The Upside of Plague

As the coronavirus or Covid-19 kicks things up another notch, humanity stands at a crossroads.

Do we live out the worst scenarios as depicted by many fiction writers over time and hoard things like toilet paper and Purell, really knowing full well that these actions will only exacerbate our state of peril?

Or do we evolve for the better?

Probably a little bit of both.

About 600-700 years ago, most of Europe had fallen into decay. The vast and wonderful public infrastructure originally built by the Romans and subsequently propped up by the Moors was suffering from neglect.

During the ‘Black Death’ era of European history (roughly the beginning of 1300 CE to about 1670 CE), tens of millions of people died from stupidity more than they did from the plague.

Our own disgusting habits of tossing human waste into the streets and neglecting the infrastructure Romans had built a thousand years prior lead to the largest elimination of peole that we’ve ever seen.

Water was probably the most impure substance you could ingest because of all of the other influences we pushed upon it. Our storage habits were lame. Our ability to record, document and diagnose issues was inept.

Because no one was taking accurate records, estimates of the death toll from the plague in the 1300s was anywhere from 75 to 200 million people, or about 25% of the population at the time. And this was the FIRST ‘Black Plague’. It continued to haunt Europe and other continents until as late as the late 1600s.

A lot of the ‘darkness’ associated with the plague continued because of our adherence to ancient institutions like organized religion that kept telling us it was God’s will that we suffered. Blah blah blah.

But then, things got better. Science and intelligence trumped ignorance. Somewhat.

We set upon a long road of independence, freedoms and good government that remains to this day. Again, somewhat. Health improved in the wake of the crisis.

We know better. But somehow we continue to do as we want, not as we should.

As we emerge from this situation, much like people did hundreds of years ago, we’ll  collectively peer from our panic rooms and toilet-paper-clad washrooms and possibly finally make a decision to save this planet. Maybe, like the Middle Ages, we’ll come to understand that there’s a bright side to the darkness.

The last 200-300 years have been an exercise in extremely positive advances but also a wide array of collective madness, constantly pushing us to ruin, not advance.

These days, it seems like there’s a LOT of madness operating just under the radar – sex trades, domestic abuse, drugs for profits, extermination of rare and nearly extinct species (this one makes me sad and is proof that we don’t deserve this planet) – and as entire systems collapse, the value of EVERY SINGLE human life and every other living being on this rare exception called EARTH will jump and we won’t be able to tolerate these injustices any longer.

Maybe we’ll stop doing business with China because we’ll discover that we don’t need them any more and we can demand they put a halt to ‘vocational camps’ (concentration camps by any other name) and attacks on different ethnic populations. Maybe we’ll even demand that they get the fuck out of Tibet.

And maybe we’ll start treating everyone and every living thing on this planet with the respect that they/it are due. And maybe we’ll get out of the carbon business because those that are left to fend for the future of this planet will appreciate that quick fixes create long-term decay and costs.

Am I overly optimistic? Of course. We all have to be now because it’s going to get grim, but as they say, midnight is where the day begins. It’s only through the cracks in the walls that we see the light.

Let’s stop panicking and let’s start to put the HEART back into EARTH.