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If anyone wonders whether we humans have 'moved beyond' superstition, they need only look around at all the masked faces.
For a while, man's natural superstitions were checked by rational religion. Now that religion (as we have known it for ~1500 years in the West) has been largely rendered irrelevant, superstition once again prevails.
To answer the OP's question, we see now, just as we did with 9/11 and AIDS, that there will always be some people who view these happenings as punishment from a god or at least a god having a hand in it and others who roll up their sleeves and get to work to find solutions. Then, of course, there will always be those who work to exploit such events for their own agendas.
I would amend that slightly. These people don't, I think, see G-d's hand in this. These see a society that has become used to luxuries, and Covid is a way to take those away. The luxuries are taken away by two methods; the lockdowns directly proscribe travel and entertainment, upon which the well-to-do are thought to spend their (ill-gotten) wealth; and they get to push their economic nostrums that are the beginnings of UBI (universal basic income). In a day and age where religion doesn't hold much sway with the elite, the elite have taken the role of G-d.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachel NewYork
I think Mightyqueen801 gave a good answer to that. I'll just add this:
Angels aren't a central belief in Judaism -- certainly not the way that they are in Christianity. Only G-d is "in charge" of the earth. Any angels mentioned in the Jewish Bible (which differs from the Christian Bible, and not just in not having a "New Testament") never had free will to be in charge of anything, and were only capable of doing G-d's bidding.
I do believe that we should all care for the earth and its creatures. I don't know about explaining "Nature's violence," or whether it even can be explained. I only know that it is incumbent upon all of us to live the best lives that we are capable of living while we are still alive and on this earth. For a Jew, that means to live in accordance with what G-d has asked of us.
There are angels in the OT, such as the ones that guided Abraham and Isaac to the place of the Akeda, and that provided the ram in lieu of Isaac for sacrifice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EscAlaMike
If anyone wonders whether we humans have 'moved beyond' superstition, they need only look around at all the masked faces.
For a while, man's natural superstitions were checked by rational religion. Now that religion (as we have known it for ~1500 years in the West) has been largely rendered irrelevant, superstition once again prevails.
I have my doubts about the efficacy of the paper diapers myself. If it makes other people less fearful I wear them.
Great Debate Question: When do we conclude that a plague such as Covid or climate change cannot be overcome, but impacts must be mitigated?
Excuse me for not really getting more into this, but IMO most thinking people have already come to this conclusion, have they not? I think the problem for many is that they can't agree on how or what that mitigation looks like.
Excuse me for not really getting more into this, but IMO most thinking people have already come to this conclusion, have they not? I think the problem for many is that they can't agree on how or what that mitigation looks like.
Mitigation means adaptation. What the politicians are seeking is more prevention, akin to King Canute holding back the tides. Let's take them in turn:
Covid - The various orders, such as "Shelter at Home", "Safer at Home", "New York Pause", ad. infinitum, had the objective of shutting down the economy and locking down (all but the politically privileged) part of the population. The folly was obvious so that was why it was initially billed as "just two weeks." Then it was extended, in most populated states, in one month waves, i.e. initially April and May. When the storming of the Michigan statehouse in April and the May 23 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision made it obvious that people's patience was wearing thin, very slowly phased "reopenings" began. These reopenings were partially reverse when the fall and winter spike began. It couldn't be total because people's patience with a process that was obviously futile was wearing thin. Even the politicians such as Pelosi, Whitmer and Newsom couldn't abide the closings. People may have come to "this conclusion" but not the control freak politicians. Cuomo is now reaping the whirlwind, having sewn the wind.
Climate change - The purported effort of the Paris Climate Accords is to hold down or reverse climate change. Virtually everyone know that China's and India's joining the effort will be indefinitely deferred, so the sacrifice of Western countries will be for naught. Even if it had a purpose, no politician in a democracy is going to do more than give lip service, since attaining the needed savings would entail shutting down large portions of the economy. Even then one could not measure the results, as natural forces create warmings and coolings of their own. More likely, the politicians salivate over the tax revenues to be gained by imposing carbon taxes. The only belief the people have in this is the superstitious belief that pain = gain.
Mitigation, by contrast, might mean changing the mix of crops to be grown as conditions change, or perhaps doing less building in exposed coastal plains. The coasts have always been hazardous places to build for obvious reasons.
Mitigation means adaptation. What the politicians are seeking is more prevention, akin to King Canute holding back the tides. Let's take them in turn:
Covid - The various orders, such as "Shelter at Home", "Safer at Home", "New York Pause", ad. infinitum, had the objective of shutting down the economy and locking down (all but the politically privileged) part of the population. The folly was obvious so that was why it was initially billed as "just two weeks." Then it was extended, in most populated states, in one month waves, i.e. initially April and May. When the storming of the Michigan statehouse in April and the May 23 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision made it obvious that people's patience was wearing thin, very slowly phased "reopenings" began. These reopenings were partially reverse when the fall and winter spike began. It couldn't be total because people's patience with a process that was obviously futile was wearing thin. Even the politicians such as Pelosi, Whitmer and Newsom couldn't abide the closings. People may have come to "this conclusion" but not the control freak politicians. Cuomo is now reaping the whirlwind, having sewn the wind.
Climate change - The purported effort of the Paris Climate Accords is to hold down or reverse climate change. Virtually everyone know that China's and India's joining the effort will be indefinitely deferred, so the sacrifice of Western countries will be for naught. Even if it had a purpose, no politician in a democracy is going to do more than give lip service, since attaining the needed savings would entail shutting down large portions of the economy. Even then one could not measure the results, as natural forces create warmings and coolings of their own. More likely, the politicians salivate over the tax revenues to be gained by imposing carbon taxes. The only belief the people have in this is the superstitious belief that pain = gain.
Mitigation, by contrast, might mean changing the mix of crops to be grown as conditions change, or perhaps doing less building in exposed coastal plains. The coasts have always been hazardous places to build for obvious reasons.
Covid:
The majority of people in MI did not feel the way those who stormed the statehouse felt. There are plenty of public opinion polls that say otherwise. The actions of a fringe element of society are not to be confused with the mainstream. This poll conducted by a business group says 57% of Michiganders approved of Gretchen Whitmer's handling of the covid crisis.
I think you are too pessimistic. There are several actions which would work wonders in terms of buying us some time to resolve this problem. I am referring to closing down as many coal fired power plants as is humanly possible, preventing deforestation in places like the Amazon, and gradual development of electric cars. I think many liberal environmental groups are going to have to reconsider their opposition to nuclear powered energy. These plants produce a lot of power without polluting the skies. Solar energy will be a big help, but we still need nuclear power and natural gas to produce power and heat homes.
Mitigation:
Efforts are already occurring and a lot of progress has been made. The emission of carbon into the atmosphere has been significantly reduced by all the western industrialized countries.
Our capacity to influence our environment is considerable. Of course, chest-thumping hubris exceeds our actual means; we're less powerful than we generally choose to admit. The range of our fancy exceeds that of our achievements, and always will. But in 2021 we have incomparably more capacity to shape our environment and to redirect our lives, than we did in 2021 BC.
By my reckoning, the problem with this entire Covid debacle is that we have treated this as being an epochal, enormous, existential crisis... whereas the actual damage is rather less dire. I don't make light of 500K dead Americans, but after all, 500K is not 50M. This isn't the bubonic plague of 1348 in Europe. Yes, every life is precious, but however precious it may be, there it has a finite preciousness. What measures of mitigation to institute, is a balance of competing costs and competing interests. We have, by my reckoning, as a planet (not just as a country) overreacted.
The vaccines are to be heralded and celebrated as a triumph of human ingenuity.... a thing impossible 100 years ago, let alone in biblical times. This is a factual testament to our scientific and organizational prowess. I am far less impressed with the lockdowns and other impositions on behavior.
A highway speed-limit of 5 mph would drastically reduce the amount of traffic fatalities. Sure, some people would speed, and some would still get killed even at 5 mph. But the loss of life would be vastly less, than it presently is. And yet, we don't do this. No serious person, however safety-conscious, would advocate for a 5 mph speed limit, or even for 25 mph. We accept some amount of death, debilitation, misery and horror... mangled bodies and brains spilled out on the highway... in exchange for the convenience of high speed road-going transportation. This doesn't mean that we lack compassion for parents who lose their teenaged daughter to a traffic fatality, or that we dismiss her life as being mere "collateral damage". And yet, however compassionate we try to be, in the end we make a cost-benefit calculation. Unfortunately as part of that calculation, the young-lady in our vignette lost her life.
So too with the 'rona virus. We as a society have made a calculation, effectively setting the speed-limit to 5 mph. Doing so, has undoubtedly saved lots of lives, and prevented lots of people from getting severely sick. It has made a tremendous positive difference in reducing suffering. But it has also made a tremendous negative difference, in increasing suffering.... in the collateral damage of lockdowns and closed schools and so on.
The real hubris isn't in quasi-religious veneration for technology or science, but in the segregation between one kind of suffering and another... and in particular, in novelty. This is a NOVEL virus. We are awed by it. We shudder in horror at a death from this virus, more so, than we would from cancer or polio or highway accidents. We go to greater lengths to forestall deaths from this virus, than we would from anything else because of the suddenness, the novelty. We feel a higher moral obligation to save elderly people from Covid, than we would, to save them from stroke or heart disease or dementia or any other non-novel affliction.
The real superstition, I aver, is that we fear the novel more than we fear the panoply of existing, old, well-known evils. And so, we over-react.
Some people just can’t get over the fact that life on earth is chaotic, irrational, unpredictable and downright unfair. So we invent unseen gods in the sky whose domain and power is an ageless struggle between good and bad and the salivation of mankind.
Some people just can’t get over the fact that life on earth is chaotic, irrational, unpredictable and downright unfair. So we invent unseen gods in the sky whose domain and power is an ageless struggle between good and bad and the salivation of mankind.
That is actually a pretty good summation. Athena for example was the "G-d of love." Love between people cannot be explained.
Tragedies such as earthquakes, destructive weather events, epidemics/pandemics are inexplicable.
Even more inexplicable is something that happened in January 1970 to one of my mother's close friends, Carol. She was driving on the Hutchinson River Parkway one frigid night during a long, cold and snowless dry spell. Her car skidded on a lone patch of ice, leaving three daughters under ten without a mother. Over the years I had thought it was a suicide. Another work colleague who knew her and identified the body said that it was not. Or when a healthy jogger such as Jim Fixx suddenly drops dead. There is no explanation.
This leaves a question I will not, for the moment answer. To whom can we or do we turn?
That is actually a pretty good summation. Athena for example was the "G-d of love." Love between people cannot be explained.
Tragedies such as earthquakes, destructive weather events, epidemics/pandemics are inexplicable.
Even more inexplicable is something that happened in January 1970 to one of my mother's close friends, Carol. She was driving on the Hutchinson River Parkway one frigid night during a long, cold and snowless dry spell. Her car skidded on a lone patch of ice, leaving three daughters under ten without a mother. Over the years I had thought it was a suicide. Another work colleague who knew her and identified the body said that it was not. Or when a healthy jogger such as Jim Fixx suddenly drops dead. There is no explanation.
This leaves a question I will not, for the moment answer. To whom can we or do we turn?
Isn't this a bit like seeking the answer to the ubiquitous question of why "bad things happen to good people"?
Sometimes tragic events are explainable, as in cases of deliberate violence where bad people happen to good people, or in cases of deliberate destruction to the environment where bad or careless people happen to good places. Some tragic events seem beyond explaining, and yet some people try to explain these by saying that G-d has removed His protection on account of being displeased with us.
I wouldn't presume to know the Mind of G-d, or anthropomorphize G-d to the extent that I should know how G-d would react in every scenario. There's a kind of cruelty in that way of thinking, because so many people seem to take a secret pleasure in believing that G-d chooses to punish those whom they, themselves, disapprove of.
To answer your question: "To whom can we or do we turn?" I believe that we should turn to whatever brings us comfort and hope, whether it be family, friends, religion, science, or a combination of these things. That which inspires hope in us also inspires us to go on -- so that we may perhaps eventually find the answers to the questions that we have.
That is actually a pretty good summation. Athena for example was the "G-d of love." Love between people cannot be explained.
Tragedies such as earthquakes, destructive weather events, epidemics/pandemics are inexplicable.
Even more inexplicable is something that happened in January 1970 to one of my mother's close friends, Carol. She was driving on the Hutchinson River Parkway one frigid night during a long, cold and snowless dry spell. Her car skidded on a lone patch of ice, leaving three daughters under ten without a mother. Over the years I had thought it was a suicide. Another work colleague who knew her and identified the body said that it was not. Or when a healthy jogger such as Jim Fixx suddenly drops dead. There is no explanation.
This leaves a question I will not, for the moment answer. To whom can we or do we turn?
There are explanations for all those events. The driver who slid on ice maybe should have been going a little slower. The jogger may have heart disease which was not diagnosed.
The issue is that prevention is difficult. Because the ice is hard to see drivers don't want to go more slowly. The jogger may not have wanted to go to a doctor and have cardiac stress test and a cardiogram when he feels fine and is only in his forties.
We turn to science and technology for as much as an answer as we can get. The cars on the road in 1970 were practically all rear wheel drive vehicles. They were less stable and controllable on ice than front wheel drive and all wheel drive vehicles are. Modern brakes make stopping easier on a slick road. Cardiac stress tests and cardiograms are becoming more common and can be used to help prevent sudden heart attacks.
However, I do get the point that no matter how far we progress there will always be some amount of tragedy. We humans examine it. Try to learn from it. Try to prevent its reoccurrence. In that way we gradually advance. Without tragedy, we would have little motivation to change.
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Pain does not equal gain
