Outline Lecture Seven—Confronting the Plague

I) Wisdom and Community: Other-centeredness

a) What Can Split a Community Apart?
i) Centrifugal force of individual interests and motives
ii) Freudian theories like that of the Oedipal Complex
(1) We’ve always been mired in this vicious cycle of human civilization
(2) Born in the very cradle of violence
(3) Son takes mother, daughter wants father etc
iii) Human civilization born in the very cradle of violence?
(1) Get people to obey laws? Punishment
(a) Even a civil society is based on violence (if you do x we will hurt you)
(b) Violence is at the center of everything
(2) Punishment threat keeps people together
b) What Can Keep Us Together?
i) Are we also “hard-wired” to cooperate, to defer to others’ needs at times?
(1) What makes us want to be together?
(2) Neuroscience studies display that (amygdala) provides us with defensive
emotions but also this section can empathize and teach us to show kindness
towards each other
(3) We are hardwired for violence, but also hardwired for cooperation
ii) Robert Sapolsky’s (neuroendopthologist) seminal study of baboons
Spent time in Kenya studying troupes of baboons and their tred of new young males
come into a troupe they always cause violence
In one particular group the conflict and transition was shorter and less than usual
It had to do with the matriarchs in that group: they were passing on a sense of
community and acceptance
The ability of the group to pass on their ethos of harmony and acceptance
This act gave an advantage to the group over others that had more violence
(1) Abstraction and complexity of empathy
(a) What Sapolsky saw in these baboons
(b) Primates and humans have an exceptional capacity for empathy
(c) Our ability to defer and postpone the benefit for the sake of larger benefit later
on. Also, the ability to embrace to be counterintuitive and counter-instinctive
– like forgiving someone
(d) Sister Helen Prijean: “The more unforgivable the act, the more we need to
forgive”
(2) Potential for “wisdom” vs. a survivalist intelligence
(a) It seems they can’t go hand in hand but we can figure that to be yes

II) The Specter of Pandemics in Human History

a) Recent outbreaks of contagion
Zika, Ebola (Liberia right now), H1N1, SARS, Measles (anti-vaxxers), swine flu, mad
cow disease, 1980s AIDS/HIV
We were lucky they didn’t break out to the degree of the Spanish Flu or bubonic plague
In the hands of the CDC are we safe and protected?
 i) Risk of major outbreak of zoonotic infection
(1) We just don’t know what will happen
ii) David Quammen’s Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

(1) Thinks they will be a new terrible outbreak of animal related diseases
(2) Because there is little buffer left between humans and animals – distance has
shrunk more and more, increasing the chance of a quickly spreading pandemic
(3) Global travel and globalization
b) Pandemics throughout human history
There have always been pandemics
Always played a big role in shaping history – contributing the popularity of Buddhism
and Christianity
Looking at the old testament, reliable records of the Greek historian Uridices
The plague killed ¼ of the population of Athens
i) Detailed account of a devastating plague that ravaged Athens in 430 B.C.E.
Athens was very packed with people – huge population density
ii) Small-pox and measles in the Roman and Han empires in the 2nd century AD
Massive outbreaks killing large portions of the populations of these two peoples
iii) 6th century AD bubonic plague in the city of Constantinople
Good records, people dying by the 1000s per day
Symptoms: Headaches, swelling of lymph nodes, terrible sores
iv) Spanish Flu of 1918
Killed around 50million to 100million people around the world
Killed 3X more people than the war – about 5% of the world population
v) 16th century introduction of Old World diseases to the New World
Diseases when the Portuguese and the Spaniards bringing smallpox and measles to
populations that had no immunities
70%-90% attrition rate of populations as a result of these diseases
Syphilis and other diseases brought back to the Old World

Main point is that diseases have always been significant to the progression of history
If or when the next pandemic comes how will our world respond? Heavier dose of
communal wisdom or survival instinct? With more other-centeredness or self-
centeredness?

III) The Spread of the Black Death

Shows we are capable of a large range of responses – how Islamic middle east and
continental Europe responded to this disease

50% attrition rate

a) Ripe Preconditions
i) Demographic changes
(1) Warming Trend from 800 to 1200 AD
Provided ripe areas for the growth of disease
Population explosion in much of Eurasia
 Even places like Greenland could grow agriculture
Increased population density

1200s sharp cooling trend named the ‘little ice age’

(2) The Great Famine 1315-1322 in northern Europe
Malnutrition = weakened immune system, lack of strength
ii) Interlocking trade networks
(1) Brought about by the Mongol empire in late 1200s
Mongols integrated previously separate networks of trade
More maritime trade – world becomes smaller
(2) Shift from local endemics to global pandemic
Because of these factors a local endemic became a global pandemic
iii) How the Plague spread in Europe 1347-1350
Spread initially from marmots because of the flees on them in the Himalayas
But because of the buffer zone shrinking, people were living closer and closer to wild
enemies
Bacteria and flees from marmots jumped onto the rats (always with humans) who
follow humans and get on ships etc.
Places first hit were port cities especially in the Mediterranean
Poland and Bohemia weren’t really hit because there wasn’t much dense population
and there were not many trade routes going through – more isolated
iv) Death toll of the Plague
Thought that the attrition rate: 30% but after discovering records in England the
number is more like 45% in England
Southern Europe was hit far harder than England – 50% on average
Death on a massive scale – how did people respond?
China – no reliable records but probably about as bad as others (Around 1/3)
Middle East - 30%
Most reliable records are from parish records and manor records

IV)Responses to the Plague

a) In Europe
i) Boccaccio’s Decameron (reliable writer)
(1) Preemptive measures – lot of warning but sense of futility
(a) Everyone knew what was coming so places would work on sanitation
(b) Relied on quarantine of certain individuals
(c) Published health information
(d) People prayed
ii) Range of responses
(1) Ascetic life-style in living like a monk – simplify your life
(2) Hey we’re going to die anyway we might as well live it up
(3) Most people it was more moderate: Practice of walking around with nose
coverings, miasma theory so cover your nose, fragrances to dispel the scent and
affect
(4) Some were desperate: eating chopped up snakes, the rich ate crushed gems and
gold dust
 (5) Fleeing away from the cities and going to the country-side
iii) Futility of flight
Go to the country and find that people were already dead, the plague had already
beat them
(1) “Lack of regard citizens and relations showed to each other”
(a) Bocaccio noticed this
(b) Every man for himself
iv) Behavior reflected notions of Original Sin and Innate Depravity
(1) Plague seen as God’s punishment
(a) Universal teaching was that original sin and innate depravity caused this – the
innate evil of humanity caused this great crisis and tragedy
(b) Punishment on humanity for all of our sins
(c) Dialogue between god and the earth to punish the sins of people on earth –
Earth is the means
(d) Pope initiates an indulgence drive
(i) Buy an indulgence and people confess and show penance maybe we can
be spared
(2) Penance and Scapegoating
(a) Flagellants
(i) Crazy people that would beat and whip themselves moving around hurting
themselves
(ii) Method of purging their own sins and the sins of the world
(iii) Even the Pope got annoyed and afraid of the group because of the
trouble they were causing
(iv) Hysteria led to scapegoating
(v) Correlation between antisemitism and the rise of hysteria
Jews targeted because seeing Jews as Christ-killers
Claimed Jews poisoned the wells of Europe
(b) Pogroms—organized mob attacks on Jews (contributed by the scapegoating)
Fueled by rumors of poisoning wells and past anti-Semitism
(i) Mobs invading the “Aljames” or Jewish enclaves
1. One city more than 300 Jews were killed
2. People would go into Jewish houses and specifically target loan
documents in houses of money-lenders
3. Used to erase debt, minority group, and gain advantage
(ii) Battle cry: “Kill the Traitors!”
b) In Islamic Regions—esp. Mamluk territory
Official response was emphasizing the maintenance of community
i) Religious fatwas against flight and isolation
(1) Fatwa=decree from religious leaders
(2) Banned anyone from fleeing the city
(3) Fatwas against anyone spreading the idea that it was contagious
(4) Plague victims not to be abandoned – responsibilities within the uma or Islamic
community
ii) Stubbornly and blindly resisted the theory of contagion
(1) Detractors such as Ibn-al Khatib in Granada
 (a) Said ‘this is contagious you idiot’
(b) Uses empirical evidence to support the contagion idea and bravely criticized
the religious leaders
(i) Imprisoned first and then the mob came and lynched him
(c) Qor’an used to support non-contagion idea such as Muhammed forbidding
soldiers from fleeing
iii) Overall Muslim response one of “reverent resignation”
(1) Ibn al-Wardi: “God creates and recreates…it is God’s Will”
(a) God’s will not punishment really
(b) Duty of Muslim is not to try and explain – duty is to show who you are as a
true Muslim
(2) Awakening of one’s obligations to others
(a) Opportunity not punishment