A Return to the Dark Ages?

Maybe digging a moat isn't the worst idea.

There is an ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail, the ouroboros, that is a visual metaphor of how life and the world moves in cycles of destruction and creation, something new emerging from the old.

But we should remember that just because something is new does not necessarily mean better. It often is not.

Think New Coke or the Edsel.

I have been considering where we are headed as the forces dismantle the America in which those of us of a certain age grew up and I more or less settled on the Dark Ages, the period just before the medieval world began to emerge.

Victor Davis Hanson, possibly the greatest living American historian, said something that really crystallized that thought for me. He said:

"Science is dying; superstition disguised as morality is returning. And we’ll all soon become poorer, angrier and more divided."

There is a lot packed into those two sentences.

One wonders - is the world careening headlong toward a second Dark Age?

The Dark Ages we know from the history books was a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity from the fall of Rome in 476 AD to around 1000 AD featuring:

• Widespread unrest as Pax Romana ended – Rome could no longer project power across Europe to enforce order

• The rejection of legal order as factions sought to establish superiority and control over traditional territories

• The rise of tribalism and ethnic segregation

• Loss of faith in societal institutions

• Economic collapse

• De-urbanization as cities died, no longer able to support their populations

• Rise of Islam and Islamic conquests leading to the First Crusade

• The rise of pseudo-science – such as alchemy

There are so many similarities between the fall of Rome and the waning of Pax Americana:

• Widespread unrest as Pax Americana ends – America can no longer project power to enforce order (or is not willing to do so)

• The rejection of legal order as factions seek to establish superiority and control over traditional territories (Putin’s nostalgic Soviet daydreams and the never ending war in the Middle East)

• The rise of tribalism and ethnic segregation (unrest in the Black community and calls for self-segregation in America)

• Loss of faith in societal institutions (declining church attendance)

• Economic collapse (the global recession)

• De-urbanization as cities died, no longer able to support their populations (Detroit – need I say more?)

• Rise of Islam and Islamic conquests (i.e. ISIS and Islamofascist terror groups)

• Increased conflict between organized religion and science (evolution vs. creationism)

• The rise of pseudo-science (such as “climate science”)

It is the height of arrogance for people to believe that there could not be a second coming of the Dark Ages. I’m sure that the people of Rome didn’t believe the Roman Empire would ever fall and yet there are so many things about America that recall Rome in its pre-fall days of bread and circuses and gladiatorial combat.

Might want to sharpen your swords and start working on that moat you have been putting off digging.