One of my favourite books is A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It’s a historical fiction account of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire in England during an outbreak of the plague. It tells the story of 1666 when the village goes into lockdown and a housemaid becomes an unlikely healer. The illness reaches into every household in the village. But it’s not the disease that is the villain – what is worse than death, in its ability to corrupt and destroy, is superstition. It spreads as quickly as the disease itself.
It’s the most basic human survival response. We are the animal who tells stories to understand the world. We use narratives we’ve constructed to manage our fear. The narrative’s accuracy is irrelevant. The narrative is meant to signpost the unnavigable, to send flares into the dark cave of the unknown. It provides architecture for our uncertainty.
When I think about it like this, it gives me immense compassion for those who believe what I perceive to be wildly unbelievable stories; narratives that involve complex co-operation and co-ordination that speak to a unified world, where currently there is none. For some it is shelter in their storm to know someone is digging the tunnels where vampiric paedophiles hide the stolen children. Some people find organised and co-ordinated horror more reassuring than chaos.
Disease has always done this to us. In the time of the Black Death many believed that the plague was God’s punishment for sinful ways. So to control the uncontrollable, one simply became virtuous and honoured God. Some believed that the Black Death was a mass conspiracy by Jews against Christians. Racial blame is perhaps as old as civilisation itself. And heaps more infectious.
Had they the scientific insight to know that the plague was in fact an infectious fever caused by bacterium Yersinia pestis, passed from rodents to humans by the bites of infected fleas, they might have tried sanitation, or killing rats. But instead they fed their bias.
I’ve been thinking about A Year of Wonders a lot. I feel like we’ve been locked in Eyam – in a cross between a very dark time in a medieval village and Atwood’s fictional Gilead. These are the stories that help me navigate this bizarre landscape, the ones that talk less to what I literally experience, but more what it feels like. I feel weird. This whole thing is weird. Life is weird. Not knowing is weird. And knowing, well, sometimes that’s even weirder.
I wonder how it got to this? I wonder what is ahead? I wonder why people believe what they believe? When I reflect on the last two years of the covid pandemic it’s been as much a pandemic of belief as it has been of illness. Conspiracies have flared up with the same viral ferocity as the disease itself.
Whatever you believe about covid, however, is irrelevant. We are here. It is here. It’s the crocodile skimming past you in the river. It might miss you this time, but get you next. Like with most crocodile attacks, it’s the people who can’t swim that get taken first: old people, weak people, the vulnerable. And there’s not just one crocodile; we’re bobbing in a river full of crocodiles.
I’ve had the covid croc skim past many times already. I know it’s just a matter of time before I feel its powerful jaws take me and pull me down to the river floor.
Am I scared? No. Not anymore. It’s just weird.
We’re learning to live with crocodiles.
5 + stars for this one, Mandy. Sometimes too we need to be a little bit cruel
to understand the kindness that’s out on a limb.
Beautifully written and insightful piece. Thank you
Great article. However “there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see”1
One of my favourite books also, well done Mandy
I love that book too
Thank you Mandy. I feel the bubble inhabited by so many in the West (certainly not all) lasted almost a century and now we are returning to what the world was for most of human history – more uncertain, more dangerous, tribal, fractious, more difficult to navigate. I hope we will learn what humans are reminded of every time we forget – that the way forward in a strange and uncertain world is with kindness, humility, gratitude, steady judgment and faith in something bigger than our small selves. I hope our Byron community will navigate our way through this next chapter in that way.
For most of the worst disasters in the Earths history, just put a group of religious fundamentalist in leadership position and stand back and watch the inevitable disaster. The “Age of enlightenment and reason” and what is now supposed to be “Secular Govt”, only came about after centuries of “Religious dark Age failure, death, destruction and the inevitable corruption”.
Now take a look at the divisive disastrous Trump USA, QAnon religious fundamentalist “Leadership” and Australia’s floundering divisive disastrous Morrison, QAnon Religious fundamentalist “Leadership” or complete and utter lack of leadership?
The question is, “How the hell do we continue to allow these religious charlatans into leadership positions still in the 21st century”? Is our manipulative corporate controlled media really that corrupted this is happening or are people just too stupid to see through the obvious now daily failure and corruption and to think for themselves? Why are there always these people that doom the rest of us, to watch history repeat, over and over?
Very well said!
Firstly our teaching curriculum does not seem to teach children critical thinking, financial prudence, consequences, proper debating, handling criticism etc, just fill their heads with wokeness, their rights, racial injustices from the past and to object to everything that they doesn’t “feel” right.
Yes I believe that the western world is dumbing down and I feel that the eastern cultures are starting to catch up at speed.
The media, under the power of selling space rather than investigating the facts are now the handmaidens of the commercial world and politicians. Young, hardly literate people are fronting the “media” with little education and life experience. These unwitting actors in the media game are easily manipulated by their employers to bias the “facts” to whichever way suits their political beliefs or advertising supporters.
Cynical…probably however I believe there is more than a grain of truth when one digs deeper.
Don’t be a fatalist about catching it- that’s what this effed up government want you think. It justifies their let it rip philosophy, which serves one thing- the economy. Do all you can to stay healthy (get the booster) and forego indoor dinner parties and long, communal events. Sanitise, wear a mask. Don’t shake hands. Good luck!
Nice one Mandy. These trying times have kicked over a lot of rocks again but hope springs eternal.
I love this! It is so beautifully written. It’s like you’re in the room, your big beautiful, feeling heart, right here, in the room.
Such perspective!
Wonderful. Keep writing!
Well written Mandy . You can make an unpleasant topic enjoyable to read and finish with a smile!