increasing populations. This is a however somewhat pessimistic answer for the beginnings of civilization. Our entry into civilization was as dependent on the environment as much it was a break away from environmental influence. We learned to live together during harder times where we were forced to live in close quarters and cooperate for our survival, developing at best a negative or forced altruism in small groups of kin or near-kin. The next ice age could mean the end of our interglacial success, a punishment for our decadence. Post-Christian western society still loves the idea of apocalypse, that there will be a cataclysmic end to humanity because of our attitudes toward each other and the world. More likely is gradual or bumpy decline. And it isn't as if nothing of the past would remain. Those of us descended from the collapse of the western Roman empire have the collective memory of the dark ages which followed. But the eastern Roman Empire continued on until the 15th century, and the Islamic Middle East had a golden age of science and philosophy. Glacial periods however are much longer than interglacial periods, lasting in the hundreds of thousands of years. Even with current global warming, the amount of fossil fuels if continued to burn will only last a few centuries and the natural climate cycle due to Earth's orbit around the sun will start to cool the climate. This is far into the future from our perspective though, and much will happen.