The Dark Ages
Photo of a silver birch tree with two pronounced bends in its trunk on a wintery common ground. The sky is silvery grey.
They say ‘history repeats itself’ and it does, of course. I’ve got a PhD in history, so you can trust that I know what I am talking about. Anyway, this tree is actually a very old tree and it has lived through a time which in some ways resembles the one we have now. Be prepared then reader, for this is a cautionary tale.
The reason this tree on Linchmere Common is bendy, is because during its lifetime the sun disappeared. As such, the tree, not having eyeballs to see, just gradually reoriented itself to a second source of power and energy: the molten core of the earth. When the sun came back, the tree turned upwards again to the original, greater source of energy. It’s stayed growing that way for some time now, but I have it on good authority that it may well have to make another turn soon.
Saying the sun disappeared is a bit of a poor description, so I apologise for that. By ‘disappear’, what I mean to record is that the sun was so flabbergasted by some humans that it face-palmed its radiant self and thrust the earth into darkness. It stayed like this for quite some time and it’s what we mean when we say The Dark Ages. It was quite literally dark and across the entire earth, not just Europe. The European Dark Ages are a different thing and I think it was a pretty poor idea to reuse the term, as it means that everyone’s forgotten about the real Dark Ages.
Anyway, you’re probably curious about why the sun would face-palm. I would be if I were you, and as the late, uber-great Toni Morrison sort of once said, ‘If there’s something that you want to know, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must make it up.’ So the reason the sun face-palmed is because of women’s stupidity. There, I said it, sorry not sorry at all.
Let me explain.
A great, great many years ago, women were pretty much sorted as a social class and were going about their days doing this and that and whatever they wanted. They were independent and able to make social, fiscal, and a variety of other contracts according to their own terms. Some of them had great jobs and were leaders in their field, some of them were wild women of the woods foraging about for roots and whatever else they wanted, some of them stayed within their communities raising kids, getting married, and doing things like that. In sum, women were pretty much free to act out their true selves as they saw fit and they all lived a life of dignity and grace.
One day, one of the wild women found a plant she had never encountered before and decided to brew a tea with it. She and seven of her sisters sat about and shared a ceremonial cup and shortly thereafter, discovered that the ingestion of the tea resulted in the ability to control their own shadows.
The wild women were mighty impressed with this new herb, which we shall call Batmanjullah, as they swiftly realised that they could get their shadows to do all the boring stuff they didn’t want to. For instance, they sent their shadow selves to sit on Council meetings and to participate in the town spring cleaning.
One day, one of the career women was sat next to a young wild woman’s shadow at a particularly boring Council meeting. They struck up a conversation and the next thing you knew, the loose lipped and immature shadow spilled the Batmanjullah beans.
Well, the career woman perked right up and spied an excellent entrepreneurial opportunity. Off she went into the woods to collect some Batmanjullah for herself. She set about growing the herb in polytunnels at the edge of the town, and then distilled the leaf and root down into a popular carbonated beverage. However, being not a wild woman, the career woman did not have training in the power of the herbs, and so every bottle of the elixir she sold ended up in disaster.
One-by-one shadows peeled off the people, and suddenly finding themselves free and without a prior apportioned agenda, the shadows went on a rampage. Man shadows and lady shadows, child shadows and adult, why even one or two dogs lapped the rims of an elixir bottle and turned into dastardly demon hounds. The shadows had practically destroyed the entire town before the sun decided to step in.
‘Sweet Jesus’, thought the sun, ‘what a bunch of idiots these women are. How can they have forgotten that the wild women of the woods have a special knowledge which enables them to bind their shadows with well-intentioned mantras? How can entrepreneurialism have blossomed into such reckless self-efficacy?’ As such, and in order to express its monumental disappointment, the sun manifested a palm by way of a solar flare and buried its face deep within it, thus plunging the earth into a period of total darkness. This is all clearly marked by the first turn in our bendy tree.
The sun’s face stayed buried in its palm for quite some time, during which the shadows of the people naturally disappeared being without a light source to illuminate them. In time, the people came to restart their lives without fear of their rampaging shadow selves. They subsequently held a Very Important Meeting where all agreed that Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should. The Wild Women agreed to not recklessly share their secrets (and raised the minimum age of spell casting), and the Career Women agreed that not everything was a money making opportunity. The rest of the town agreed to use more reason and long-term thinking in their purchasing decisions. The sun, of course, observed all this and once it was certain that the people had learned from their mistake, it de-manifested its hand and thus re-illuminated the world. That moment is clearly marked by the second turn in our bendy tree.
Nowadays, a lot of people intuit that we are on a precipice and that something monumental is going to happen. Something which changes society irrevocably and in ways we cannot possible imagine. A lot of people talk about an ‘economic singularity’ and AI and whatnot, and to be honest, I was in that camp until recently. However, bendy tree has given me a message and it is one I believe we should all take seriously. What if the actual emergency, the actual epic change, is that the sun is about to face-palm again due to the normalisation of idiotic and desperate women doing debased and crass things like publicly fucking 1000 men a day all for likes and attention..?