Coming soon: The (New) Dark Ages

[LSparkle]

A caller on C-Span recently hit the nail on the head when she noted that the Dark Ages (also called Middle Ages) were a result of the religious leaders running amok. During that time, all the wisdom of the Greeks and Romans -- not only in terms of science but in arts and literature -- was cast aside, in favor of church doctrine. My fear is that we're headed (at least in this country) for a second Dark Age. Science is already being impugned (no stem cell research, creationism being pushed in schools), artists/intellectuals are branded as suspicious, traiterous, etc. (there's a proposed ban in school libraries of literature that includes gay characters), kids are being taught lies about sex and contraception (leading to a rise in STDs and AIDS) ... Guess what else the Dark Ages brought us? The Plague! These Regressives are truly leading us backward.

[IrateCitizen]

1. The middle ages came after the dark ages

The Dark ages, however, were the result of the disintegration of the former Roman Empire, and the lack of centralized government that resulted from that collapse. In short, anarchy reigned -- eventually replaced by feudalism. Knowledge and the arts suffered largely because there was no longer a significant group of people with the means to pursue them.

Luckily, church officials gathered up and preserved many of the texts from this period, and they became the foundation upon which the Middle Ages and the Rennaisance were built, which in turn led to the Enlightenment and modern-day society.

Additionally, the Plague had little to do with the Dark Ages. There were several outbreaks of the plague throughout the Dark Ages, Middle Ages and Rennaisance. They were largely the result of unsanitary conditions and overcrowding in European cities -- the same cause of the majority of pandemics throughout recorded history.

[southpaw]

2. Well, yeah...

but you get the point... right?

[villager]

4. but the Dark Ages enabled the plague to spread more rapidly...

...since minority groups (i.e. Jews) were scapegoated as the "cause," no real medical science could be pursued in its cure, or in terms of preventive hygiene, etc...

[freedom_to_read]

5. jeez we had almost identical posts!

guess I'm not the only pedant on this board.

[Johonny]

14. sort of

"Luckily, church officials gathered up and preserved many of the texts from this period, and they became the foundation upon which the Middle Ages and the Rennaisance were built, which in turn led to the Enlightenment and modern-day society."


Well sort of. The Islamic church gathered them up. Gathered and added to them. During the Islamic Rennaisance. Also mix in the Indo culture too. Greko-Roman knowledge is not the center of Rennaisance. Just part of it. The import of Chinese, Indian, Islamic and American culture very important to the Enlightenment.

[freedom_to_read]

3. your history needs a bit of polishing

Not that I disagree with your overall point, but...

(1) The "Dark ages" and the Middle Ages are not identical. The Dark Ages is an old fashioned-term for the end of Late Antiquity and the beginning of the early Middle Ages (roughly 8th-10th centuries CE). The reason it is called "dark" is more because of the lack of historical documents than because it was truly "primitive." Though in some ways it did represent a decline in civilization from the Greco-Roman world, still many important developments, such as the rise of feudalism and the manorial system, and the consolidation of the Church, took place during this period.

(2) The Dark Ages did not "bring us the Plague"... as a matter of fact, various plagues -- including the bubonic plague which became known as the Black Death -- have been a recurrent event in human history. (The most recent pandemic, excluding AIDS, was the outbreak of Spanish influenza in 1918). The Black Death actually recurred several times throughout the 12th-14th centuries (there was another, smaller outbreak in the 17th century as well.)

If you're interested in the Black Plague, I recommend reading In the wake of the plague by Norman Cantor. Very readable and interesting.

[Axo1ot1]

6. Seems a little far-fetched

I don't really think another dark ages would be possible. The whole planet is hooked into the internet which is estimated to contain damn near the sum of human knowledge. How could you just loose all of it? I think we're probably headed for another massive world war. That could potentially end up with the loss of all that knowledge if it was all just annihilated, but I like to think we're less stupd than we would have to be to let that happen.

[indigobusiness]

10. Our dependence on technology only makes it seem more likely to me.

We are becoming less and less self-sufficient and divorced from the natural world. Our burgeoning orientation to an artificial reality, coupled with an exploding population, seems like an alarming Achilles heel.

[newyawker99]

22. Hi Axo1ot1!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Greylyn58]

7. I Have To Agree With You

I am listening to Randi Rhodes and she's talking about how "The Powers that Be" want to teach Creationism and not the real science of how the world was formed. Also she was talking about the TV station in LA that refused to show a syphilis ad, but will show ads for herpes and million different drug ads for getting and extending a man's erection.

The school's are pushing abstinence to the kids instead of giving them all the info they need, that over 50% of gay teens have AIDS, that you can get AIDS from tears and sweat. This is total insanity!!!

I swear...I always wanted children, but wasn't able to have any, but I gotta tell you - With the way this country is going I'm glad I don't have kids because I think a large part of of this country has lost their minds and they are dragging the rest of us with them into their black pit of craziness

Dark Ages here we come...guess they will be breaking out the thumb screws, Iron Maidens, and the rack.

:shrug:

[donhakman]

8. DU Poet Laureate

Good times , End times
As events turn worse
It's too late to learn
If you're breathing the curse
It may be our turn
With sorrow to come
Still the Dark Ages
Were Golden for some

[indigobusiness]

9. This thread has terific potential...

Thanks for starting. I intend to drink it in. I have nothing to add, at the moment, but I have some things in mind that I'll search for.

Like the UK Dark Age website that is supposed to be really something.

edit- Dark Ages fact page and links.
http://en.mcfly.org/Dark_Ages

[indigobusiness]

11. Bush's Dark Age: The End of Science

The Bush Administration's dangerous misuse and suppression of government supported science is threatening the security of the nation.
By Frederick Sweet


A group of leading American scientists, including over a dozen Nobel Prize laureates, have made public their 46-page report, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science." The highly detailed report gives alarming examples of the Bush Administration's misuse of science that have already cost American lives, and foretells of soon-to-arrive national disasters directly caused by the Administration's wholesale ideological distortion of science.

The scathing report opens with Part I: Suppression and Distortion of Research Findings at Federal Agencies. The section headings are: "Distorting and Suppressing Climate Change Research; Censoring Information on Air Quality; Distorting Scientific Knowledge on Reproductive Health Issues ; Suppressing Analysis on Airborne Bacteria; Misrepresenting Evidence on Iraq’s Aluminum Tubes; Manipulation of Science Regarding the Endangered Species Act; Manipulating the Scientific Process on Forest Management; OMB Rulemaking on 'Peer Review'." This only takes the reader to page 16 of the report.

The report criticizes Bush's subversion of American science, continuing with, Part II: Undermining the Quality and Integrity of the Appointment Process. Here we are told the frightening details of "Dismissal of Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Panels; Underqualified Candidates in Health Advisory Roles; and Political Litmus Tests on Workplace Safety Panel" to cite just a few examples. This takes us only half way through the report.

Part II, begins with a quote: "The real issue here is that we are allowing scientific advisory committees to be contaminated by people who have clear bias, clear financial conflicts that will not allow them to make unbiased scientific decisions." This was written by Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The highly qualified Lanphear's nomination to an advisory committee had been scuttled by the Bush administration. His replacement was an unqualified industrial "scientist" who was not concerned about the dangers to children of high levels of lead and mercury.


http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=670

[donhakman]

12. crusades on the march

[indigobusiness]

16. Condi looks a bit like Oprah

That makes it even more horrific, somehow.

[BillZBubb]

13. Do you really see a Dark Age?

Personally, I see us in something like another "Great Awakening". It's been building for a while. "Awakenings" have happened from time to time in US history. Religious fervor gets cranked up and the fanatics control policy for a while. Then reality sets in and the country returns to a more normal mode. Fortunately, religious fanaticism has a very short half-life for the vast majority of Americans.

[donhakman]

15. the great pendulum swings both ways

BUT

Religious fanaticism has never faded from the scene.

[PlanetBev]

17. This is a great thread, keep it kicked. There is so much intellect at DU

Another thing that fueled the Bubonic Plague was the superstition around cats. The first outbreak in Europe was in the 12th Century, I think. People thought cats were witches proceeded to kill them by the millions. Not a good move. Rats carry the Plague and cats eat rats. When the cat population was thinned out, the rats had a free ride.


From century to century, these superstitious idiots are always with us.

[donhakman]

18. Superstition is invariably evil

Unless it is for the Red Sox

[indigobusiness]

19. THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN
I.


1 Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
2 By famous Hanover city;
3 The river Weser, deep and wide,
4 Washes its wall on the southern side;
5 A pleasanter spot you never spied;
6 But, when begins my ditty,
7 Almost five hundred years ago,
8 To see the townsfolk suffer so
9 From vermin, was a pity.

II.


10 Rats!
11 They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
12 And bit the babies in the cradles,
13 And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
14 And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
15 Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
16 Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
17 And even spoiled the women's chats,
18 By drowning their speaking
19 With shrieking and squeaking
20 In fifty different sharps and flats.

III


21 At last the people in a body
22 To the Town Hall came flocking:
23 ``Tis clear,'' cried they, ``our Mayor's a noddy;
24 ``And as for our Corporation -- shocking
25 ``To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
26 ``For dolts that can't or won't determine
27 ``What's best to rid us of our vermin!
28 ``You hope, because you're old and obese,
29 ``To find in the furry civic robe ease?
30 ``Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking
31 ``To find the remedy we're lacking,
32 ``Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!''
33 At this the Mayor and Corporation
34 Quaked with a mighty consternation.

IV.


35 An hour they sat in council,
36 At length the Mayor broke silence:
37 ``For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell;
38 ``I wish I were a mile hence!
39 ``It's easy to bid one rack one's brain --
40 ``I'm sure my poor head aches again,
41 ``I've scratched it so, and all in vain
42 ``Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!''
43 Just as he said this, what should hap
44 At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
45 ``Bless us,'' cried the Mayor, ``what's that?''
46 (With the Corporation as he sat,
47 Looking little though wondrous fat;
48 Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
49 Than a too-long-opened oyster,
50 Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
51 For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
52 `Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
53 ``Anything like the sound of a rat
54 ``Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!''


---

snip

http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/text.html

[indigobusiness]

20. More re: The_Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin - (A parable for our time?)

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a folk tale, among others written down by the Brothers Grimm. It tells about a disaster in the town of Hamelin, Germany, that supposedly occurred on June 26, 1284. In that year a man came to Hamelin claiming to be a rat-catcher. The people of Hamelin promised him payment for killing the rats. So the man took a pipe, attracted the rats by his music and made them follow him to the Weser river, where they all drowned. Despite this success the people reneged on their promise and did not pay the rat-catcher.

He left the town, but returned several weeks later. While the inhabitants were in the church, he played his pipe again, this time attracting the children of Hamelin. One hundred thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave and sealed inside. Depending on the version, at most two children survived.

snip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin

[Hosnon]

21. That is why I'm thankful for Europe. They aren't powerful in the way

that we are but at least don't get carried away with religion-induced ignorance.

BTW - Question: Anyone think there is a necessary (or close to it) link between the rise to the status of the most powerful nation and the rise in religious belief? Such as - we're number one and God may be the reason. If God didn't like us, we wouldn't be number one so we must worship him more to maintain the status quo.

[rman]

25. religion is an exellent tool

to misguide the people.

people who are fanatically religious are likely to blindly follow a leader who identifies himself with their religion ("he's one of ours"...)

[orpupilofnature57]

23. I know of over 60,000 reasons why that will never happen.48/51

[GOPBasher]

24. Looks like that to me.

[FlyByNight]

26. Racing forward to the past

Funny thing is, these religious mullahs and their herds use science and technology every day: cars to go to work; probably listen to radio while in their car or wherever; listen to CDs; use computers at home and work; use cell phones; use the internet to communicate, etc. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.