What the 1918 epidemic teaches us about human nature

[defacto7]

I just listened to a podcast episode that gives an historical perspective on how humans have dealt with pandemics. It shows the sucesses as well as the mistakes made during the Spanish flu epidemic. I swear, some of the same attitudes at that time are what we deal with now, from denial to action to false restart to giving up to uncontrolled mass death.

If you are interested in what we are facing as a society and what we can learn from our past success and failures in a time of pandemic please give it a listen. I know it's long but I really think it's worth it. Politicians, clergy, businesses and corporations had better listen carefully.

An Unfinished Lesson

from NPR - Hidden Brain

[NNadir]

1. CSPAN history has had several lectures on the 1918 epidemic.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?465724-7/influenza-pandemic-world-war

https://www.c-span.org/video/?469755-1/1918-influenza-pandemic-public-information

[defacto7]

2. Excellent. I'll give them a listen.

[drmeow]

3. My great grantmother died in that pandemic

The drug store wouldn't give my 13 year old grandmother the medication was trying to get for her mother. Can't remember the reason why - I'll have to ask my mom - either she was too young or they didn't believe her mother really was sick and needed the medicine. No guarantee it would have saved her but certainly contributed to my grandmother's devastation (why my step-grandfather wasn't trying to get the medication, I don't know - maybe he was also sick or she took a sudden turn for the worse when he wasn't around).

[customerserviceguy]

4. Thanks for posting this

I'll give it a listen later.

But, we have numerous advantages over the society of a century ago. We just came off of a somewhat prosperous period, whereas the Spanish flu epidemic came at the end of what had been the most devastating world war ever fought. We have all sorts of things that people didn't have in those days, in terms of communication, transportation, and home living. Simply having a refrigerator instead of an "icebox" means that you can keep food fresher longer, and thus reduce the amount of time you had to spend on trips to gather food.

[defacto7]

5. I agree that our surroundings and abilities have improved.

What's interesting about this is that it's not so much a comparison of the diseases or the situation but human nature and how we think and react. These two diseases are completely different with similar effects. But human nature? that hasn't changed much.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Perhaps not

but consider that most people didn't even have radio in 1918, that didn't become common until the 1920's. We have leapfrogged past radio to television and the Internet. There are so many more ways of being connected safely than we had a century ago.

Human nature adapts to these technological innovations, either for good or for bad. When ATM's were first deployed on the side walls of banks in the 1970's, who told anyone how far away you were supposed to stand from the person using the machine? Remember, the default was for a line to wait at a teller window, and people stood close to each other in those lines. But, we figured it out.

Before smartphones, how many people would look at each other while walking down the street? Perhaps not so many in big cities, but in small towns, it was routine to greet another with a smile or nod. Now, people walk down the street with their nose buried in a screen, never looking up to acknowledge their fellow human beings. Who taught us that behavior?

Technology invariably affects human interactions and responses, seemingly "changing" human nature in many cases.

[defacto7]

7. It is changing society and culture for sure..

The speed of change has been exponential. But human nature is another thing. I see uncanny similarities in human nature when reading texts from hieroglyphics from more than 5000 years ago or texts from ancient Assyria. Human nature is deep. The bad parts we fight because some of us have learned a better way but it's still there. Using our technology and other advancements to take advantage of what is good within us is the goal but it also works the other way around. Society, culture and advancement is only as good as we are able to overcome the worst in our nature and advance what is beneficial because human nature from the ancient core of our mind is not easily or quickly changed.

[customerserviceguy]

8. Good points

It drives my lady nuts, but I keep coming back to the hunter/gatherer explanations for human behavior, since that was the primary human lifestyle for many more centuries than agriculture has been around. When I try to use that framework for understanding human behavior in the modern world, it sometimes gives me an insight.