Church, State, and Supplicants, all helpless in the face of nature.
Here's a question to consider. How can any government truly protect you?
Almost 700 years ago, Europe got a wallop it never forgot. A bacillus (Yersinia pestis) skedaddled out of central Asia along the Silk Road, concealed in droves of Oriental rat fleas, and began an unfortunate migration that rocked Europe to its very core.
The plague was a nasty, awful, horrific way to go. But as horrific as it was-- it taught humankind a valuable lesson that should be remembered today in our most recent "time of plague."
Europe of that period was a mosaic of feudal estates and vassalage. The social contract was rather simple and effective: peasants grew crops and gave a portion of those crops to their barons in exchange for security, protection and (if necessary) even a stay behind the castle walls. Going up the chain from there, the baron owed knights and supplies to his count or earl for protection, and the count or earl owed the same to his marquess or duke, and so it went in ever larger swaths of territory, up to a king who was ordained by God as the super-master of the realm.
In matters of faith this hierarchy was replicated in the church of Rome, with monks and nuns in the place of the peasants; priests in the place of barons; bishops in the place of counts and earls; all the way up to the pope who was the super, super master (Pontifex Maximus) who outranked even the kings.
All this went along fairly well from the fall of the Roman Empire until the plague. As mentioned above-- under the social contract of the time the lower orders were promised protection in exchange for labor. The problem was, both the State and the Church were powerless to protect anyone-- even themselves. When knights, deacons, barons, priests, earls, bishops, kings and popes all fell to the same fate as the peasants, nuns and monks-- chaos ensued. No castle walls; no novenas; no amulets could combat this pestilent foe.
True-- a few scholars were on the right track in understanding the rudiments of epidemiology, but as the crises continued; as quarantined ships rotted at wharves ; as food rotted in fields; as the social order collapsed; the "governments" at the time were impotent and flailing.
Looking at this history, it's tempting to find a statist solution to the problem. "If only the governments had done more," the reasoning goes-- "the results might have been better."
This is a misleading supposition however, because the flaw was not in the response of the governments to the crisis at the time; the power structures in place took the threat very seriously, and did everything within their power to control the crises. It was in the basic social contract that was flawed; since no government can provide protection in exchange for anything, because protection cannot be guaranteed.
An interesting example of this occurred in New York City this week. It was determined that schools could not close (a sound decision to reduce exposure to contagions) because underprivileged children would starve, this being because a majority of their caloric intake is currently provided by the school system. The righteous indignation of the author of this story completely fails to ask two very reasonable and logical questions: What do schools have to do with any child's caloric intake? And why was this a policy in the first place?
However well-intended that policy might have been when it was created, its unintended consequences were a result of a flawed social contract where the security of food was guaranteed when no such guarantee was possible.
Governments of all types (and at all levels) promote this social contract of compensation for security, whether that compensation is paid for by grain, knights, cash or civil liberties-- and in every case the contract is flawed and unenforceable, because no matter how lax (or invasive) the government in power is (or tries to be)-- it will be impotent against the forces of nature. To think otherwise is unfortunate and (in some cases) deadly.
After the Bubonic plague, the era of feudalism was over. The renaissance, nation states, and the age of reason came into play, and a concept of inalienable rights and a profound suspicion of invasive government took hold. The "divine right" of kings and the supremacy of the Roman church were eroded and diminished. Liberty became valued over security.
Let us hope that if (or when) our next plague arrives, we recall the lessons of the Black Death and regain our suspicion of invasive government and a dedication to inalienable rights. Truly that is the only social contract worth pursuing.
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