The Darkening

My favorite part of history is the broad-brush names historians give to great chunks of it. There are the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and on and on. And never mind that more than one name may apply to the same period.

I think my favorite "age" is the Enlightenment. The gist of the Enlightenment was that there was a natural universal order that was accessible through rational thought, that common people might have a few rights, that it wasn't necessary to kill people who followed the wrong religion, and that government didn't have to be something the powerful did to the weak. Science, reason, tolerance, and democracy entered the lexicon as words that might be said in polite company. And a couple of major revolutions were supposedly fueled by these principles.

As I said, I like these historical ages and the names given them by historians. But I think they got one wrong. I'm speaking of the Age of Greed. Not all historians even agree on the name. You'll hear "the Age of Polarization," "the Age of Terror," "the Age of Torture," and others. Almost all historians agree on the name of the following age, "the Remourance." Opposite of "the Renaissance," of course.

So, if they can agree that the last age was the opposite of the Renaissance, that it was the age of the death of arts and learning, why shouldn't the one before be matched to its opposite? The so-called Age of Greed was everything the Enlightenment wasn't: the triumph of fear, bigotry, intolerance, superstition, and tyranny. Its proper name is "the Darkening," the quenching of the Enlightenment.

Once there was a president who said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." During the Darkening, there was a president who said, "Be afraid. Be very afraid. I am the only one who can save you. Of course, you will have to give me a little something in return. It's so tiny, you probably don't even realize you have it. A mere formality, really ... All you have to do is sign ..." And we signed.

And that's why the historians get it wrong. Because it was too egregious to deal with. Because it was the beginning of the end of history itself. Because that was when we made our Faustian deal. Because that was when the human species signed away its future for the promises of con men.

The consolation is that we won't be in the business of thinking up names for historical epochs much longer.