On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:06:48 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Some (admittedly speculative) responses... > >Mike Palij wrote: >> (1) Why is so little about this pandemic included in our >> school curriculum, especially in history and biology courses, > >Because, generally speaking, history is abysmally taught in schools >(even worse than math and science). What is taught as "history" is >mostly nationalist myth and morality tales (or, by way of political >overcorrection, anti-nationalist myth and morality tales) rather than >history, properly speaking.
No doubt but some researchers refer to "social memory", cultural knowledge that is transmitted from one generation to another through one's family and membership in a particular community. For example, although the Armenian holocaust gets very little coverage, many people of Armenian ancestry are aware of it. Similarly, many people of Ukrainian heritage are aware of "The Hunger", the artificially induced famine in Ukraine by the Stalinist regime during the 1930s. It is curious that nothing similar has happened in the U.S. or elsewhere regarding the 1918 flu. >On top of that, the time of the flu pandemic is overshadowed by >World War I Actually, if one views the American Experience episode (or reads the transcript) the spread of the 1918 flu was intimately related to the operation of World War I. For example, the U.S. war effort required large numbers of young men to gather together for training and then to crowd onto troop ships to travel to Europe; both situations conducive to the spread of a respiratory infection. Indeed, the first cases of the flu were at a U.S. Army post: >From the transcript of the "Influenza 1918" episode http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html |NARRATION: Some say it began in the spring of 1918, when soldiers |at Fort Riley, Kansas, burned tons of manure. A gale kicked up. A choking |duststorm swept out over the land -- a stinging, stinking yellow haze. |The sun went dead black in Kansas. | |NARRATION: Two days later -- on March 11th, 1918 -- an Army private |reported to the camp hospital before breakfast. He had a fever, sore, throat, |headache... nothing serious. One minute later, another soldier showed up. By |noon, the hospital had over a hundred cases; in a week, 500. As the program notes, Wilson was aware that sending troops by ship to Europe to aid the war effort could result in faster, wider spread of infection but in the end decided that it was worth the risk. Unfortunately, the infection was rapidly spread among the troops. >> (2) Even though it had a tremendous impact on popular >> culture at the time, a social amnesia seems to have developed >> about it, with few people remembering or knowing about >> it (the AE episode shows several survivors who provide >> oral histories about their experience with the flu). One of the >> more obvious manifestations of fear of the flu was the widespread >> use of surgical masks in public to prevent transmission (as it >> would turn out, the masks were inadequate). How could >> something so horrific be forgotten? > >Once something is (nearly) out of living human memory, it depends on >historical research and teaching and learning to be remembered. This is true but it ignores other means of historical transmission, especially oral traditions and the maintenance of cultural rituals that lead to the maintenance of social memory (one of the problems with Balkans is that there are groups of people who are fighting over events that occurred hundreds of years ago, grudges and feuds that have been maintained by families and social institutions). >We live in a culture that doesn't much value history (as contrasted with >patriot-building national myths). The "Spanish" flu doesn't play a role >in how American view themselves. It wasn't a "glorious triumph" (and it >is difficult to turn into one), and because it was an international >event it doesn't serve to differentiate Americans from everyone else. In the main, I agree. I find it somewhat surprising how many undergraduates don't know or understand what "Watergate" was about or that Nixcon had commited crimes. American optimism may also lead to "Pollyanna Effects" in focusing on only the good/happy/pleasant in contrast to the bad/sad/unpleasant. Nonetheless, we still have commemorations such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day and other anniversaries. > From a narratological perspective, it is disaster without any obvious >evil-doer. Unlike the Holocaust, the enslavement of Africans, or the >decimation of the North American aboriginals ("Indian" is a pejorative >term not used in Canada much anymore, though I see that it is still >commonly used without offense in the US), the flu pandemic isn't a case >in which someone "did something" to someone else, and so it requires a >slightly more subtle historical framework to understand. Most people >don't have enough interest in the past to develop an appreciation for >happenings of this sort. Perhaps, but a large number of people lost family members and friends to the flu, life was disrupted, and there was the fear that one could be struck down without warning. It would seem to me that such a social upheaval would have been encoded into our social memory somehow. >To be fair, over the centuries there have been a number of disease >epidemics that have killed massive numbers of people in short periods of >time and then gone away (i.e., evolved out into less virulent forms: a >number are described briefly in Jared Diamond's /Guns, Germs, and >Steel/), but are then totally forgotten a century or so afterwards >(except by a few historians). The "Spanish" flu (as it was known) was >still fairly well-known and spoken of when I was a kid (in the 1960s), >but as it slides out of human memory it will likely disappear like the >others. As a child, I had not heard of the 1918 pandemic but I do remember the polio scare. One of my earliest memories is a TV commercial about getting the polio vaccine. I don't remember what was said but the imagery was frightening to me as a child: a puppet was being held up by strings, dancing on the screen, and one by one the strings were cut until the puppet lay in a heap on the floor. I assume that people born after this period have little knowledge of the polio fear back in the 1950s but vaccines may have gone a long way toward removing the focus on it. However, the 1918 flu has no vaccine or effective treatment. If it or something similar re-appears, we'll be in real trouble. >> Undoubtedly, some >> people will return after the floods have gone and will rebuild their >> homes in the flood plain, only to have them flooded again at some >> time in the not too distant future. Why? > >Short-term thinking, unwillingness to accept alternatives to how one has >"always" lived, the (foolish) belief that "man's" destiny is to >"conquer" nature. As already mentioned, the "sunk cost" effect is probably operating here as well as an overly optimistic discounting of costs and risks. >To be fair, although there have been bad floods along >the Mississippi in the past, this recent one was regarded as a 500-year >flood. It would be silly to not rebuild on the basis of another flood >this bad coming along in the next 500 years. Apparently, a very bad flood happened in 1993 which caused extensive damage in this same area. Insurance money paid for much of the rebuilding and new housing was built in an area that clearly had a much higher risk of being flooded than other areas. The past may serve as basis for predicting the future but there is always error in such predictions (as anyone who has tried to follow the stock market knows all too well). >On that logic, no one >should build anything in California because of 500-year earthquakes. (On >the other hand, the climate is changing (no, really!), and what used to >be a 1-in-500 occurrence may now be a 1-in-5.) Given incomplete knowledge about the past and poor predictive mdoels for future events, it ultimately depends upon how risky one is willing to be especially in a dynamic environment which may alter the probability of any event at any time. -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
