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> As it happens, The Dark Ages is also one of my Special Interests and the term is reductive to the point of useless. It's a very loaded word that promotes a bi

> As it happens, The Dark Ages is also one of my Special Interests and the term is reductive to the point of useless. It's a very loaded word that promotes a biased view of history that is, for the most part, meaningfully incorrect. Industrial output, long-distance trade, literacy, artistic quality (yes, I know it's subjective. I don't care: if it hadn't collapsed the Grotesque style wouldn't have been a revolution), and tons of other things collapsed. Records became extremely spotty. There's no reliable descent from antiquity for a reason. By the fifth century, what we'd call serfdom was common. People were legally bound to their parent's professions. Free movement was restricted. Spoliation was universal because new high-quality materials couldn't be sourced at any price. Oh, and almost the entire corpus of classical literature was lost. Yes, the dark ages were real, miserable, and significant, and I don't care for the modern revisionism on the subject. You could argue about the speed of the decline and whether it really got going in the third or the fifth centuries, or whether it might have been averted without the Gothic Wars wrecking what was left of already-fragile Mediterranean trade, but that there was a civilizational nadir in western Europe around the end of the first millennium is beyond honest dispute. The perspective you've adopted is exactly the one that needs to respond to intellectual competition, because this nonsense about "oh, there was just a change in civilization style and we don't know which is better so don't judge" is infuriating and gaslights the public.

wredcoll 1y ago
> The perspective you've adopted is exactly the one that needs to respond to intellectual competition, because this nonsense about "oh, there was just a change in civilization style and we don't know which is better so don't judge" is infuriating and gaslights the public. I absolutely can and will make moral value judgements about civilizational statuses. Lower literacy rates is bad! Public healthcare is good! The problem is that the world is far more complicated than the term "dark ages" accurately reflects. There sure was a reduction in some types of trade and some literacy rates in some specific areas at some specific times. Constantinople was having a fine old time in 450c.e. for example and their literacy rates hadn't changed meaningfully. > By the fifth century, what we'd call serfdom was common Yes? It was also common in the 4th century, 3rd century, 2nd century, 1st century... you get the idea. I looked up the "bound to parent professions" and the first reference I can find is to emperor Diocletian around 280c.e., I admit I'm not sure if that counts as part of your dark ages. > Oh, and almost the entire corpus of classical literature was lost. The "corpus of literature" was constantly being lost before the invention of the printing press. Look, talking about history (and in general) requires some degree of generalization and vagueness. We literally don't have time to cover every single detail, so we use commonly understood if slightly inaccurate terms like "roman empire" to refer to complicated subjects. "Dark Ages" is similar. It doesn't help that the term "Dark Ages" was invented specifically to make Rome/Greece and the Renaissance ages look better. It's hardly an unbiased term. But the overall point is that if you actually look at history, 900 c.e. is really truly not that much different from 500 c.e. or 1200 c.e.

wredcoll 1y ago

> The perspective you've adopted is exactly the one that needs to respond to intellectual competition, because this nonsense about "oh, there was just a change in civilization style and we don't know which is better so don't judge" is infuriating and gaslights the public. I absolutely can and will make moral value judgements about civilizational statuses. Lower literacy rates is bad! Public healthcare is good! The problem is that the world is far more complicated than the term "dark ages" accurately reflects. There sure was a reduction in some types of trade and some literacy rates in some specific areas at some specific times. Constantinople was having a fine old time in 450c.e. for example and their literacy rates hadn't changed meaningfully. > By the fifth century, what we'd call serfdom was common Yes? It was also common in the 4th century, 3rd century, 2nd century, 1st century... you get the idea. I looked up the "bound to parent professions" and the first reference I can find is to emperor Diocletian around 280c.e., I admit I'm not sure if that counts as part of your dark ages. > Oh, and almost the entire corpus of classical literature was lost. The "corpus of literature" was constantly being lost before the invention of the printing press. Look, talking about history (and in general) requires some degree of generalization and vagueness. We literally don't have time to cover every single detail, so we use commonly understood if slightly inaccurate terms like "roman empire" to refer to complicated subjects. "Dark Ages" is similar. It doesn't help that the term "Dark Ages" was invented specifically to make Rome/Greece and the Renaissance ages look better. It's hardly an unbiased term. But the overall point is that if you actually look at history, 900 c.e. is really truly not that much different from 500 c.e. or 1200 c.e.