Easter Greeting

I am eighteen years old. The study of History is coming alive. Not a single story in human events fails to inspire my fascination. And yet, it is around this time when I also begin to see how utterly twisted and distorted Western academia has become.

In my History of World Civilizations course, I was coming across the terms “CE” and “BCE” where one would have expected to find “BC” and “AD” period indicators. CE, of course, is a reference to the “Current Era,” substituting the BC/AD indicators (“Before Christ,” from the Latin Ante Christum, and “Anno Domine,” meaning “Year of Lord,” respectively.).

At first, I wasn’t sure whether this new innovation was a positive or just a neutral change. So what if we “universalize” the dating system, right? By now, however, its perfectly clear to me why this change is at once irrational as well as arrogant. This innovation is really just another indication that the academy is in a state of moral and intellectual confusion, that is perhaps irreversible.

And just how do a couple of letters lead me to this inference?

Let me start from the beginning: The BC/AD system is attributable to a sixth century monk named Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor (modern day: Romania.). Doinysius thought it high time for Christian Europe to discontinue its use of the Diocletian dating system, named for the third/fourth century Caesar who immediately preceded Constantine the Great.

No doubt the monk’s chief motivation for the change was Diocletian’s bloody legacy of Christian persecution. Indeed, the first decade of the fourth century AD marked the last and most gruesome series of Christian persecutions under the Empire. Historians low-ball a figure of about 3,000 Christians who were burned, boiled, buried alive, crucified or tortured to death in that decade alone (For perspective, during the Spanish Inquisition, beginning in 1478 and ending in 1834, between 1,000 and 4,000 were executed for heresy.).

(As an aside, another highlight of Diocletian’s reign was the Edict on Maximum Prices which naïvely attempted to halt ramped inflation by installing penalties on merchants who set prices above the maximum. Supply and demand were lost on Diocletian. The policy ultimately resulted in an abrupt halt to market activity, while effectively giving rise to black market activity, more inflation and monetary instability. If that didn’t work, surely the Edict on Coinage provided some Imperial Hope. Devaluing the coinage in order to repay the Empire’s debts was definitely going to halt inflation and preserve the price of gold, yes? Nope.).

Planned economies: Screwing Free Markets since 301 AD.

We get the picture. Diocletian: model of justice, legacy of greatness? Not so much.

Of course, dating systems which reflected the reign of individual monarchs or dynastic periods had remained a standard method for most of human history. The practice remained common well into the Middle Ages.

But, Dionysius felt that man’s time ought to reflect the new reign of the King of kings. Dionysius’ reform of drawing the Christian world back to the birth of Christ spread to every Western Christian country during the Middle-Ages. These countries had formerly comprised Rome itself. In 1422, Portugal became the last to adopt the BC/AD system. This was the universal dating system, and remains so to this day.

Within a generation of Portugal’s adoption, Europe – unified under the banner Christendom – mounted the crest of the High Renaissance: the rebirth of Roman knowledge, culture and glory. Europe emerged from the dark ages, previously brought on by godless barbarism, thanks to the Church’s preservation of ancient knowledge. Thanks to the Christian monasteries, the writings of Greece and Rome were in tact and Western civilization was saved (in more ways than one.).

During this time, the Church itself served as patron to Da Vinci, Michaelango and Raphael. Philosophy was revived. Commerce was flourishing. Scientific knowledge was increasing. The Enlightenment of the post-renaissance was only a natural consequence of Christian Europes swift march down the path of cultural and scientific revolution.

Now, it would be wholly inaccurate to talk about Europe between the Middle-Ages and the mid-Twentieth Century as a place of constant peace and Christian brotherhood. However, even world regions comprised of warring nation-states, while united under a single religion (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), never experienced a moment like the Renaissance. Christianity bound the nations of Europe, separated by language and ancient claims to land and superiority, under a common law and a common purpose. Christian Europe shared its knowledge, and Western civilization charged ahead in every field of human production.

Today, Europe squanders the fruits of Christianity’s impact, denying its Christian heritage and reshaping its institutions into “unoffensive” secular versions of their former selves. Western academia seeks to replace Christian dating with non-confrontational, non-sectarian, non-feeling-hurting nonsense-terms like “Current Era” and “Before Current Era.” The reason of course is to avoid offending non-Christians. The glaring problem with the new system – that is, the feature which makes it entirely irrational – is the fact that there is no push to alter the dates themselves. Indeed, the year is still 2009 – proponents of the new system would call it 2009 CE rather than 2009 AD.

Odd how the “Current” Era still happens to coincide with the “Year of Our Lord.” With eyes still fixed on the birth of Christ as our demarcating line, the dating itself still separates human history into before and after the coming of Christ. After all, what exactly is so “current” about events that occurred 2009 years ago? Moreover, what would be the need to separate human history into two periods: shouldn’t we just use a constant stream of years? We could be in the year 200,000, say (the approximate age of the human genome.). Nay, that would offend rocks. Heck, lets just call it the year 4,000,000,000 and be done with it.

Actually, the whole reason behind the change is that BC/AD may offend those who believe that, in these modern times, all cultural, governmental and social institutions ought to be re-organized to fit secular fashion. Thus, we shall simply call this 2009th Year of Our Lord the “Current” era. Then, we shall just try to forget about the legacy of this pesky religion that saved civilization. The same religion which preserved education and learning for a thousand years – without which there would be no “Current” university professors here to distort history.

As a matter of fact, being that I cry myself to sleep over the oppression modern calenders inflict on me, I submit that we rid ourselves of these hideous theocratic month-names: Janus (god gates and doorways), Februum (purification ritual) Mars (god of war), Aphrillis (godess of love), Maia (godess of fertility), Juno (wife of Jupiter). Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus and Octavian are secular month-name inspirations enough, I suppose. Nothing wrong with worshiping human beings as secular gods. Perhaps we could even rename one Obamuary or another Caesar Chavember.

Happy Easter.