Do the Dark Ages Beckon?

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Mass delusions were unheard of for those old enough to be around in 1978. We were flabbergasted when we heard Jim Jones had induced his fellow cult members to join him in a suicide pack by drinking cyanide-laced cool-aid. It claimed the lives of 909 commune members, 304 of them children.

But, over the years, mass delusions have proliferated like termites until they are rotting the foundations of our modern world, painstakingly built on reason and science. There is no way to sugarcoat this: We are in real danger of allowing superstition and urban myths to drag us back to the Dark Ages.

Just look at QAnon conspiracy theory’s central belief that “government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a sex-trafficking operation.”^⁠1 This bizarre myth is no longer confined to the nutty fringe: According to several reputable surveys, one-in-five Americans are now QAnon believers.

As I have written previously,^⁠2 the notion that our nation could regress is anathema to the American Dream, which holds that continuing progress is our birthright.

But what if this notion of perpetual advancement is only a myth? That’s what the 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico theorized. He said we fool ourselves by thinking our sense of reality is based on higher principles when, in fact, cultures are steered by the myths and metaphors of everyday people. Because of this limitation, societies can’t help but ebb and flow, facing inevitable periods of decline, which he summarized in this axiom:

“Men first felt necessity then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”^⁠3

Carl Sagan, at first blush, would appear to be the complete opposite of Vico; he, of course, is fondly remembered today as America’s most public and revered scientist, a true believer in progress and rationality. Yet, like Vico, Sagan predicted bad times ahead due to the irrational prejudices of the average citizen.

In 1996, Sagan wrote a book, “The Demon-Haunted World,” as pessimistic as anything Vico wrote: 

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time…when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few; when the people have lost the ability to… question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes… unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.^⁠4

Sagan wrote this despite his belief in progress and “timeless natural law, which he believed were discoverable with the tools of science. But the big danger that haunted him was that “the candle in the dark” of science would be snuffed out by “the dumbing down of America.”^⁠5

Sagan died in 1996, shortly after writing this book, but not before strenuously arguing for a major overhaul of our educational system. He believed the best defense against superstition and prejudice was to teach children more science and critical thinking skills in school, starting at an early age.

Of course, that would be impossible in NH today because our legislature and our two-faced governor would reject the teaching of critical thinking just as it did with critical race theory.

Then again, perhaps Vico, not Sagan, was right about progress being a myth. Maybe societies rise and fall in cycles like the seasons take turns in the natural world. 

One might argue that nature moves forward in the sense that rivers always progress toward the sea. But that would not be the complete picture: At some point, the water evaporates back into the atmosphere and starts the cycle over again. It’s the same with us humans: We are merely another cycle destined to be born, procreate, grow old, and die.

Of course, our human musings are not the final word: An advanced civilization from outer space – or God, for that matter – would likely consider even our most advanced theory to be just another primitive myth.

xxx

¹ https://www.thedailybeast.com/23-percent-of-republicans-agree-satan-worshipping-pedophiles-run-government-poll-says

² https://www.concordmonitor.com/A-return-to-the-Middle-Ages-35214142

³ https://www.openculture.com/2017/01/carl-sagan-predicts-the-decline-of-america.html

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid