Author: jai.che.20

The Masque of the Red Death published in 1842 by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story filled with allegories and a fictitious presentation of societal norms during pandemics. Inequality is one of the main themes explored in the text.

Inequality in The Masque of the Red Death is expressed through the character of Prince Prospero and his guests. By illustrating the protagonist of the short story as a prince, Poe was successful in illustrating the superiority and authority of Prospero. This was further enhanced by the descriptions of Prospero as ‘happy and dauntless in the face of the ‘Red Death’ which was ‘so fatal or so hideous’ that ‘No pestilence’ like it has ever occurred. This arrogance and nativity expressed by Prospero are essential in understanding the inequality during a pandemic, where the wealthy or certain groups of individuals can offer better protection for themselves and means of creating fantasies that distract their fear of death. The hubris character of Prospero is illustrated by his fictitious control over the death of the courtiers, where ‘neither of ingress nor egress to the [ the court will create] sudden impulses of despair or frenzy from within'(1) the courtiers. This notion of despair and ecstasy through entering or rejection from Prospero’s court collates with the biblical reference of the last judgment, where supernatural figures decide whether the deceased are sent to ‘eternal fire prepared by the devil’ or ‘inherit the kingdom’ prepared by god（2）. The arrogance of Prospero pretending to be god and the obedience from the courtier’s presents suggests the contrasting position between the wealthy and the poor. Prospero’s thoughts of ‘the external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve or to think’ further emphasised the concept of inequality as he and his guests were able to diverge their fear of death by engaging in other activities inside an environment that they deem as safe, while the poor are excluded from the protections.

In the context of the current pandemic, the arrogance, and naivety of figures in authority parallel with the hubris character of Prince Prospero. One of the most evident authority figures in line with Prince Prospero is ex-president of United States, Donald Trump. At the time of the pandemic, Trump was the president of America thus was referred to as President Trump by the media. This parallels with Poe’s illustration of his protagonist Prince Prospero as both prince and president correlate with the notion of power and authority. In April 2020, Trump made a public announcement that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the US population to wear face-covering when entering public spaces, where right after the announcement he indicated that he will not be following the advice(3). Below is a video recording of that time.

This straight ignorance of advice by scientists and medical experts demonstrates Trump’s hubris and arrogant character during the Covid 19 pandemic. Like the couriers in The Masque of the Red Death, many Americans obeyed and followed Trump’s action in not wearing a mask during the starting month of the pandemic. These anti-mask individuals supported by Trump’s arrogance and naivety enhanced the severity of the pandemic as the researcher suggests a hypothetical scenario where if 80% of the population in Washington or New York state wore a moderately effective mask the projected death rate over two months could decrease by 17 – 45 %(4). Prospero’s thoughts of ‘the external world could take care of itself is also evident during the pandemic through the shutting of borders and evacuation flights worldwide, where each government is only concerned about the citizens of their own countries. In January 2020, evacuation flights were sent by the US, Japan, France, South Korea, etc. to evacuate according to citizens from Wuhan China(5). Inequality arises here as individuals that were allowed to board these evacuation flights are in some sense protected like the couriers that were allowed to enter Prince Prospero’s court, while those who were not allowed to board were left to defend themselves in Wuhan.

Reference

1.POE, E. A., RATHBONE, B., & SACKLER, H. (1988). The masque of the red death, and other poems and tales of Edgar Allan Poe. New York, NY, Caedmon.

2. Matthew 25:31-46, Holy Bible: King James Version

3. Dwyer, C, Aubrey A (2020), The Coronavirus crisis CDC Now Recommends Americans Consider Wearing Cloth Face Coverings in Public [online] Npr.org. Available at: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/03/826219824/president-trump-says-cdc-now-recommends-americans-wear-cloth-masks-in-public

4. Steffen E. Eikenberry, Marina Mancuso, Enahoro Iboi, Tin Phan, Keenan Eikenberry, Yang Kuang, Eric Kostelich, Abba B. Gumel,(2020), To mask or not to mask: Modeling the potential for face mask use by the general public to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic,Infectious Disease Modelling,Volume 5,Pages 293-308,ISSN 2468-0427, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idm.2020.04.001.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468042720300117)

5. Hancock, T., 2020.‘We see people getting ill around us’: the foreigners trapped in Wuhan. [online] Ft.com. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/4ebd0eaa-41c7-11ea-bdb5-169ba7be433d

A crisis can be defined as a situation involving fundamental threat. However, the concept of crisis can associate with vast degrees of semantic significance according to the distinctive language and discipline context.

Reinhart Koselleck suggests the concept of crisis ‘remains as multi-layered and ambiguous'(1). Koselleck further proposed three primary conceptions of crisis approaching from different disciplines. Crisis in the medical sense emphasis the notion of it as a turning point. This is supported by various medical terms, such as hypertensive crisis, aplastic crisis, identity crisis, etc., where each represents an established change of situation in the human body. Concurrently crisis in economics refers to both acute destructions and ongoing breakdowns of a certain system. Examples of such representations of crisis are evident in the descriptions of the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing economic crisis due to the impact of Covid 19, which demonstrates an established and an ongoing breakdown of various economical systems worldwide (2). Lastly, from a theology standpoint crises are concerned with eschatological significance and present the conception of permanent transfiguration. Because of the eschatological significance in theology crisis, the concept of theology crisis often aligns itself with the representation within religions. A crisis arises in the bible whenever a man is confronted by God (3) with possible judgment to be made. The Last Judgement from the bible is an example of theology as it correlated with the world or eternity of life after death, where the permanent transfiguration is presenting fundamental aspects of an eschatological concept (4).

Another way to look at the ambiguous characteristics of the concept of crisis is through comparisons of the definitions of crisis in different languages. For example, in classical Greek, krino which is the foundation of the word krisis or  crisis in classical Greek refers to the idea of the action of separation, judgment, or decision. The concept of crisis in Greek is highly used in politics and correlates with the notion of decision-making in the sense of reaching a verdict or reaching a crucial transition point. (5) While in Chinese, crisis or 危机（wei ji） takes into account two concepts. One is the concept of crisis as a situation where there is a hidden danger. The other refers to the concept of an important life-changing turning point. (6) While the first concept relies upon the first character of 危(Wei) which correlates deeply with the conception of danger and precarious(7), the second relates more to the second character 机(Ji)which correlates with the notion of chance, transition, or opportunity(8). On the other side, in Japanese 危機（kiki）, relates to the concept of ongoing risks, destructions that were unexpected and cannot be resolved by method from past experience (9). Although most kanji characters in Japanese are adapted from Chinese, sometimes the same combination of characters might create different concepts. In the case of the word crisis in Japanese, it differentiates from Chinese in the sense that it is highly correlated with the notion of 危機管理（crisis management）which was first used during the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake in 1995(10). Such correlation deeply relates to the current definition of crisis in Japanese as at the time the earthquake was still ongoing and the scale in addition to the urban location of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake meant methods of encountering the earthquake from the past will be ineffective in the situation. So the concept of crisis in japan correlates with more the notion of uncertainty rather than opportunity or transition in comparison to the concept of crisis in other languages.

Although there might be defined characteristics of a crisis in the modern world today the concept of the crisis still remains ambiguous due to the different perceptions context and language it is used in.

References

(1) Runiciman,D (2016), “What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking about Crises?”, Critical Theories of Crisis in Europe pp3 – 16 https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/3349471/mod_resource/content/1/critical_theories.pdf

(2)Sogani, A (2020), “The Great Lockdown vs The Great Depression and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis”, E- International Relations, https://www.e-ir.info/2020/07/02/the-great-lockdown-vs-the-great-depression-and-the-2008-global-financial-crisis/

(3) Fischer, P. (1964). “THEOLOGY OF CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE”. The Centennial Review, 8(2), 216-227. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737913

(4) KORNER, A; (2011) “The Experience of Time as Crisis. On Croce’s and Benjamin’s Concept of History.” Intellectual History Review , 21 (2) 151 – 169. Downloaded from UCL Discovery: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1321530

(5)Kosellect. R and Richter .M .R 2006, “Crisis,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.67 No.2 pp357 -400, University of Pennsylvania Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/30141882

(6) Weiji, Qian pian Hanyu dictionary, https://cidian.qianp.com/ci/危机

(7) wei, Handian dictionary, https://www.zdic.net/hans/危

(8) ji, Handian dictionary, https://www.zdic.net/hans/机

(9) kiki, Weblio dictionary, https://www.weblio.jp/content/危機

(10)Hirasawa. A, n.d, Chuo online https://yab.yomiuri.co.jp/adv/chuo/opinion/20121217.html

In the materials provided and discussions in the seminar in week 4, the topic that stood out to me was the possibility of plague or crisis as a tool in the progress of human society.

Mentioned in the “Plague and lethal epidemics in the pre-industrial world”, some scholars argue that the Black Death and other plagues set ‘Western Europe on a path of quicker economic development by contributing to the creation of high mortality ‘and ‘high income’.(1) The so-called ‘Golden Age of the English Labourer’ followed the series of bubonic plague and black death lasted till the early 16th century was a period of time that abrupt rise in real wages occurred(2). The rise in wages could be due to the change in the land labor ratio, where it was estimated that ‘more than 40000 (people) died during the plague’ from passages in “Anacardina espiritual”(3). This depopulation of lower-class citizens reduced the absolute obedience from peasants to their landlords, as in contrast to an abundance of labor prior to the plague, the lack of labor meant workers had more leverage in negotiating their working terms. After the plague, the wealthy put in measures that aim to return the lower class citizens to their working conditions before the plague, which sparked the various peasant revolts such as the peasant revolt in France in 1358CE. (4) While class systems and struggles are still present in society today, the peasant revolts during this period of time contributed to the decline of the feudal system. Therefore creating a paradigm shift in human society.

If there is one thing that the recent pandemic has warned us from the economic and social prospect, it is the risks that are involved in globalisation. Globalization for the past few decades has contributed enormously to the global economy and environment. Globalization includes the exchange of goods, services, national capital flows, immigration, technology across the borders. (5) Industries like the fashion industry benefited from globalisation through employing lower-wage labor in Asian countries, while the Asian countries befitted from the extra employment from western companies. Prior to the Covid Pandemic, the advance of globalisation was impacted by two events. One has been the 2008 financial crisis which leads the world into ‘slowbalisation’. Following the financial crisis, a group of populist leaders was chosen and championed nationalism by creating policies that produced negative impacts on globalisation. (6) The trade war between America and China is one of the most well-known examples in this period of time. Then the pandemic hit in late 2019, where countries and multinational business worldwide was hit by the disruptions in the production and posting process of supplies from Asian countries. This disruption further enhanced the risks of globalisation and an era of ‘de – globalisation’ is to be expected in the Post-Covid era, symbolising a paradigm shift in society.

Although not all crisis will produce distinguish impacts on the human society, it is still worth analysing and considering the possible influence each crisis will create to the society.

1. Alfani, Guido, and Tommy E. Murphy. “Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World.”The Journal of Economic History 77, no. 1 (2017): 314–43. doi:10.1017/S0022050717000092.
2. Munro, John H.(2004): “Before and after the Black Death: money, prices, and wages in fourteenth-century England.” Published in: New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Selected Proceedings of Two International Conferences at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelser , Vol. 104, (February 2009): pp. 335-364.
3. Juan Serrano de Vargas y Urena “Anacardina spiritual” Libreria anticuaria “ El Guadalhorce” 1962
4. Mark, Joshua J. “Effects of the Black Death on Europe.”Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified April 16, 2020. https://www.ancient.eu/article/1543/
5.  Antras pol. “ De-Globalisation? Global Value Chains in the Post Covid – 19 Age” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No.28115,November 2020, http://www.nber.org/papers/w281156.
6. CNBC “ Is Globalization Over? | What’s Next For The U.S. Economy” online video clip. YouTube 15 sept 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOQP-IQV21w&t=125s

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion." 
― Isaac Newton

The conflicts between religion and science are evident in the distinguished objectives of both disciplines, where religion aims to explain both natural and supernatural occurrences, science only concerns itself with natural events (Cruz,2017). One of the most well-known conflicts between religion and science is the debate regarding the beginnings of the earth, where scientists believe in the evolution and big bang theories, while religion provides the theory of god’s creation (Draper,1902). Although both disciplines have their loyal supporters, either side is capable of proving the opposing side as invalidating. Like Newton’s quote, science can only ‘explain the motion of the planets’ to a certain extent. All questions beyond science capabilities can only be explained by theories involving divinities, which science lacks the abilities to prove or disapprove.

The value of religion is established in the sense of relief it provides to its believers. During the medieval ages, people believed that sickness or plague could be sent by God as punishment for not observing the ‘ceremonies and commandments’ set by god (D’Agramont, 1949). Thus people at the time tend to gather in communities and perform prayers hoping to gain forgiveness from god. At the same time, it can also be argued that religion can be used as a way of getting through tough situations, as it helps creates a new narrative, allows the believer to imagine a joyful future, and prevent the believer to enter a mental state of permanent fear and sadness (Meza, 2020).

The value of science lies within its ability to analyze the situation. The concept of science is evident in the medieval periods through the procedures of medical arts. The typical steps within the scientific method consist of making an observation, present a question, form a hypothesis, predicting the hypothesis, and test the prediction. Although testing the prediction might be hard to achieve in medieval times due to their lack of scientific equipment, the ‘Regiment de preserv acio a epidemic o pestilencia e mortaldats’ demonstrates other components of the scientific method. An observation of people getting sick was made leading to questions on the reasons behind the sickness. A hypothesis that changes in the ‘air’ is the cause behind people’s sickness was presented. The hypothesis is further developed by identifying the causes of the changes in the air, such as god’s punishment for human sins. This is supported by chapter 28 within the holy scripture. The prediction is evident through the passage ‘ if the corruption and putrefaction of the air have come because of our sins the remedies of medical art are of little value, for only He who blinds can unblind’ (D’Agramont, 1949), suggesting if the sickness is caused by supernatural powers then it can be only undone by supernatural powers. Hence the people back then would refer back to prayers as their solution to a plague. Although both religion and medical arts reach the same conclusion in encountering plagues sent by God in the medieval ages, the value of medical arts and components of the scientific method lies in its logical thinking process towards creating a solution to the issue at hand.

Thus although religion and science tend to sit on the opposite side regarding issues such as the creation of the world, both disciplines co-exist and provide different beneficial values to the societies.

Reference list

Cruz. H.C (2017), “Religion and Science”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/#WhatScieWhatReli

D’Agramont. J (1949) “Regiment de preserv acio a epidimia o pestilencia e mortaldats”,Translated by Duran – Reynals . M. L and Winslow. C.-E., A Bulletin of the History of Medicine, JANUARY-FEBRUARY, Vol. 23, No. 1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1949), pp. 57-89 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44443424

Draper, J. W. (1902). “Appleton dollar library. History of the conflict between religion and science”. D Appleton & Company. https://doi.org/10.1037/12369-000

Meza, D (2020) “In a Pandemic Are We More Religious? Traditional Practices of Catholics and the COVID – 19 Southwestern Colombia”, International Journal of Latin American Religions 4, 218 – 234, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-020-00108-0

Since COVID 19 ‘s first appearance in late 2019, the pandemic has created fear and chaos in various countries worldwide. The virus that causes COVID 19 is named SARS – CoV -2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (Shereen et. al 2020). In 2003 a similar virus SARS – CoV ‘infected 8098 individuals with a mortality rate of 9%, across 26 countries'(Shereen et. al 2020). In comparison, COVID 19 has a larger infection rate and a lower mortality rate, in July 2020 (Shereen et. al 2020).

The association between a global pandemic and a public health crisis is often mentioned simultaneously by the mass media. A crisis defined by the World Health Organization is a ” Time of danger or greater difficulty, decisive turning point”(WHO,n.d). In this sense COVID – 19 pandemics can be classified as a crisis due to the danger of the pandemic on the human population, the difficulty in controlling the pandemic, and a possible paradigm shift within various systems in the human societies.

Mcloughin’s claim of crisis as “the fundamental engine of history” (Mcloughlin, 2020) is evident in the process of encountering COVID -19 within the differentiated and new or adapted policies to the pandemic from different governmental systems worldwide. The lockdown procedures initiated by the Chinese government in Wuhan and other major cities involving 56 million people “is unprecedented in public health history” ,stated by Dr. Gauden Galea (Caduff,2020), is an example of a possible paradigm shift in the established concepts within the international public health systems. This paradigm shift is further enhanced by the implications of similar lockdown procedures by different governmental systems worldwide (Australia, Italy, UK, etc.), despite the criticism of the lockdown approach from various international media during the lockdown in China. Thus it can be argued that the paradigm shifts in the pre-established concepts and policy-making decisions in regards to encountering global pandemics in the international public health systems caused by the COVID -19 crisis, is an example of how a crisis can help the advance of history.
However, it is important to understand that the impacts of COVID – 19 is not limited to the public health systems but all systems and industries in modern society.

The impact of COVID- 19 is not only evident in politics and public health systems but also in the lifestyle of individuals within different regions. The wide use of online platforms for both work and educational purposes provides societies with new living styles. Recent articles have suggested the possibilities of remote working being more effective than office working (Boddy, 2020). Such suggestions demonstrated the possibilities of paradigm shifts within industries outside of public health, thus supports Mcloughin’s claim of a crisis as the force behind the advance of human history as the impact of crisis such as COVID-19 is applied throughout all industries in human society.

Reference list
Boddy, N. (2020) “It’s more productive to work from home”, Financial Review available from https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/careers/it-s-more-productive-to-work-from-home-20200401-p54fwc

Caduff, C (2020) ” What Went Wrong: Corona and the World after the Full Stop”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, volume 34: 467 – 487 https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12599

Mcloufglin, J (2020) ” In Tims of Crisis”, The London Magazine, pg 25 – 31
Shereen, M, A. Khan, S. Kazmi, A. Bashir, B., Siddique, R.(2020), “COVID infection: Origin, transmission, and characteristics of human coronaviruses,” Journal of Advanced Research, Volume 24, Pages 91-98, ISSN 2090-1232, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2020.03.005.

Who.int. n.d. WHO | Definitions: Emergencies. [online] Available at: https://www.who.int/hac/about/definitions/en/