Dark Days

As the nineteenth century concluded and the twentieth began, Mark Twain found the world scene darkened by military actions of the so-called Christian powers; nation preyed upon nation, the strong upon the weak.  “The time is grave,” he wrote.  “The future is blacker than has been any future which any person now living has tried to peer into.”

Now in this early twenty-first century there are those of us who feel that Mark Twain’s comment fits our present dilemma.  James Bridle’s book, New Dark Age, suggests that it is technology which will bring on this darkness, while others suggest it is in our attempt to go backward to another time, or the erosion of  character, tolerance, and good manners and decency, or the current pendulum swing toward nationalism.  

Sinclair Lewis affirmed Mark Twain’s view of his time and my view of our time when he wrote: “We can go back to the Dark Ages!  The crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin!”  The “Dark Ages” in history refers to the Middle Ages—the term,  “Dark Age,” originated with Petrarch in the 1330’s.  Most modern scholars reject the term “Dark Ages” nowadays, finding it misleading and inaccurate to describe that period in history as a time of backwardness and ignorance. Some good things, the scholars say, some flashes of light, illumined the darkness of the time.

“The time is grave,” as Mark Twain put it and we can, as Sinclair Lewis wrote: “go back to the Dark Ages! For the crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin.”  These are words that describe the reality of our time.  They also describe the beginning of the twentieth century that Mark Twain observed.  The words also describe the rise of Nazi Germany in the mid-twentieth century, and I’m convinced they speak of our own time and of “a future blacker than has been any future which any person now living has tried to peer into.”

BUT, we must not despair.  I do not know if there will actually be a new Dark Age or not, for the gift of prediction is not given me, but I do know that it is my task (and yours) to keep a light burning in the midst of the present darkness.  My faith is that we can overcome and that morning will come.  

As the Astilbe blooms each June without fail, so too there is in our nature
a reason for hope rather than despair