Nobody really thinks about or remembers the Spanish Flu, the Asian Flu, Hongkong Flu or SARS etc, but everyone knows about the Great Depression. The current Flu seems to have used dodgy computer modelling to shut down the world economy, the coming recession will cause greater and more long term damage than this flu ever will, even assuming the worst computer model predictions.I think he is drawing false conclusions from that first sentence, that this is somehow evidence that the Great Depression was worse. We remember it now, so it must be bigger.
The dead are soon forgotten, while the experiences of those who survive very quickly become the only history anyone thinks about. That is not a comment about the relative destruction of disease versus economic hardship, but human nature in general. When we remember Vietnam now, it is rare, even among veterans who were there and saw the dead, that we talk about them. We talk about the return home, PTSD, divided politics, military strategy, plus all the really cool cultural byproducts in music and movies for the young. The parents or siblings of those who died might remember. Might. But even uncles and cousins have long moved on. The military makes concerted efforts to remember in general, as does government, but as individuals vanish from our sight our brains just move on as well. We have ceremonies to put the dead to rest. We think it is their rest, but it is ours. Flowers for the newly dead, wood for the recently dead, stone for the completely dead.
My best friend from high school died in his early fifties. I think of him a few times a year, for a few moments. Those who I see at reunions I think of more often. Memory is terrible in its injustice. Even among the most important people in our lives it can be "out of sight, out of mind." Where does the phrase "life is very daily" come from? I can't pull it up, but it is a true thought.
Disease vanishes from history, even when a separate examination with disease in mind reveals that plague, more than princes, has brought empires down. Rome's "first fall" in the 3rd C and a few of its stumbles were caused by disease, and that may be the overall main cause of the final collapse. The West failed to rise again in the 6th C because of the Plague of Justinian. The New World was conquered by disease. Even now our history books do not often record these things. We tell ourselves other stories. There probably isn't any other way for a people to survive.
Richard Fernandez made the point recently that the Great Gatsby, written very soon after the Spanish Flu killed tens of millions, never mentions it once.
ReplyDeleteIt's a frightening thing, really, that this is who we are. That we can pick ourselves up and head off to the harvest the next day is likely how we survived as a species. Does it make what we say about ourselves and our compassion a lie?
ReplyDeleteFunerals help: they hand off the loved one to God's care.
ReplyDeleteI assume part of what we say about ourselves and our compassion is a lie, especially a lie that we tell ourselves. On the other hand, as Gus says in Lonesome Dove, "The only thing to do with death is ride off from it." There's no choice, not really. We have to ride on, and it doesn't make it better if we dwell on it. I found my father's death very difficult to ride off from. I don't know that it helped me that it was so hard; I am sure it didn't help him.
ReplyDeleteHe had a great funeral, though. I don't know if that helped either, but he'd have been so proud to see it that he couldn't have actually watched it as a living man. It would have embarrassed him beyond endurance to see so many honors heaped on him by so many people. Being dead was the only way he could have stood to attend it.
A talk I saw recently referenced the Roaring Twenties as a cultural decision to not have their lives changed by the Spanish Flu and the Great War, but to consciously reject it. I have no clue if that is true at all, but it’s the Headline Only version of history, which rarely tracks with real life, so I have been wary.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in Montréal, I developed a theory that the sidewalk-cafe culture, festival culture, and summer party culture were a direct response to the especially long duration of winter forcing people to stay indoors, and the short duration of the summer when such activity is practical.
ReplyDelete"we've only got ~max 12 weeks to have city-life outdoors, let's make sure that we make good use of the other 40 in planning how to make the most of it!"
So I'm sympathetic to the theory that pent-up demand caused an opposite extreme after WWI austerity and Spanish Flu restrictions on gatherings. I'm certainly seeing a lot of people announcing plans for what they'll do "once this is all over".
DOuglas2