Witness all of the negative press about the middle ages - especially from the church and industry. "They didn't have technology!" and "It was a primitive time!" ring out the nervous calls. But every few years some astonished scientist staggers out of his or her lab and points out that in some detail, the middle ages clearly was every bit as advanced as we are now - much as the Greeks and Romans were - and that points to a more advanced society as a whole. This person is quickly drowned out by exciting news about television shows, a middle ages revival? where's the profit in that? You have been taught the "progressive" view of history: the past was primitive because they did not have technology and morality, and since we now have these things, we are steadily moving toward Utopia. Interestingly, the techno-paranoid societies of "1984" and "Brave New World" also insisted the same thing. Are you seeing how cheap words are, yet?

Despite the endless subtle propaganda against it, the past was not a terrible time. It did not have the technology we have now, or the egalitarian empowerment, and as a result it was less encumbered with the pretense of the individual and the demands of technology. You did not have large discount stores, but then again, you didn't spend time in cars driving to them or waiting in line while the credit card machine malfunctions (all technology seems to work great "on paper" but when deployed in real life, screw up constantly). If you declared that you were a caprisexual and wanted to spend the rest of your life making love to goats, they threw you out of your town and you had to find a new place to settle, such as the free-for-all republics of North Africa and the Middle East. On the other hand, you did not have one hand tied down in every decision because doing the right thing would offend - someone.