2014-05-13
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The term renaissance means rebirth, but in order for anything to be reborn, there first needed to be a death.
And that death doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing.
We see instances in our everyday lives where there are figurative renaissances where nothing really bad happens when that death occurs.
For example, you could go on a new diet and lose 100 pounds and feel like you're personally experiencing a renaissance.
The only death there is the death of your old, unhealthy lifestyle.
Nothing really bad there.
You could, for example, end a long period of corruption in your local government,
where you fire a few people down at City Hall and your city experiences a renaissance.
You know, the potholes are finally getting filled, the lines at the DMV are only three hours long now.
But what died in order to usher in THE renaissance?
The answer is between 30 and 60% of the entire population of Europe.
What died was an entire way of life.
We say renaissance in modern times and there's a pretty positive connotation associated with it.
Because of that, it would be very easy for us to think about it in a black and white way.
It would be very easy for us to just look at the renaissance as the catalyst between modern times and the middle ages and declare
that the renaissance was the good time period to live in and the middle ages was the bad time period to live in,