
The Great Mortality - kawera
http://reallifemag.com/the-great-mortality/
======
petermcneeley
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.

~~~
peter303
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.

~~~
petermcneeley
If I write "Plague basically hasnt existed in developed societies for quite
some time."

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?

------
Senderman
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.

~~~
m_mueller
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.

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dredmorbius
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.

[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kyle-
harper/the-f...](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kyle-harper/the-
fate-of-rome/)

------
noonespecial
A little bit of Douglas Adams in there.

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.

------
bambax
> _Why can’t we or won’t we save ourselves?_

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.

~~~
lpcam33
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?"

------
atemerev
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?

~~~
pjc50
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)

~~~
atemerev
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".

~~~
beaconstudios
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.

~~~
MisterOctober
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.

(That said, I still drink coffee)

~~~
beaconstudios
> 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.

> (That said, I still drink coffee)

Monster!

