by fulltimestudent 8 Replies latest jw friends
Dr. Andrew Latham (a professor of political science at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota). argues that the effects of this plague (in Europe) changed Europe and created the conditions that led to modernity.
It's an interesting thought, as we wander through the current pandemic.
This article was shared from the Medievalists.net website
https://www.medievalists.net/2021/08/the-black-death-and-the-great-transition/
The Black Death also helped English to supplant French as the language of education and government in England. But these effects were on the timescale of centuries. Perhaps (let’s hope) the impact of the novel coronavirus of 2019 will be somewhat shorter and shallower than that, commensurate with (again, let’s hope) its lower death rate, all told.
sbf - The current pandemic, is clearly not on the mortality scale of the bubonic plagues, so it may just hasten some of the trends already evident.
For example, if production can be independent of physical work, then business enterprises are likely to hasten automation. Do you agree?
Certainly working from home is here to stay for many people. The technology, of course, has been in place for sometime previously - but as the say about the relationship between necessity and invention!
Yes, definitely. Might hasten the decline of print media, newspapers, magazines and books, too.
Have you been watching closely?
Can anybody say "Build Back Better"?
RB
Might hasten the decline of print media, newspapers, magazines and books, too.
Pretty sure they have been on the way out for a long long time now.
Question is, will it cause modernity in China, the source of the virus?
They could do with some reset so they learn how to behave and treat animals in non-barbaric ways so people don't think they are a bunch of backward abusive cunts.
I'd agree with Simon and sbf that the 1200 (?) y,o print industry seems to be facing major changes. Though, I'm guessing that an individual's ability to own a cheaper printer hooked up to the world-wide web means that printing could be increasing. Not sure how I could prove that, though. I no longer buy newspapers, but read (after scanning for what interests me) the internet editions of several national newspapers - something I could not do 25 years ago. For daily news . TV news (with its limitations) is a daily practise, but that may be a carryover from childhood, when the whole family sat around the radio in the loungeroom to listen to the 7.00 pm news. And, another major source of news (for me - -mainly because its free) is Australia's government owned ABC. Since both sides of politics here claim its biased, it just may give a mostly unbiased viewpoint,
As to Simon's P.O.V. that China "could do with some reset so they learn how to behave and treat animals in non-barbaric ways so people don't think they are a bunch of backward abusive cunts." The wet-markets he's referring to, can be found everywhere in the less-developed world. You'll find them through S.E.Asia, India and Africa (and maybe parts of South America. They serve to allow millions (maybe billions) to buy freshly killed flesh foods in areas that do not have refrigerated food chains. Slowly they will disappear.
Incidentally, I've already posted here (somewhere) that my father once caught a fruit bat kept it in a cage for 2 months while he fattened it. then killed it and had my mother roast it. Can't tell you what it tasted like as I would not eat it. He did the same another time with a black swan.
As a kid, in country Australia, I regularly caught and killed rabbits, both to eat (rabbit stew) and to sell the skins. At least 2 sundays a month my father would kill a chook (chicken) for sunday lunch, And, I guess many in western countries catch fish to eat.
All of which indicates that humans. a flesh-eating animal, needs to kill and eat other animals.
Are the animals we eat. always killed in humane ways? Depends on our viewpoint I guess. Some humans are strongly opposed to killing any animal, in any way.
The bubonic plague pandemic of the mid-14th Century also left in its wake religious changes - at least in Europe.
It caused many to begin to have doubts about the until then all-powerful Catholic Church, thus helping sow the seeds of the Reformation.
Religious Responses to the Black Death - World History Encyclopedia
