The Third Dark Age is upon us. We live in the modern equivalent of the final days of Rome, waiting for the sack that finishes off the Empire once and for all. Like the Huns and their Bronze Age counterparts, invaders run rampart in our towns and cities, not only not stopped by those who claim to lead us, but actively supported by them. Meanwhile, alleged academics want to banish all knowledge of the past, for fear of the masses recognizing our decline.

Can we halt our decline? Probably not, as far down the path as we’ve come so far. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work to ensure that it is as short as possible, and that our descendants are not left in a centuries-long era of regression and barbarism.

Awakening

Out of the Greek Dark Age came legends: Homer and Exodus, mythic tales of people overcoming the great and powerful with more than a little help from their chosen deities. By the time the dust had settled, the world had changed irrevocably, a full break with the past. Gone were the Hittites and Trojans and Canaanites, while Darius and Alexander were still hundreds of years away.

It was a long road back, but we got there in the end. Eventually, rational thought returned to the Western world, largely confined to Greece at this stage. Philosophy was born, and with it the awakening of wisdom, of reason.

Much, much later, the fall of Rome and rise of Islam brought the Medieval Dark Age to Europe, all but extinguishing that light. And while the cultural and technological and even scientific knowledge of the West rose from the mire after only a relatively few generations, the higher purpose of wisdom, of the kind of knowledge that creates civilizations and jump-starts human progress, lay dormant far longer. Instead, Europe looked to religion, to mysticism and myth, for another few centuries.

Only when science had advanced far enough to prove the fairytale stories of Jewish scripture demonstrably false could the Enlightenment begin. And only when it began was Europe able to cast off the last of the darkness.

That didn’t start until the early 17th century, with great thinkers like Galileo and Bruno to start, followed later by those such as Newton and Spinoza. Eventually, the Enlightenment even began to fracture, different regions going their separate ways. The French Enlightenment, for instance, gave us the rational philosophy of Descartes and the like: ways to look at the world that didn’t invoke the supernatural. The English and even Scottish, on the other hand, contributed the wisdom of politics, economics, and the "hard" sciences. Last, but most important, was the American Enlightenment, bringing the liberal (in the classical sense) values of French thinkers together with the moral imperatives of free speech, free markets, and freedom of religion that came from their rivals across the Channel.

In that sense, then, there were still bits of darkness in the world as late as 1800. (Really, not all of them left, but I digress.) Even though Europe didn’t have wandering hordes of invaders anymore, we in the West still needed a thousand years after Charlemagne to truly return to the glory days he was trying to emulate.

And that pairs up well with the Greek Dark Age. Yes, Homer was writing his epics in the ninth or tenth century BC, but they were the beginning, not the end, of Greece’s rise. Most of the great thinkers we associate with the Greek school of philosophy came much later, in the third and fourth centuries BC. In other words, almost a full millennium after the invasions of the Sea Peoples. In a very real sense, then, the path from darkness to light was longer for medieval Europe.

Learning from the past

We must do better than that. The effects of our Third Dark Age can’t last for a thousand years. We’ve come too far as a species to allow ourselves to be dragged back into the darkness, no matter what the "traditionalist" right and "inclusive" left wish for us.

So how do we do it?

First, we must keep knowledge alive. True knowledge, the wisdom passed down to us and created in our own time. Digital collections such as Library Genesis are a good thing—the fact that elites hate them so much is a pretty good indication—but they have the downside of being, well, digital. If the Third Dark Age collapse is too great, ubiquitous computing won’t be a given. In addition to distributed, censorship-resistant online libraries, then, we need open, secure libraries in the physical world. The Library of Alexandria, except there’s one in every city, and their shared goal is to archive as much knowledge as possible, in ways that it will endure even the harshest decline.

Second, those of us who are awake to the peril must continue to share that knowledge. Within our family, our community, and our country (in that order), we should be training others in the skills we possess, while also passing down what we have learned. And this includes the greatest lessons of all: that the world is not some divine mystery; that humanity is inherently a good and positive force; that science is not reserved to the elite, or those with the right credentials, but is something every one of us experiences every single day.

Third on the list is a greater focus on that community. The post-collapse time of the previous Dark Ages was a reversion to a heavily decentralized world. An anti-globalism, or a "localism", if you will. In modern times, I can foresee that creating a multitude of city-states; we’re already pretty close to this with New York, London, and a few others. But even rural areas will have to become more self-reliant as the Third Dark Age brings a fall of the American Empire. We can’t do that if we don’t know our neighbors. (We also can’t band together to resist invasions without that sense of brotherhood, so this strengthening of community has more than one beneficial effect.)

Fourth, reconnecting with our past, in the sense of doing useful work outside of the internet. This can be writing books, building a shed, or just anything. The key is that it has a physical presence. It’s a physical manifestation of our knowledge, which matters more in a world that will come to see that knowledge as worthless in itself. I’m not saying to become a prepper—that might be more useful in other collapse circumstances—but to prepare for a major shift in what society deems important.

Above all, we need to remember, to preserve, to teach the world that the coming darkness is not eternal. There is a light beyond, and it is not the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the dawn of a new day. Working together, recognizing what we are losing and why, we have the chance to bring that new dawn faster than in our ancestors’ previous two attempts.

If knowledge is power, our job is to be a generator. And that’s what you need to keep the lights on in a disaster.

Twice before, the West faced a crisis, a series of unfortunate events that led ultimately to the decline of the reigning powers of the civilized world, a long stretch of technological stagnation or even regression, and a loss of the cultural achievements of those who came before. In short, a Dark Age.

Our world today is on the same track. We’re following those same steps, dealing with those same crises. Unlike the past, however, we have the ability to recognize what is happening, and to stop it. But we can only do that if we acknowledge our situation. To do that, we must understand the warning signs and the parallels.

The last Dark Age

Most people in the Western world have heard of the Dark Age. (Sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages, but the singular is important here, as you’ll see shortly.) The time after the fall of the Roman Empire was a period of barbarism in Europe, a long stretch of Vikings and serfdom and general horror.

Archaeological finds show that our legends of this time are exaggerated. Alas, these finds have given ammunition to those on both sides of the political spectrum who wish to argue that the Dark Age never even happened. The left will point to algebra and the Almagest to say, "See? Muslims kept making advances where white Europeans failed." The right, meanwhile, counters with, "Look at those cathedrals! That’s proof that Christianity is what kept civilization going."

Both are wrong, of course. The few Muslim inventions—and their occasional translation of ancient knowledge—don’t make up for the ravages of the Moorish conquest of Spain. The cathedrals built in the 9th century weren’t constructed from Roman concrete, because knowledge of how to make that was lost along with so much else. There was a Dark Age, no doubt about it. The only questions are how long it lasted and just how dark it was.

By any reasonable estimation, the fall of Rome was the tipping point. Many of the Gothic tribes that settled in Italy, France, and Spain at the time still considered themselves vassals of the Empire, to some extent, and some continued to pay homage to Constantinople, the eastern capital where the flame of civilization was kept alive. But even that had ended by 540, following a volcanic winter (caused by an eruption in Central America!) and attendant famines and plagues. So we can put the start of the Dark Age around 500 AD, plus or minus about 40 years.

When did it end? Tradition has it lasting as late as 1066, with the Norman Conquest. Academics like to credit Charlemagne’s accession in 800 as ending it. I’d say the best date comes in between those. The early not-quite-Renaissance of the late ninth and early tenth centuries shows that European culture was beginning to rise from its nadir far better than the end of the Merovingian era. Personally, I’d use 927, the year of Æthelstan’s coronation as king of England, as a good compromise, but you could make a case for anywhere in the range of 870-940.

In between, most of the continent was a mess. Rational thought took a back seat to mysticism and monasticism. Texts, cultural contributions, and even general knowledge of the Roman Empire all fell away, until the Romans themselves almost became mythologized. The typical Hollywood portrayal of medieval peasants in dirty, tattered clothing, treading muddy streets to go back to their thatch hovels, isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s probably closer to the truth than the almost romantic notions of some traditionalists.

The European Dark Age was, to sum up, a time where the strong ruled, the weak toiled, and the wisdom of the past was forgotten. What’s worse is that it wasn’t the first time that had happened.

The one before

As far back in history from the start of the European Dark Age as it is from our present day, the lands of the Mediterranean faced a crisis. This was precipitated by invasions from what are commonly called the Sea Peoples, a later collective name given to groups who are mostly known only from a few Egyptian accounts. We can identify some of them from such accounts, however: the Achaeans, Sicilians, Sardinians, and Philistines. Possibly also the Etruscans, though this etymology is on somewhat shakier ground.

Whoever they were, the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt, most of the Levant, and Anatolia. They clashed with the major civilizations of that time—Egyptians, Hittites, and so on—and ultimately wore them down so much that they fell into their own decline. It wasn’t a conquest, but more like a war of attrition, the same way forces in Palestine and Lebanon (almost the exact same place!) are bleeding their occupiers dry as we speak.

Dates are hard to find this far back in history, but the most common given for the start, or perhaps the height, of the troubles is 1177 BC, owing to the popular book of the same name, which isn’t bad except for the part where it does the usual academic trick of trying to be notable by minimizing the impact of known historical events.

This "Greek Dark Age", as it’s commonly called, isn’t as much known, but its effects were no less drastic than the European one that started a millennium and a half later. The Hittites fell out of history entirely, to the point where our only knowledge of them as recently as 200 years ago was a mention in the Bible. The Egyptians fared a little better, but lost most of their holdings east of the Sinai to the Philistines and Canaanites, who—in another event paralleled by modern times—later lost them to invading Hebrews. Farther north, Troy fell to an alliance that included Sea Peoples; its collapse was so total that the modern West thought the whole city was a myth until it was rediscovered.

Three thousand years is a long time, so it’s only reasonable that we have far less data about the Greek Dark Age. We don’t know a lot of details about it, but what we do know shows that it follows the same pattern as the one that befell Europe later on.

What’s to come

The biggest contributor to both of the previous Dark Ages is invasion. Rome was invaded by Goths, Huns, Vandals, and (later) Moors, all of whom picked apart the bones of the empire and left little behind for its citizens. The Sea Peoples did much the same to the powers of the Bronze Age, even when Ramesses II tried to resettle some of them.

It’s not hard to see that pattern repeating today. Our own country is being invaded as we speak, as are so many of the major Western powers. Millions of "asylum-seekers" who consume resources but refuse to assimilate, who provoke or cause violence, who care nothing for the sentiments of those who call this land home. The Haitians eating pets in Ohio, the Venezuelans capturing apartment complexes in Colorado, the rape gangs of England…these are the modern Sea Peoples, the modern Huns and Moors. And they are one tip of the trident thrust our way.

The apocalyptic conditions of the 530s contributed to the European Dark Age, as well as the fall of a number of smaller cultures in the Middle East, where the resulting power vacuum provided fertile ground for a Muslim conquest. It’s harder to pinpoint a major ecological disaster for the Greek Dark Age; probably the closest is an impact (or airburst) event on the shores of the Dead Sea circa 1600 BC, the historical basis for the Sodom and Gomorrah myth. But that must be too far back. Undoubtedly, the Sea Peoples wanted to migrate south for some reason. Perhaps it’s linked to the fall of the Minoans on Crete, another total collapse in that era.

Today, we don’t seem to have as much to worry about on that front. We’re in a stable climate epoch, a period of global "greening" while temperatures remain steady and comfortable. In our case, the ecological angle of collapse might come from an overreaction on the part of—or simply led by—doomsayers who claim our relatively quiescent climate is somehow a bad thing, and that we need to go back to the days of the Little Ice Age.

More likely, ecology will be used as a way to contribute to the collapse. We already see that happening, as clean nuclear plants are shut down and replaced with toxic solar panels and bird-killing turbines. Eugenics is another possibility: the attempts by the so-called "elite" to force us to eat bugs or genetically modified plants, to take experimental drugs that are shown to have a deleterious effect on our health.

The third and final pillar that must fall to create a Dark Age is cultural continuity. In modern times, that one isn’t so much collapsing as being demolished. The entire agenda of ideologies such as progressivism and communism is to create a clean break with the past, with the traditions and customs that brought us to where we are. What little history is allowed to be learned is shown through a distorted lens, and too many who should oppose such acts instead welcome them, hoping that, in the chaos that follows, their particular ideologies will have a chance to step forward.

To be continued

Our new Dark Age, then will come from those factors: unchecked immigration, ecological fear-mongering, and the destruction of our heritage. That’s not to say these things will start happening soon. No, they’re already happening. With every border crossing, every falsified temperature record, every statue torn down, we sink deeper into the darkness. We’re on the path of decline right now. We have been for almost the entire 21st century.

The question then becomes: what are we going to do about it? In the next post, I’ll offer my own thoughts on a solution. To combat the Third Dark Age, I believe we’ll need a Second Enlightenment.