The New Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, or Dark Ages as they are sometimes called, were an over a thousand years historical period between the 5th and 15th centuries. Although the history of these ten centuries is varied and diverse, medieval times are characterized as times of ignorance and superstition, where religious fanaticism took fully political, judiciary and social control and the word of religious authorities was placed over personal experience, science and rational activity. The pace of evolution of society, art and all sciences was particularly stagnant during the Middle Ages in comparison to any other time in human history.
Religious dogma on many occasions overcame scientific data, simple observation, and even simple intuitive knowledge. Anecdotes abound, sounding insane, nonetheless mostly based on real events. Throwing a suspected witch into a river or the sea tied and bound in a package. If she floats regardless, it is proof she is a witch. And if she doesn't? So sorry! Burning of books, whole libraries, destruction of works of art that offended the church fanatics, torturing of individuals until they confess and repent and more, were common occurrences. The population became terrified, subdued with every visible expression careful and politically correct lest one is denounced and subjected to a rabid, hateful chicken pecking party where mobs attacked alleged apostates, heretics and pariahs. Being burned, ostracized, excommunicated and at a minimum, socially destroyed, was the fate of anyone daring to voice anything outside official dogma. Galileo Galilei, recognized as “the father of modern science”, was a pious Roman Catholic and even considered entering the priesthood. He was judged for heresy and imprisoned for life as well as being forced to recant on his publications and beliefs. All because he said the earth was round, not flat, and it revolved around the sun! Both facts observed and known for thousands of years by the Phoenicians and the ancient Greeks, purely by observing simple and indisputable natural phenomena such as the masts of a ship gradually appearing on the horizon.
A new version of the Middle Ages have begun. Things move faster nowadays, so they will not last 1000 years. But their destructiveness towards the human spirit, the fabric of society, human relations, art and science will be devastating.
The new religious fanaticism bringing forth the new Dark Ages is New Age activism, with all it's associated appendages, sects and sub sects such as ultra feminism, the MeToo and Non Binary movements.
Like the Catholic Church, they are gaining more and more political power, pushing legislation, intimidating anyone daring to speak against them, but also intimidating anyone who just wants to be silent and uninvolved into supporting them, under the doctrine: “If you are not with us and declare it, you are against us and we shall destroy you”. Companies, politicians, celebrities, artists, businessmen, are all coerced to humiliate themselves and apologize profusely and publicly for any perceived offense. They coerce airlines into adding non-binary as a gender option on check in, as if it is a significant percentage of the population, finding discrimination in everything and obligating businesses to have multiple toilets to cater for all the poor, victimized minorities. They are even attacking Peppa Pig, a cartoon for preschool kids that used the word “fireman” instead of “firefighter” in a cartoon!
Like the Catholic Church, they are destroying all legal rights by considering someone “Guilty until proven innocent” instead of the opposite, where any unfounded allegation creates such a fury and condemnation and loses people their jobs, their reputations, their livelihood and ostracizes them, subjecting them to social media public stonings.
Like the Catholic Church, they disregard scientific data, facts, history and simple, intuitive life experience.
They say gender is non binary, disregarding the scientific fact that it is the most binary thing in the world: If you have two X chromosomes you are a female, and if you have an X and a Y, you are male. This case of trying to confuse identity with biology and reducing gender to a fashion item that can be changing constantly is beyond any logic. They demand equal pay for female athletes and group sports such as football, when male records and performance is 10-12% higher than female in all sports due to hormones and a bigger body size. Women's world records are often overtaken up to 15,000 times statistically in the same year by men and boys!. If women were competing equally with men in the Olympics, almost no woman would qualify!. And these are official facts. And equal pay is about economics, how many people watch. If a women's match has more attendance, they should be paid more than the men. It is not about gender discrimination, it is about economics! Men and women are different, purely on genetic and hormonal factors. It is a scientific fact, the degree to which testosterone and other hormonal levels affect athletic performance, that is why they are illegal!
Like the Catholic Church they destroy all art that offends them in some way. Classic paintings are taken down and hidden, masterpieces by Monet, Matisse and others are renamed from “Portrait of a black woman” to “Portrait of Madeleine”, because the word black offends. Artist's whole exhibitions are taken down because of some allegation against the artist, Woody Allen's movies are shunned, Amazon recently refused to air his new movies and he is being ostracized because of unproven allegations that he has been cleared of twenty years ago, Einstein is stigmatized as racist for writing that the Chinese are dirty and backward during his travels decades ago! Laura Ingalls Wilder's name (the writer of “Little House on the prairie”) was removed from the American Library Association's children's book award because she was racist towards the Indians, saying they were savage etc! The books refer to her childhood's memories after the civil war, in the 19th century for god's sake!
Like the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages they have no limits to their demands for orthodoxy; it is not enough to have full legal and social gender and race equality, but actors are persecuted on the basis of
“Colourism”, where black actors are deemed not black enough for a role (like Will Smith being deemed not dark enough to play Richard Williams, the father of the tennis prodigies, and Halle Berry too light skinned to play his girlfriend), actors are attacked for playing gay people if they are not actually gay, actors are trolled mercilessly for playing disabled people if they are not disabled themselves, because they deprive people with disabilities of jobs! As if acting is not the art of getting into the skin of someone you are not! Is it an offense then to serial killers if an actor plays one without being one? Have we lost all logic?
And same as Medieval times, they create fanaticism and rage in their followers and obedience in everyone else, lest they be the next victim of the enraged mobs. They are currently taking down Joe Biden, the presidential candidate, because he encouragingly kissed a young, black, female politician in the back of the head five years ago! He is being coerced into apologizing for something that he feels no guilt about. CONFESS and REPENT and you may be allowed to survive.
Like in the Middle Ages, the fanatics rage and persecute in the name of goodness and morality, and their personal extreme morality must be embraced with force be everyone, to save our mortal souls.
And last but not least, they obliterate humor since any kind of humor may offend somebody. Justin Bieber has had to apologize for his post on April Fool's Day about his wife's pregnancy because it was offensive and disrespectful to all those people who cannot have children! The Oscars could not find any presenter willing to risk their careers either by being totally boring or by risking being humorous and offending some class of person. Stand up comedians see their careers destroyed about comedy they did decades ago!
After the Dark Ages, the Renaissance (rebirth) came, allowing people to return to the freer exploration of beliefs, science, society and arts. The period was known as the Enlightenment period. People returned to forgotten, freer, less absolute and fanatic beliefs, and continued to evolve them until today. In this period human rights, freedom of speech, public education, public health, social care and unbelievable scientific advances and improvements of quality of life and the doubling of life expectancy developed.
Enlightenment today is that the history of humanity is an amazing feat of evolution and achievement. That human beings belong to two sexes working together for the survival and well being of the species as a whole, and not a story of oppressive, toxic patriarchy. That we are equal, but not the same. We are complementary. That if thousands of years of male domination were a bad thing, then we shouldn't exchange it for female domination and revenge, but we should be working together, no one above the other, each one exploring their particular capabilities for common advancement. Men are somebody's brothers, uncles, cousins, fathers and grandfathers and women are somebody's mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers. It is love, peace and collaboration that brings progress and not enraged, fanatic mobs trying to control everything by rabid intimidation. It is also the acknowledgment that everything wants to be ‘one with’, and we should move towards uniting rather than separating, towards greatness rather than endless victim hood.
Resist entering the Middle Ages! Make Love, not War!