| the Present Dark Age
Plato, Phaedo
Norman D. Livergood |
| the Present Dark Age
Plato, Phaedo
Norman D. Livergood |
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These cultural despots are literally dictating reality, conditioning people to a totally false "reality." We're now living in the "dark age" of the "emperor's new clothes," in which an illiterate, deranged idiot pretends to be a "fearless leader." The insanity of our present "dark age" is so advanced and so pervasive that many people praise this buffoon as "a great man" and others--out of personal corruption and cowardice--refuse to point out that he is morally and intellectually naked--a self-deluded, evil poseur.
This is a particularly deadly "dark age" because not only are many people touting this imbecile as a "genius," but are suicidally allowing this despot to send American young men and women to their death in a totally senseless war and tolerating his attempt to destroy the system whereby older people are able to live out their lives with financial security derived from their own savings.
The American people are allowing this buffoon to perpetrate countless criminal actions without calling him and his junta to account. The cabal that controls this naked simpleton is creating a society of rampant lawlessness and destruction: a new Dark Age.
This age of darkness is eloquently described by Bertolt Brecht.
The horror of the present "dark age" is its renouncing of all reason and understanding: a return to a barbaric state of authoritarianism and ignorance.
At present, truth has become merely what the rulers tell the people is the truth. Contemporary American citizens are being deliberately led back into the mind-destroying ideologies of the earlier Dark Ages.
Granted, the current processes and historical settings are different, but the essentials are the same. The role of the church in the Middle Ages in conditioning the people's minds has been taken over by both the reactionary religious right--and the media.
The performance of the submissive, gullible Medieval serf falling down before his religious shrines and his "lords" has now been replaced by the credulous masses blindly accepting the lies of the Bush junta and media pundits falling all over themselves to see who will be first to praise our fearless leader most fulsomely after his state of the dis-union diatribes, or other public propaganda events.
The Roller-Coaster of Human Understanding
In this essay we'll examine several diverse ways humankind has previously struggled out of "dark ages" of ignorance and delusion to a renascence of understanding and development. We'll investigate the roller-coaster of human understanding, from contentment with ignorance--to stirrings of desire for knowledge--to new means of comprehension assumed to be a final achievement--to a return to the desire for ignorance--with the ups and downs continuing forward.
While reviewing the various means humankind has used to overcome tyranny, we will also be able to determine how we can apply those same methods to defeat this current deadly "dark age." In each era, a small group of advanced thinkers pushed humankind forward, revealing what humans were capable of, while overcoming the forces of degradation, ignorance, and indifference.
Deliberate self-delusion in the current world is so pervasive and so shored up by its own "apologists," that we must use the strongest means possible to overcome our present plight. Fortunately, we have a number of weapons in our arsenal to use in our struggle against the current Dark Age of murderous deception and deliberate self-delusion, including:
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." |
For thinking people to overcome the enormity of preemptive wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, rampant criminality, attempts to destroy social security, and the other monstrosities of the present "dark age,"
we must gain a potent understanding of human history: a new form of discernment.
The first power of higher discernment is its ability to keep us free from being engulfed by the weight of present circumstances. The current political-economic-military regime set up by the demonic cabal in this Reagan-Bush era might appear to be invincible. Who, we ask ourselves, can defeat such a gargantuan despotism? And history whispers: "You, using the inescapable forces of the despots' own internal corruption.
Our first line of attack is to make ourselves invulnerable to any unhistoric, irrational presentiment of defeat and despair in the face of apparently overwhelming force.
We begin our battle with the full assurance that this present noxious plutocracy is degenerating from within and that our own efforts can hasten its inevitable overthrow by the use of positive forces.
Using the potent weapon of discerning awareness, we'll examine a former historical period which most closely resembles our present experience: the Dark Ages (or Middle Ages) which extended from the fourth to the fifteenth century, the era when the mind-set imposed by the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant perversions of Christianity held sway. We'll cut through the misrepresentations and deliberate distortions by a number of "historians" who have tried to make us believe that the mental, physical, and spiritual retrogression of the Dark Ages was caused primarily by the savage barbarian hordes that invaded the Roman empire.
Another part of our weaponry gained from higher discernment is a clear awareness of the inevitable forward
thrust of positive evolutionary forces within human history.
Humankind moves in a wave-like course as Perennialist seers interject higher ideals (top of wave) which remain potent even when humankind experiences periods of retrogression (bottom of the wave).
Periods of history do retrogress --as we're now experiencing--but the upward momentum of previously introduced higher values remains. Once a higher ideal appears within the course of human history, it continues to be a force which even the groups attempting to destroy this value must use as their pretense. Thus the current Bush junta parades the ideal of "democracy"--both at home and abroad--while at the same time attacking the very fundaments of the American democratic system and setting up a counterfeit "democratic" puppet regime in Iraq.
Energetic dissidence is the only appropriate and sane response in an America which has become a literal "the Emperor's new clothes" delusory state--where millions have become incapable of seeing the evil pretender-President who just stole his second presidential election in a row, encourages stupidity and ignorance through pride in his own illiteracy and empty-headedness, and commits atrocities daily while pretending to be "moral" and "courageous."
Our primary struggle against the "dark age" which has invaded our political-economic-social universe is to respond appropriately in the ordinary world while realizing and residing in another domain. Thereby we achieve understanding of what is actually occurring in both the physical and spiritual worlds and delight in the higher realities. Comprehending and relishing the invisible riches of the spiritual realm is express triumph over the forces of depravity. It is not that we engage in higher pursuits to spite the debasing influences that attack the very fabric of our existence. Depraved influences win by destroying meanings and capabilities and values. We defeat such influences by persisting in our understanding of meanings and the exercise of higher capabilities, and continuing to hold dear our hallowed values.
The historian Arnold Toynbee reasoned--based on his study and analysis of history, civilization and social development--that in a period of crisis such as we're presently experiencing, transformation can only be brought about by what he termed "creative minorities." He described "the creative minority" as those few individuals who are capable of meeting the challenges that confront a society.
"Creative minorities" are those who work to gain an understanding of their world, pioneer new ideas, and chart new paths forward for humankind. These small groups re-invigorate cultures and give life to societies in decay. They initiate the great impulses that move humanity forward. Throughout recorded history we can see their mark, as in the examples of Frederick II and Perennialist-inspired teachers such as Boethius and Bernard of Clairvaux.
H. G. Wells also believed that these "creative minorities" were the single hope for humankind's future.
"I am building my expectation of a new phase in human affairs upon the belief that there is a profoundly serious minority in the mass of our generally indifferent species. I cannot understand the existence of any of the great religions, I cannot explain any fine and grave constructive process in history, unless there is such a serious minority amidst our confusions. They are the Salt of the Earth, these people capable of devotion and of living lives for remote and mighty ends."
"A group, although very small, is capable of eluding the harmful influence of the society of its epoch by imposing upon its members rules of conduct modelled on military or monastic discipline. Such a method is far from being new. Humanity has already lived through periods when communities of men and women separated from others and adopted strict regulations, in order to attain their ideals. Such groups were responsible for the development of our civilisation during the Middle Ages. There were the monastic orders, the orders of chivalry, and the corporations of artisans. Among the religious organisations, some took refuge in monasteries, while others remained in the world. But all submitted to strict physiological and mental discipline. The knights complied with rules varying according to the aims of the different orders. In certain circumstances, they were obliged to sacrifice their lives. As for the artisans, their relations between themselves and with the public were determined by exacting legislation. Each corporation had its customs, its ceremonies, and its religious celebrations. In short, the members of these communities renounced the ordinary forms of existence. Are we not capable of repeating, in a different form, the accomplishments of the monks, the knights, and the artisans of the Middle Ages?"
Man, the Unknown, 1935
"Dark Ages are ambiguous things. They are both tomb and womb. As tomb, they represent culmination, death, and cessation of the action of one phase of history. But as womb they incubate another. Dark Ages are dead bodies of time. They are the corpses of a previously vital age. . . Yet, Dark Ages are also the incubators of a new body of time. Just here the Phoenix, as the legendary firebird that dies and rises again from its own cold ashes, takes on poignant significance."
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