The Dark Ages™

an excerpt from Panopticon Remix:

Picture it like this: You're born in a dank, smelly, dusty hut with a dirt floor. When you are old enough you are set to work in the fields for the Lord Of The Land™. If you don't provide enough the soldiers come. Perhaps you get drafted to fight in one of the dozens of small wars between this lord and that lord or between this king and that king or between the followers of this sect and the followers of that sect. Or perhaps you are drafted as a laborer for one of the great and grandiose projects your leader envisions; a big wall, a lavish palace, an ostentatious tomb. Better not complain. Maybe you even survive all of this, to come back to the home you do not own and work again. From the day you were born to the day you die your life is not your own. You cannot read, you know of no other life than a short and miserable one at service to people you have never even seen. Maybe if you're lucky you will not fall victim to any one of the thousands of illnesses they cannot cure yet. Maybe if you're lucky you won't be murdered outright in this era of lawlessness. Maybe you'll live to a ripe old age, to see your children felled by war and disease and overwork. Then die, then repeat. Continue this for a few thousand years.

Or maybe that's too depressing for you and you prefer to identify with the rulers. Who wouldn't? So how about this: You are born into more wealth and power than you rightly know what to do with. Your slightest whim is made into reality, you hold in your hands the lives and deaths of thousands of people. Dirty, smelly people -- barely even people at all. You bask in pleasure every waking moment of your life. This is the Divine Right Of Kings™. Then, one day, you get murdered by your own guards. Or by your brother. Or your son. Right before you die you think for a moment about how tenuous your "power" always was, or more likely you just think about how unfair this is. Or heck, maybe you live a long life and it's only after you die that your entire bloodline is brutally wiped out by the competition. It happens.

Either way, insert some Dark Ages™. Fast forward through the needless suffering, the ignorance, the filth. Or, if you’re one of those ren-faire type people, fast forward through an era of unheralded chivalry and honor. Either way, skip ahead a few thousand years.