Comparison: Renaissance To Now Essay, Research Paper

The Similarities of the Renaissance and Contemporary Era

Historically, the Renaissance era developed societal, ethical and moral behaviors for its future known as the Contemporary period. The study of the Renaissance era, during the past few weeks in class, captures the magnificent ideas of history and compares those ideas toward today s thoughts and views which stimulate the minds of the researcher and creates an imagination of personal values. Comparing the Renaissance views to Contemporary views there are immeasurable similarities regarding art, politics, and technology. All three acknowledges and exhibits the standards for improving society and the world.

Art is constant throughout history and considered an expression of the artists to communicate his or her views. Art expression is noted, modeled, or documented through literature, paintings, sculptures, music, or any kind of project used to convey or enlighten society as a whole. The music similarities between the past and present include public performances for entertainment, enlightenment or historical values. Entertainment of the past to the present continues to mark society s culture because of audience s acceptance of the music performed. It was not uncommon for music to be performed during the Renaissance era on the streets, at fairs, plays, theatre, and castles for entertainment. Music was played for church functions as it remains today. In contemporary society, music continues to provide content and meaning from the writer and still found in concerts, plays, fairs, and special events of today. The writer or artist strengths and weaknesses are the attributes that contribute to learning value, which has not changed from the Renaissance era. Who demands the wonderful sound of music? Simply, it is the audience who creates the demand to listen to a collage of lyrics or musical ensembles for entertainment (Popular Music & Society 2).

The popularity of the songs dictates the length of time a song may last, but there are questions of how long it will last throughout history. Music survives because it communicates the artist s image of beliefs or values of life to pass on to each generation. Society from both past and present questions the intent of the artist from the beginning of time. Music is now so foolish that I am amazed. Everything that is wrong is permitted, and no attention is paid to what the old generation wrote as composition. (Samuel Schedidt – 1587-1684) Elvis Presley started his career with his wild shaken leg movements and loving lyrics but was severely criticized by the public as being obscene with his presentation. Think about music and content for today. The content is the same as the past and found in plays, theatre, operas, special events and views of humanism and realism to touch the human emotions, which both embellishes our minds and prevalent for today. Soap operas, for example creates emotions because the access to the personal feelings projected by the cameras.

The similarities of music from the past as entertainment is the same as today; it surpasses the time zones and embraces our life with a variety of wonderful sounds that entrap our souls and binds our thoughts of realism and humanism. In music, there are political agendas that would separate the classes and allow certain people privilege to perform or listen to the talented. The popes were powerful in earlier times. They enjoyed the company of the musicians and if they were good enough they would live within the confines to write and perform their works.

Society was divided into classes and ruled by Popes and Kings, which resulted into power struggles. In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli states, I might be asked how it has come about that the Church has reached such great temporal power, when, previous to Alexander VI, the Italian potentates-and not merely the really powerful ones, but every lord or baron, however insignificant-held in slight esteem as regards temporal power; whereas now it is dreaded by a king of France (The Prince, p69) The same book discusses the two political systems;

1.) Monarchies – The Prince rules and the Republic are annexed through state or acquired by princes.

2.) The Republics – Achieve sovereignty either by wicked means, or when a private citizen becomes sovereign of his country by the favor of his fellow-citizens.

The disadvantages for having a mixed government was to maintain control over the people, lack of loyalty, and facing vengeance. Today, we have a two party dominate system as well, which is similar to the ideal of Machiavelli. Both political parties have differences within pursuing and obtaining an office to serve; however, they are the same in a sense that those striving to the top actually apply the same goals to get there. The idea of conquering and establishing authority and ruling a providence in Machiavelli s time are to have less consideration for people, establish armed forces, punishing the guilty and watching the suspected and strengthening position across the country he rules.

To conquer and achieve rule and control, Machiavelli suggests that suppressing the people, allowing the people to live within their own law, and creating a government of few will keep the country friendly to the conqueror. What a thought to compare the political agendas of the past to the present. A person that wants to get ahead must follow guidelines within the political system to achieve success. Those guidelines are not easy either. Again, comparing to the present day, it manufactures ideas of our systems in government. Our local laws in government controls the people in the city and the state laws control the people at a larger level, as the Federal laws governs the entire body of states on even a higher level with the ideas of hierarchy in mind. Those same ideas entertain our businesses today. The results are called networking in our society; its elements encompass the idea that the workforce contacts must converge to become more successful at making a profit.

Machiavelli influenced modern politics of today but yet is similar to political hierarchy in business. To achieve success, a consideration of who and what needed to be accomplished and who could perform and make a person look good generally delegated tasks to get ahead, in other words, doing what is necessary to get the job done and being noticed for the purpose of getting ahead in the career. The whole idea is achieving power and retaining that power with morals or ethical convictions. The leader does not allow others to step over him or her or enter into their territory as well. Basically, politics affect the relationships and personal path towards success and the company succeeds because the politicians pursue and create a competitive environment which improves profit and power within a company. Thomas More s, Utopia, a socialism or communism society suggests that no one owns property and everyone shares material goods or belongings. His ideas certainly would reduce crime rates within society but without individualism, pride and spirituality. The vision of Thomas More shares the idea that everyone improves their lives for the utopia of tranquility and peace. Using a political system to generate and motivate individuals towards goals to succeed fits More s thoughts for the Renaissance and Contemporary era. Both the idea of utopia and the politics go hand in hand because building a successful business include improvements and networking. Networking helps the business become more versatile as the politics of the Renaissance helped the Kings achieve power by selecting his court and agendas to pursue power. The other areas that would be a value and similar between periods of the past and present include technology. Politics play an important role with achieving goals and meeting the right people to help with the accomplishments are common in both periods.

Technology boomed during the Renaissance era around the world. Some of the first documented records come from the music industry. The music artists would write their music by hand until Leonardo da Vinci s. He was one of the most famous artists that appeared during the high Renaissance era shared his great works. Leonardo da Vinci had notebooks filled with his intriguing visions of airplanes, parachutes, helicopters, screw propellers, machine guns, canal locks, and many other inventions that would someday appear in reality (Zophy p95). His amazing contribution to society was unbelievable to the technology field of the future which was introduced during the Renaissance era. Economics were the reason for creating technology during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, Europe was still a land of many poor and a few rich (Zophy p163).

Gutenberg seemed to have discovered an alloy that could be poured into molds to form letters that would not shrink or twist upon cooling (Zophy p163). The printing press was invented and books were printed which were a lot better than hand written books and cheaper. The demand for printed books increased which created a market for the invention, Bibles, commentaries, devotional works, sermons to mention only of few of businesses created from this invention (Zophy p163). Technology continued and is still marketing inventions as the old times of the Renaissance period. For example, the invention of the airplanes or cars both developed from thoughts and expanded on by other inventors created a demand in the market because there was an increase in travel for pleasure or business. During the 19th century, there has been an abundance of inventions to improve our lives in society. Technology also increases the opportunities and pushes individuals to be competitive for money and power. The future will continue this path as long as there is freedom to explore and expand on ideas of the past and present.

The past and present continues to parallel in the fields of art, politics, and technology. There are always new inventions, thinkers, and explorers as each generation travels through time. Society has and will always strive to improve upon existence as time proves that there are benefits to each accomplishment. The only way to motivate others are to use tools that will teach our future generations the significance of history and current events because it will provoke thought and needs that will generate new ideas. Coaching and communication are two important tools for management to be successful and ties art, politics and technology together.

The arts experimented with writing music, religious commentaries, and other articles of importance for the past, whether it was through hand written documents or illustrating appreciation of beauty from sculptures, paintings, music or literature, the artists prove that sharing their works were important for society at large. Communication is one tool that management will benefit for achieving high productive people in the workforce. As a manager, the importance of understanding and relaying the messages can affect any business in a positive or negative way. Every business must have leaders and workers. The politics of a business or government provides guidelines for an internal view of leadership. Society s acceptances of the art, politics, and technology proves that in time there are continued needs to fill those shoes of the past.

We must face the facts that technology can destroy us or move us into the future of new and improved products that would improve the world economic conditions and the business world. The lessons of communication and leadership derive from the past and create the present. Management decisions are largely affected by their leadership and can sink a company with one bad decision. The importance of communication whether written, spoken or computerized must be clearly understood. The lessons learned from the past that are valued will enhance a manager for their future careers when dealing with people. You can deceive and destroy the trust of those who are the workers and not be productive or you can instill the higher values of ethical and moral behaviors in one s self and others to build a quality mission within a company. The study of the Renaissance era illuminates the ideas from the past creators of art, politics, and technology stimulating minds and molding society views to improve our world. The imagination and the comparisons between two eras of time, the past and present, establish a foundation for ethical and moral values because each generation has the opportunity to accept the conditions and risks because of our creativity.