Plague basically hasnt existed in developed societies for quite some time. The traditional transmission vectors for plague have basically been cut down to zero. The only one that remains is airborne. All this fear is just dark fantasy.
The only rampant plague I see is plethora extremely poorly written articles with vague socially suicidal liberal elitist positions.
Wrong. Plagues still occur unfortunately in the developing world as the Gates Foundation has been gloriously struggling against. And even in the developed world as AIDS and flu epidemics have shown. Even more insidious is that microbes have been suggested in the common scourges of the 21st century such as artheoscelosis, cancer and Alzheimers, though far from proven.
Because we only care about the short term. The very short term.
It's a great paradox that many philosophies tell us to only care about the present moment ("seize the day!") when in fact many if not all of our problems come from that exact behavior.
What we want, we want it now, and if a price will have to be paid in the future, whatever the actual amount, we regard it as zero. But we're wrong.
Marcus Aurelius had the quote "Confine yourself to the present". He was one of the most respected roman emperors, and a famous stoic. Today living the present is associated with reckless living but for the old philosophies it was about questioning every day "what can I do today to improve myself as a human being?"
Maybe my attention span let me down here, but did I miss the part where the alleged taste-altering virus was identified? I enjoyed the article, but I was really interested in finding out more about that particular point.
Not sure whether it's my attention span or just this article's style of jumping around between subjects - I couldn't get past a third into it.
This may just be my taste but even in long form articles I want the central hypothesis stated right at the beginning. Don't waste my time with your personal annecdotes, except if the annecdote is so interesting that your whole article is about it, at least then I'll know what you're talking about right from the start. Otherwise it's like a film starting with a bunch of backstory instead of an inciting incident.
Purely anecdotal on my part, but I noticed my taste preferences changed a bit after I had mono. Again, totally my own experience, not bounded in fact at all, but it is interesting...
When I first saw that section I guessed maybe she had eaten pine nuts, but having experienced the taste disturbance (metallogeusia) those can cause, I decided her symptoms were much less unpleasant.
I don't understand the phenomenon of "liberal guilt" described in this article. To me, it sounds anti-humanistic, life-hating, cruel and borderline sociopathic.
I love life, I love human civilization, and all things that technical and civil progress gave to us. I will work to get a better future for myself, my daughter, and everybody else. It saddens me deeply that there are people who want the civilization to end with some epidemic, who basically want people to die. What made them this cruel?
No, I think that's an American conservative misinterpretation on the level of "because they hate freedom".
You take a mocking admission of own irrationality and turn it into a desire to control everyone. Certain instances of the former may turn into some form of the latter (environmental laws, let's say), but they are not the same, and your interpretation is as malicious as it gets.
I think that's a mischaracterisation of guilt, especially if you think it implies they want other people to die. It's based (as the article says) around survivor's guilt, and the worry that your life exists only because someone else's doesn't. Or is comfortable because of their suffering. Or the vegetarian impulse: at what cost in animal suffering is your life, and does it matter?
(Having this discussion work is going to require a certain minimum amount of empathy and non-assumption of malice)
OK, I understand the vegetarians. However, I don't understand how my happiness is supposed to cause other people's suffering (life isn't a zero sum game). Additionally, I presume there is a difference between "I cause other people's suffering, therefore I am unhappy and I don't deserve to exist" and "I hope that some sort of epidemics wipes out humanity; good riddance".
consider all the academic literature on how Western powers are built on slavery and exploitation, how evil the European powers were (colonialism) and how if you are a white American or European, you benefit indirectly from that exploitation though your nationality and heritage. It's true in a technical sense, but it's also something you have no control over. Some people feel guilty about the actions of their cultural forebears, and thus a sense of regret that they exist in comfort because of historical atrocities perpetrated on other people. I can understand how that feeling would be pretty pervasive if you spend a lot of time around these topics in art and social science circles.
It's worth noting that the exploitation and atrocity aren't only historical and associated with forebears -- it's ongoing and being done by folks in the present day.
Re : control : clearly, we can't influence past circumstance, but we can exert some influence over current activity by choosing what to buy and not buy, i.e., 'voting with our wallets.' All, or nearly all, all activity is driven by economic incentives.
> It's worth noting that the exploitation and atrocity aren't only historical and associated with forebears -- it's ongoing and being done by folks in the present day.
Of course, but this "liberal guilt" phenomenon is specifically associated with people who try to act morally in general. Thus the only (or one of the few) thing they have left to feel guilty about is their cultural ancestry.
> I don't understand how my happiness is supposed to cause other people's suffering (life isn't a zero sum game).
Take a sip of coffee. Tastes good? Happy?
Now, how did that coffee get to you? Whose hands touched it? Were they working in free and fair employment, or were they coerced into it?
How did the coffee plantation come into being in the first place? Was it bought at market price from the original occupiers, or was it expropriated from them by gun or pen?
Diseases and host populations co-evolve. Disease co-opts a human civilisation's own behaviours and vectors of exchange for itself.
Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome develops this idea in the context of the Roman empire, showing how the co-development of trade, commerce, urbanisation, and medical knowledge (or ignorance), interacted with other factors, including wars, climate change, financial crises, and religion, to provide the conditions for the emergence and spread of disease.
Thinking we are beyond diseases' reach strikes me as extreme hubris.
We say we need to control global warming to "save the earth". Save it for what? Well us of course.
But nature doesn't think or plan. There's no grand design. It's just as valid to assume our rabid desire for the latest iThing is merely the ant crawling to the top of the blade of grass.
We were just the necessary step to get the earth hotter for the next phase in microbe and insect development.
We are not the finished product, we're just the heater.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 56.1 ms ] threadThe only rampant plague I see is plethora extremely poorly written articles with vague socially suicidal liberal elitist positions.
and you write "Wrong. Plagues still occur unfortunately in the developing world as the Gates Foundation has been gloriously struggling against."
What is my response suppose to be?
Because we only care about the short term. The very short term.
It's a great paradox that many philosophies tell us to only care about the present moment ("seize the day!") when in fact many if not all of our problems come from that exact behavior.
What we want, we want it now, and if a price will have to be paid in the future, whatever the actual amount, we regard it as zero. But we're wrong.
This may just be my taste but even in long form articles I want the central hypothesis stated right at the beginning. Don't waste my time with your personal annecdotes, except if the annecdote is so interesting that your whole article is about it, at least then I'll know what you're talking about right from the start. Otherwise it's like a film starting with a bunch of backstory instead of an inciting incident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_nut#Taste_disturbances
I love life, I love human civilization, and all things that technical and civil progress gave to us. I will work to get a better future for myself, my daughter, and everybody else. It saddens me deeply that there are people who want the civilization to end with some epidemic, who basically want people to die. What made them this cruel?
You take a mocking admission of own irrationality and turn it into a desire to control everyone. Certain instances of the former may turn into some form of the latter (environmental laws, let's say), but they are not the same, and your interpretation is as malicious as it gets.
(Having this discussion work is going to require a certain minimum amount of empathy and non-assumption of malice)
Re : control : clearly, we can't influence past circumstance, but we can exert some influence over current activity by choosing what to buy and not buy, i.e., 'voting with our wallets.' All, or nearly all, all activity is driven by economic incentives.
(That said, I still drink coffee)
Of course, but this "liberal guilt" phenomenon is specifically associated with people who try to act morally in general. Thus the only (or one of the few) thing they have left to feel guilty about is their cultural ancestry.
> (That said, I still drink coffee)
Monster!
Take a sip of coffee. Tastes good? Happy?
Now, how did that coffee get to you? Whose hands touched it? Were they working in free and fair employment, or were they coerced into it?
How did the coffee plantation come into being in the first place? Was it bought at market price from the original occupiers, or was it expropriated from them by gun or pen?
(And so on.)
Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome develops this idea in the context of the Roman empire, showing how the co-development of trade, commerce, urbanisation, and medical knowledge (or ignorance), interacted with other factors, including wars, climate change, financial crises, and religion, to provide the conditions for the emergence and spread of disease.
Thinking we are beyond diseases' reach strikes me as extreme hubris.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kyle-harper/the-f...
We say we need to control global warming to "save the earth". Save it for what? Well us of course.
But nature doesn't think or plan. There's no grand design. It's just as valid to assume our rabid desire for the latest iThing is merely the ant crawling to the top of the blade of grass.
We were just the necessary step to get the earth hotter for the next phase in microbe and insect development.
We are not the finished product, we're just the heater.