Myth and History

I took a look on Wikipedia's List of time periods to give myself a better sense of history and to help put my story in context. Unfortunately, I feel that the truth often gets lost in the facts. When you tell of your people's history in myth, you can learn from history. When history is just a collection of facts, it loses all meaning.

Of course, the next logical question is "Whose truth is the right one?" Well, if you study history, you notice certain trends and traditions which have often been satirized in fiction, however they are often contained in metaphor, historical fiction, speculative fiction (or science fiction to all you non-nerds out there [Heh. As if anyone who reads my blog isn't a nerd.]), or what have you. And the closer history gets to the present the more facts we have and the less truth.

We have a layman's American mythology of history... of Greece, Rome, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration and Colonization... It basically goes something to the effect of...

Once upon a time, people (that is to say white people) were really, really stupid and dug around in the dirt a lot until we got smart and built shit. We got temples and columns and built silly little temples to a bunch of gods we had for all sorts of elements. We thought the world was made of the four elements, but we are a lot smarter than that now.

...

So we founded Greece and the Romans took over Greece... and kinda became Greece but now they called themselves Rome and they were really smart too and took over all sorts of stuff but then this dude Jesus came, they killed him, and God squished Rome into the Dark Ages. Which was awful because you couldn't see anything.

I'm pretty sure I stole that last joke from Eddie Izzard. Anyway, then we had castles and knights and princesses and fairies and magic but then Merlin said the world was becoming too Christian and decided to go some place that wouldn't kill him for his beliefs. Meanwhile, we went to the Middle East to kill people for their beliefs... and since we were already there anyway, we helped ourselves to the wealth of jewels and spices.

Speaking of spices, the kings of Dumbsfuckylvania needed to be snootier and prissier than the emperor of Marzipan so he sent ships out to get a bunch of it and in the process discovered there was more to the world than just him. Naturally, this terrified him and so he set out to conquer and enslave everything... which he did. He manage to do this in the most dickish way possible by pretending to be everyone's friend, talking to them about Jesus, and stealing all of their shit. It was the great European pyramid scheme which fell apart when the rest of the world realized that (A) we are dicks and (B) they outnumber us.

Now stay with me for a slight detour. I'm reminded of a line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer where one vampire says something to the effect of "A lot of guys talk about the end of the world, but they don't actually do it." Similarly, a lot of people tried to take over the world, but it wasn't until Hitler that anyone would really do it.

My story seeks to merge myth with history. The setting is factual. The stories are fiction... but true none the less. Not to sound too much like Winston Smith, but there seems to be no sense of history any more.

Anyway, I came across a list of historical ages that coincide with comic book eras pretty well. This is in what they categorize as the Post-Modern era.

• The Atomic Age (circa 1946-1957) - Perfect! I was already using this name and it is the perfect period. I'm sure I heard this somewhere before, but it's nice to know this phrase is a reckognized term.
• The Space Age (1958-1971) - This fits almost perfectly with the period that comic historians call the Silver Age. They both are representative of the same things: hope and change.
• The Information Age (1972-present) - This corresponds to the Bronze Age... although I'd say the Bronze Age ends in 1986 with Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Watchmen. We are currently in the Modern Age of comics, they say. Perhaps its time for the post-modern age of comics.

Douglas Rushkoff once suggested that the Information Revolution is poorly named because information can be quantified and measured (like facts). This was, in fact, a Communications Revolution... dictated by unmeasurable truths.

I'm thinking about calling the period after the Bronze Age, representing 1988 to 2000, the Silicon Age, but I'm not certain. It is meant to represent the beginning of the computer age and the internet, of course. I think the end of using precious metals to define ages is significant. Maybe I will just call them The Age of War, The Atomic Age, The Space Age, The Information Age, and The Silicon Age. I don't know...