Actually, this comic brings up something I’ve always thought about. The Dark Ages happened after both the Greek and Roman civilizations. This is strong evidence that things like democracy, freedom, and the arts should not be taken for granted. They can — indeed they have — gone away, replaced by feudalism and serfdom.
I have often wondered how this happened. How could civilization go backwards? And are we seeing the start of the same thing now, with the US backsliding toward a new version of the dark ages where science is once again abandoned and replaced by various doctrines? Where the rule of law is replaced by might makes right? And where individual liberty is replaced by legions of dittoheads, sucking up propaganda like babies?
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To my mind, the more worrisome thing is that it’s not just the US suffering from this horrible nostalgie de la boue — it’s as if thuggery has become a movement, seeking to enlarge its territory on the globe.
Amen and Hallelujah!!
Cultures go backward when they stagnate and others supersede them, or when dead end ideas crowd out better ones and when the dead ends die there is nothing to take their place, for a while or forever. And maybe all cultures have a shelf life and die of their own accretions. Are we there? I think so, but I may be in the minority; it’s easy to be a pessimist today….
Read “A Canticle for Liebowitz” by Walter Miller.
There’s an excellent podcast called Hardcore History produced by Dan Carlin that I highly recommend for students of history that really want to get into the weeds and trenches, so to speak. He has episodes on WWI and WWII, among others, that recount battles and strategies in detail through first-hand accounts from the front and excerpts from books written by historical scholars. One recurring theme is how perplexing it was (and still is) that the same German society that produced some of Europe’s finest and highest cultural and artistic achievements, including painters, sculptors, writers, philosophers, engineers and scientists of the 18th and 19th Century was also responsible in the 20th for germinating (no pun intended) an environment that led to the Third Reich, with all the horrors, death and destruction that came with it.
Remember, Hitler was democratically elected, acquiring added powers little by little to eventually become every bit and more the dictatorial autocrat his mentor, Mussolini, was and who once said about acquiring power something like, “A chicken doesn’t mind being plucked when you pull one feather at at time”.
Here’s a link to several HH episodes and info about the others, for those interested, many of which are available for free on YouTube and his website or anywhere podcasts are available for download or subscription. IMHO, Dan Carlin is a national treasure that too few take advantage of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMT_BVBBsA
I’m beginning to think that “Rise and Fall of the third Reich” should be required reading. So very well written and so gripping.
Idiot learned that if you tell a lie often enough, people start to believe you as have all these Deplorables that I’m surrounded by.
He told a reporter at the start of 2016 that he knows he is lying, and he knows people will believe him if he says it often enough.
I recommend “The Peloponnesian War” which explains how Democracy in Athens came to an end. Precis: Athens though it was so great and powerful that no other state in the region could resist it. They were wrong.