Did the Renaissance Really Happen

Was the Renaissance 'a thing'? In John Green's video, he argues that the Renaissance was not really a thing (re-watch it if you forgot his argument). Do you agree? Make an argument for your side.

In the video, John Green formed his argument of how the Renaissance wasn't 'a thing' by saying that people didn't realize it was happening. He attempts to further strengthen his argument by comparing it to the climbing of the Berlin Wall, which was televised and considered a historically valuable event. This argument is pretty much invalid, because a period is known about through the events that take place within it. Of course people didn't know they were living in the Renaissance- it wasn't a singular event but a series of events spanning three centuries, which can't exactly be compared to the Berlin Wall's many scalings over the course of 20-ish years. The people who lived during that time recognized the individual events that occurred around them, such as the spread of the bubonic plague, but they didn't recognize that they were living in the Renaissance- although, thats only because the term originated in 1785. And if we're really going in-depth with this argument, what constitutes 'a thing'? 

In addition, he also adds that only a small population of Europe was really effected by the occurrences during the Renaissance, which apparently makes it completely insignificant. He is somewhat right in saying that not many were immediately effected by the changes that the Renaissance brought, but eventually many of those changes shaped art and literature in Europe. I did say somewhat right, and what sense would that make without an example of how wrong he was? An example of that is the Gutenberg printing press, which allowed the works of popular authors to be printed in the hundreds of thousands. The printing press was the groundwork for an era of mass communication, which allowed for information to be spread across Europe and increased the literacy percentages of the lower classes. The world would be vastly different had the events of the Renaissance not occurred. Most of the events that took place within this period (excluding the Black Plague) were influential in the molding of the arts, literature and technology of Europe into what they are today.