Perhaps you missed reading the entire article:
There is one great difference, however, between the medieval and modern worlds.What is more, perhaps you are not aware of who Victor Davis Hanson is:People living in the first millennium believed in transcendence and a soul, and sought to keep alive culture until civilization returned.
People living in the second millennium increasingly live for their appetites without worry about what follows -- with little awareness of what has been lost and so not a clue about how to recapture it.
Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. He was a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.Hardly someone who would "buy into a lot of stereotypes about the Middles Ages"Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is a blogger on current affairs, particularly regarding the U.S. in the Middle East and the U.S.-Mexico situation. Hanson is also a fifth-generation farmer, growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
I am well aware of who he is.
I am well aware that he also has bought into stereotypes of the Middle Ages.
“People living in the first millennium believed in transcendence and a soul, and sought to keep alive culture until civilization returned.”
This is a very generalized statement. Remember for the average peasant, life was harsh, brutish and short. Only the clerical elites knew how to read and few texts were available. Even emperor Charlemagne (800) could barely read and could not write. It would be silly to conclude that your average medieval schlub gave any thought to eternity when his entire existence resembled a Hunger Games episode that revolved around getting enough calories and avoiding torture and death from his master. Europe in the early middle ages (500-1000) was not uniformly Christianized. Large areas of what is today Germany, the Slavic nations, and Scandinavia were largely pagan. Even the French royalty did not accept Christianity until Clovis was baptized in the 480s, and that was because he saw a vision of the cross before winning a battle (much like Constantine).
True, great universities were founded in Bologna, Paris but this was much later in the 12th and 13th century corresponding with the erection of the great gothic cathedrals.
The early middle ages, and we would be lucky to have a civilization as such after WW3, has been described by some as a prolonged “western” with fights between marauding tribes, brigandage, raiding and general lawlessness and insecurity for the average serf.