Self-Assement

Today I made the twitter account for the group.  I also helped people pick characters and I worked on the definitions of the words.  

Don't Take His Fish!

Based on what I have seen in the biography, I think Ghenghis Khan is merely a leader who does what he has to do, because "a baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do" (Rugrats reference.)   But in all seriousness, the man was protecting himself and asserting his beliefs.  As a child, his father was killed, this ultimately made him believe that he needed to avenge him. Thus, his scheme for revenge was born.  Overall, he is an immoral human being and I'm no fan, but most leaders are terrible human beings.  Khan shows how the tug less behavior needed to seek revenge.  He had to be ready to kill people and make smart moves.  The man married so he could have a militaristic/political alliance to advance in his plan.  As un-romantic as that is, it's really smart for a sixteen year old boy to come up.  Ghenghis Khan also killed many people, but in all honesty, I don't blame him.  He's threatened and has the right to protect himself.  He is also super determined, which is a good quality in a leader, even if his main goal was stupid and bad.  I'm in no support of his desire of revenge but he worked really hard for it.  He just did what he had to do. 

Materialistic Lifestyle (Without iPads?????)

Based on the "Capitulary de Villis", I would characterize that the conditions of material life in the Carolingian countryside is somewhat rough.  First of all, I think that these people who own all the stuff, which are most likely lords, are really materialistic and it surprises me.  It's mostly astonishing because I don't except people in this time period to be able to protect their stuff to the extent that we can today.  But that explains the conditions of material life.  Since stewards are basically told to do everything in this excerpt, I believe that keeping these materialistic possessions was difficult and tedious.  I think it was difficult because stewards are in charge of virtually everything here, which indicates how the lords probably needed help with organizing and keeping track of everything.  The excerpt also informs me that lords must have been really lazy or just too egotistic(vocabulary word!) to take care of their own belongings.  They basically sound like little children that need their mommys taking care of everything for them. Or maybe they were genuinely busy people who needed help, I don't know, but keeping track of food, materials, land and people seems really tedious and stressful and lords definitely didn't want to deal with that. Since this excerpt is basically a long, detailed "to-do" list, material life seems to be really difficult in the Carolingian countryside.  There's so many things that need to be accounted for that material life seems pointless and just too much work.  There were definitely people who wanted to steal the materialistic belongings because not everyone is a moral human being.  Thieves, robbers, murderers and other people probably wanted these objects and land that the lords possessed.  It was probably really hard for the stewards to keep track of everything and they were probably liable for anything that went missing or wasn't accounted for.  This shows how the lords probably wanted a form of insurance that their stuff wouldn't be messed with.  None of this seems worth it but clearly there were people who had the mindset of "Stuff! I need more stuff! Stuff makes me look rich and powerful! I like stuff!" Overall, the conditions if material life in the Carolingian countryside seem rough due to the difficulty of the stewards' jobs. 

India and Europe Map