It's time for a periodic reminder:

stop using the misrepresentation of medieval past to excuse our deeply-flawed present.

It's the cheapest of tricks to brand the failure to create a just, competent, and solidarist society as medieval. And no, it does not mean that the medieval past was a paradise. It means that you cannot use it to create a convenient narrative of false progress in the present.

You cannot brand every failure of our times as "medieval": those are our failures. The medieval past isn't there to make y'all feel better and somehow excuse a failure to react with compassion and competence.

You can create as many "Dark Ages" as you want to feel the wind of progress combing through your hair as we speed towards a societal disaster but the bad news is: it's not gonna make the "Dark Ages" any more real.

So drop it, talk with the actual researchers of the past who are actually going to tell you that yes, in times of crisis it's the arts and humanities that are left to pick up the pieces, yes, people in the past were curious about the world and no, history is not the past itself.