New Moon in Capricorn: Musing on Dark Ages

It's a strange thing, the way human needs work. There comes a point when you have gone so long without meeting a need that you don't even think you have the need anymore. People who are starving don't get more and more ravenous. They eventually reach a point where they don't feel hunger. Even if they start to eat again, they can't dive in all at once. They need to start slowly, remember how to eat and digest.

When you go too long without an intellectual rest, similar things happen. Competence wanes. The well of inspiration goes dry. Your work gets harder. The results are sloppier, more and more derivative. This bothers you, at first. Then it stops bothering you. Once it stops bothering you, you're in a dangerous place. Extreme starvation has its own momentum. It takes an outside force to intervene and keep you from limping along forever.

You might, from time to time, look back at things that you've done in the past with awe the way Dark Age Europeans looked at the ruins of Roman architecture. You know that you aren't capable of those great things anymore, but your curiosity is gone. You don't have the will or the courage to ask yourself, "Why are these things beyond me now? What would it take to get back to my full strength?"

And, anyway, why bother creating something from scratch when you can remix or use generative AI? Maybe Silicon Valley is right, and creativity is just one more problem to be solved with machines. We just need to ask the right questions and get the algorithm right. One more all-nighter, one more push, and we’ll never have to be tired again.

Dark Age Europeans told themselves that the world was once inhabited by giants.

Did some part of them remember that they had been giants once? Did they ever wonder if they were just tired, or if they had fallen into decline? Did they ever ask themselves why? They couldn't see the universities and cathedrals their children would build. They could only look behind with the certainty that they would never build Roman aqueducts again.

Maybe, they didn't think about those things at all. Maybe, they told themselves that thinking about the past was a distraction. There were kingdoms to build. Neighboring warlords to fight. That ship in the harbor might be carrying plague.

Eventually, we know, they got back to work, meticulously copying manuscripts in a language they could no longer read, because, once upon a time, someone believed the task was useful.

Recent historical scholarship suggests that the Dark Ages weren't as dark as we were once lead to believe, but the story of the years between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance persists because it is an important cultural myth.

The Dark Ages remind us that time moves in a circle and a line.

Rome is gone. Its language is dead, and its monuments are ruins. It is no longer possible to walk across the continent on Roman roads, and Roman tax collectors can no longer compel you to pay for their bureaucracy. But you can trace your finger along the arc of history and find empires that rhyme.

Some historical accounts jump through time from monument to monument, empire to empire, but that isn't an accurate picture. Human energy rises and falls, waxes and wanes like the moon. There are times when we active and growing to new heights, and there are times when we rest and decline. Often, we are doing both simultaneously in different areas of our lives.

New Moon in Capricorn: Darkest Moon in the Darkest Season

I am writing this just before the New Moon in Capricorn. In the northern hemisphere, this is the time when the moon's cycle and the sun's cycle align. We are at the darkest phase of the moon's monthly cycle at the darkest phase of the sun's annual cycle. The heart is in darkness at the dead of winter.

Our ancestors chased away the dark with candles, but they also knew it's time to be tired. It’s time to rest.

Are you resting? When was the last time you really deeply, truly checked in with your heart?