One great sin of those who read up on the past is "smugness". It is a sin that is hard to avoid. This trap is laid for us who study the past, by the shear size of historical ignorance. Simply put so many people know so little about the past that, to people who know even a little, they seem suffering from some form of mental limitation. Hence smugness comes to fruition in the historian. Nobody likes a no-it-all, but these days a more accurate way of describing what people do not like is to say that nobody likes a person who knows anything. To show knowledge of anything makes you seem part of the dreaded intelligentsia.
People who know stuff go out of their way to act stupid and ignorant lest people find out that they actually might know something. Our President, a person who knows little, has this down pat. He actually goes out of his way to act stupider than he is since this endears him to the stupid people who support him.
Then there are all those milky, limp, country songs sung but bar stool warming rednecks "who don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran". Well I am sure that many of them know NOW! Nothing like three tours in the desert to educate you.
The book above is a great book on the Pestilence, Black Death, Plague, Great Mortality, Big Death, of the middle of the 14th century. I have read lots on this period and one cool thing that comes through is that it is highly unlikely that this beast will ever treat us so badly. We are simply not in the same spot as the starving, filth, people of the past. Unfortunately the past also shows that the circumstances surrounding nasty events such as the Black Death are so numerous and intertwined that such a catastrophe, albeit not from the plaque, could well happen to us modern people.
In terms of naturally occurring diseases, and man made climatic problems, ignorance is NOT bliss. Even when faced with the event itself incomplete knowledge is not much different that mystical mumbo jumbo. The plague not only decimated ignorant Europe, but also the enlightened Islamic middle easterners, the Mongol Empire, they wealthy Indian kingdoms, and South East Asia. Humans lacked the concept of germs. The best anyone could muster was to rely on two thousand year old Greek ideas of the four humors being out of alignment due to planets, stars, and winds.
Today we are better off and, some some ways, not much different than those unfortunate ancients. We know about disease, but climatic change, and how we can slow it or stop it, is beyond us. Many still don't even believe it is happening. The best scientists know it is happening, know it to be human caused, but are still at a loss to stop it.
When the plague hit Europe for the third time in the 17th century, people finally made the connection between the fleas on the rats and people getting sick. But even then, when they knew the mode of disease transmission they were at a loss to really know how to stop it. And the idea of germs was still more than a century off.
With climate change we may not have time, or the skills needed, to really avert the coming disaster. The best thing we can do is get smart, and not admire idiots.
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