Comment

Comment by Jeff on April 13, 2010 at 6:06pm

If you could tell us the name of the guest(s) or what the show was about we could Google it and listen, otherwise it's impossible to find.

Comment by OAbrey on April 13, 2010 at 5:36pm

I wonder if I can remember to connect at the right time...

I am intrigued.

Comment by Jeff on April 12, 2010 at 9:10pm

That subterfuge never stopped. History's been rewritten so many times now it reads more like Grimm's Fairy Tales then a description of civil society.

Comment by OAbrey on April 12, 2010 at 7:17pm

Agreed on that too Gary. The classical "period of enlightenment" was concurrent with the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars through to the America Civil War: Hardly a period I would call the enlightenment.

If I were to look at the period of history in the West for the last 600 years... There are a handful of people I think really contributed to the enlightenment of humanity.
The first in the Obscure: Erasmus. Called the first humanist, Erasmus's simple message called us to value human life.
The 2nd, Descartes who suggested "cogito ergo sum"-- "I think therefore I am". Not perfect, but important if it is seen as a continuity with Erasmus.
Kierkegaard, for his calling humanity to look for meaning and purpose for being.
Newton, for creating the music of the spheres. Showing us laws of nature, and mathematics.
Einstein, not so much for E=MC2, which changed the modern world of science. I choose him for his famous essay: "The World as I See It." Considering his brilliance in so many other ways, this essay showed his humanity as example of humanity at its best.

I am sure everyone would add more to the list, but I wanted to pick the handful that to me indicate light in the darkness.

Comment by OAbrey on April 12, 2010 at 6:48pm

The Dark Ages were Dark and various shades of grey depending on your perspective. For example, Germanic tribes had been under siege for many many years (100s actually) by The Roman Empire making the period before the sacking of Rome, their Dark Age. The sacking of Rome broke that yoke from off their backs. What followed for them was a period of enlightenment.

The same could be said for Gaul, (France). Egypt, Etheopia, Persia, and even Brittan.

In the case of Brittan, later invasions brought about the dark ages. This was because they tended to bring wholesale slaughter. Its hard to preserve enlightenment when that happens to your civilization.
What did happen to survive there though was a unique blend of Celtic Spirituality with Christianity. Some say that "saved" Christianity from extinction. Christianity came to Brittan from Rome. It was "Augustinian". Augstine's theology was highly inter-meshed with Greek rationalism, particularly Stoicism. Consequently, it had moved from the "Koinonea" the marketplace of the Roman/Greek empires, to the intelligentsia, concurrent to Constantine.

Some say the Celts brought it back to earth. Concepts of earth water sky, life cycles, and depth of interpersonal relationships existed within the Christian milieu, but were submerged by the dominance of Augustine. When Rome fell, all Romans did not leave. And for a period of almost 200 years a kind of a Renaissance happened in England. There were constant wars with the Picts, and yes among different factions, but this was the time also of Arthur of legend. It was a very important time of enlightenment.

In contrast, it was in fact the Vikings who brought a dark age on the Isles. It isn't a stretch to call a dark age when at anytime you and your village, your wife and daughters could be beset upon by Vikings in the middle of the night, murdering and raping a pillaging.
Gary and I disagree on the aging or even relevance of the term. I think its an important concept, but we need to appreciate various contexts when we are thinking about peoples and countries.

It was with considerable deliberance, that I took the philosophical perspective. Since the "Enlightenment" period, post reformation began with Anselm.

Do I think there was no enlightenment prior? No.
Was there darkness after, Absolutely. Are we in a new dark age? The Juries out on that.

Is there a new dark age coming? That is the most important question.

Comment by Jeff on April 12, 2010 at 6:35pm

Man hasn't advanced intellectually in 1000s of years. Period. We've always lived in a dark age.

Comment by Jeff on April 11, 2010 at 8:51am

Knew I could count on you!

Comment by Jeff on April 10, 2010 at 10:13pm

It's OK, just don't tell anyone I believe the elite worship Lucifer.

Comment by Jeff on April 10, 2010 at 10:53am

And we discussed that Gary, at length and privately, and I'm not going to define "nothing" here, but we both understand my definition of nothing enough to understand that I don't exactly mean nothing is happening. There's a lot happening. If you don't work, don't consume, rarely go anywhere and spend the majority of your time reading very little of what goes on in the outside world has a direct effect on you, from 9/11 to the economic war on the US, my life remains very much the same.

Comment by Marklar on April 10, 2010 at 10:09am

As I always understood it the dark ages were primarily "dark" in that Rome had withdrawn taking most of Britain's literate people with them. Those who were still literate were more often than not too busy warring with their neighbors in the feudalistic chaos that followed in the power vacuum left by Rome's withdrawal in order to put pen to paper very often. So the dark ages were dark from a historical perspective with few written records to shine a light on that period. No doubt many records that were written were destroyed by those wars as well. Not to forget of course the further mayhem that occurred around that time due to the various sea people invasions.

Other parts of Europe must have experienced the same thing to one degree or another but it would have been more pronounced in the British Isles due to it's relative isolation from the mainland.

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