Pandemics

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Black Death-
A DISTANT MIRROR- historian Barbara Tuchman
writes about how people acted when plague killed
half the population of Europe in the 14th century.

Since no one knew how the disease was carried-
the idea of fleas on rats carrying fatal infection being
beyond all conception- people had all sorts of theories
about what was going on. But there was no logic to it.
At the time, life was mainly lived in towns or villages.
People didn't travel much; roads were dangerous.
Nations as such didn't exist. So everything was local.

The plague was beyond reason, impossible to fathom.
Medievalism was shattered... Absolutism, too. After all,
if God was all powerful and loving, how could He allow
such horror? And if God wasn't all powerful and loving,
what was the point of the Church? Or of existence?

Whole towns died while, next door, another town was
spared. Some became super-religious; others turned
to depravity and orgy; some towns walled themselves
in, others didn't. Every sort of superstition was present
and conspiracy theories (e.g., of witchcraft), as well as
altruism, selfishness, panic and serenity.

It's said, "The sleep of reason produces monsters."
The plague ended belief in the Church. Schism
followed and, then, the birth of the modern psyche,
one shaped by skepticism, science and rationalism.

The Age of Reason  advocated that people could
govern themselves. So the "triumph of democracy"
followed the American and French Revolutions--
thereby ending both civic and religious authority.

Now we're seeing something not unlike the insanity
which accompanied the plague. The paralysis of our
Congress raises critical issues re: the social contract;
the assumptions we make about what democracy is;
the degree of stress we're willing or able to tolerate;
and what happens if "the center cannot hold."

2013 is looking a lot like 1326 when the plague hit.