The New Dark Ages

We live in an empty age. In fact, I'd go further than that. With humankind breeding out of control, natural resources being depleted faster than the Earth can replenish them, religious fundamentalism on the increase, the world in thrall - and hock - to faceless multinationals, owned by a small coterie of billionaires who call the shots, I can't help but think that we are either on the precipice, or in the throes of, a New Dark Age.

I’m not referring to the parlous state of the global economy, nor the shrinking rain forests, nor the plethora of ridiculous wars that we human beings visit upon one another. I’m thinking more of the Dark Age of the Mind.

We live in an age blessed — or perhaps cursed — with more sources of information and knowledge than at any other time in human history — printed media, mobile devices, ever-expanding universities and so forth, and yet these media seem increasingly obsessed with the trivial, banal and down right stupid.

So I’ve constructed something of a hermit’s cave, or mental gymnasium, right here in the belly of the beast – the Internet – that last wild, unconquered virtual wilderness, where would-be messiahs, lunatics and obsessives seem to spend their days proselytizing to we, the uninitiated (or uninterested).

It’s just a place to regain my sense of perspective, and my rusty writing skills that were once relatively well honed. It’s also a place I hope to generate a little bit of light of my own, for whatever reason.

It’s good to write. I stopped doing it for quite a few years, and I lost the most important part of myself in so doing. I’m back, and the point is not that somebody reads this, but that I wrote it in the first place.