Return of the Dark Ages

 Last week, the US Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that UFOs are probably demons or "fallen angels" expelled from heaven for their sins. "That," she said "is what makes sense in my world view." Well who can argue with such logic?

The Dark Ages, as I am hardly the first to remark, seem to be returning. Occult forces we believed the Age of Reason had banished forever are swarming back  into public life. Last year the popular American broadcaster Tucker Carlson explained that he had been "mauled" by a demon while sleeping. It had "left claw marks on my side." (You don't have to be a sceptic in the league of David Hume to wonder whether the fact that Carlson sleeps with his "four dogs in the bed" is relevant.)

A few weeks ago Jordan Peterson's daughter Michaela said her father had been "spiritually attacked" by diabolic forces. And in a recent speech... Peter Thiel set out a series of  prophecies concerning the coming of the anti-Christ...

It is becoming clear we have drastically undervalued the rare and precious achievement of a civilisation founded on rational thought.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
William Blake (1757-1827)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

Ironically, as the Dark Ages return, the Enlightenment philosophers and scientists who campaigned against zealotry and ignorance... - are patronisingly downgraded by revisionist historians... The darker truth is that ignorance and superstition are never far from the surface of human affairs...

Readers hardly need telling that the recent spate of demon attacks are but a colourful symptom of a world losing its reason. Significant portions of the US government are virtually at war with science... We cannot underestimate the magnitude  of this anti-rational shift...

In China a new law decrees that that online influencers must hold relevant qualifications in the topics they discuss. Compare the West, where public discourse chases such valuable themes as whether Brigitte Macron is a man, whether the earth is flat and whether science is a "pagan faith." ...

One of the traditional advantages of free democracies over their totalitarian rivals has been the superior rationality of debate in a liberated public sphere. For how much longer?

For Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, superstition and zealotry are the cornerstones of their profitability. The only answer is to rediscover the original uncompromising crusading spirit of the Enlightenment...

When looking for a leader, admirers of science look for the "quality of the content of your ideas, not who looks more dashing in a scarf". Unreason, by contrast, is subversive, edgy and emotionally appealing. (That it looks dashing in a scarf is at least partially refuted  by the existence of Russell Brand.)...

Ecrasez l'infame - crush the loathsome thing - was Voltaire's war cry as he went to battle against the bigotry of his age. In our own unenlightened time, we need to rediscover  this spirit. Ecrasez l'infame!

(James Marriott, The Times, 2025)

In our celebrity driven culture where fame rather than knowledge becomes the arbiter of what we buy, what we eat and more importantly, what we say. Is it any wonder that rational thought comes a poor second? The restoration of respect for informed expertise over the influencer culture is what should be aimed for. China, in this respect, sets a very good example to those of us who live in the West.