Chronicling Covid-19 (4)

05 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by michelinewalker in Covid-19, Pandemic

Tags

Covid-19, Denial, Marcus Aurelius, Pandemics

The angel of death striking a door during the plague of Rome; engraving by Levasseur after Jules-Elie Delaunay (Wikipedia)

Denial

Denial is our worst enemy. I saw the people of my building flaunting so many rules (consignes) that they should have been penalized. I wrote emails to the Committee managing this building to report dangerous interaction.

However, I did not write that the dangerous interaction I witnessed was in violation of rules put into place by authorities. But, my star fell. I was no longer the quiet person who had purchased an apartment in the building, but someone who would not let her neighbours huddle by the mailboxes, in violation of the rules put into place to protect the citizens of Quebec.

It’s quite simple. The only outings that are allowed are trips to the grocery store and the pharmacy. One cannot touch the money one gives to the pharmacy’s delivery man. Mail is delivered, but parcels are not signed by recipients. Distancing has its rules. One cannot go out to walk the dog.

But what about leaders elsewhere? We know that it took a long time for President Trump to realize that the danger was real and imminent. Not in the United States! Yet, I wonder to what extent he would have been believed had he mobilized the authorities at the end of January. The highways remain busy. I hope these people are driving home. It took a long time for President Trump to suggest self-isolation. He may have thought that the United States was a “free” country and that as President, he had to comfort Americans.

People are now throwing stones at Mr Trump for looking upon the coronavirus as no more than the yearly flu. However, had he closed the country down, would citizens of a “free” country have taken him seriously? I don’t think so. There are exceptionally dutiful Americans. They died on both fronts, the Atlantic and the Pacific, during World War II. Had the President closed the country, he may well have been deemed “un-American” by the very persons who elected him to the Presidency of their country?

Yes, President Trump reassured everyone. This will go come April. His attitude did not differ much from the attitude of my neighbours who didn’t “believe in” the coronavirus and would have agreed with Mr Trump that come April, etc… But I jumped like a lioness. Yet, I don’t think I would point a guilty finger at “sinners.” Nor would I pronounce the President of the United States guilty of a genocide. It’s a pandemic.

The government of China reprimanded the whistle-blower, Dr Li Wenliang. Many Quebecers went to Florida and other sunny destinations several days after I had gone into self-isolation.

Is now the time to throw stones? Not quite. Now is the time when one does not leave one’s house or apartment, except to get food and medication, wearing protective gear. Now is the time when industries produce whatever doctors, nurses require as rapidly as they produce weapons.

I live in the most defiant province of Canada, but the management of this building has now issued consignes, rules, that could prevent hundreds of death were they respected everywhere. I said to a member of the managing committee of this building that I understood my neighbours. They are asked to live upside down. A few weeks ago, they could greet one another and hug when they picked up their mail. They could also exercise in the pool, but all these rooms are closed. My star rose.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/coronavirus-quebec-covid-19-deaths-climb-to-75-cases-rise-to-nearly-7-000/ar-BB12aoy0?ocid=msedgdhp

—ooo—

Denial is strange. It is as though one believed, yet did not believe at the same time. It’s a defense mechanism. Yet, would that Mr Trump had seen what was going in Wuhan!

One of my nieces so wanted to go to Cuba with her husband and two children. She postponed the trip by a year. Another niece cancelled a trip to Disneyland. Is anything real?

President Trump did take a long time to understand what to him was incomprehensible. Capt. Brett Crozier was dismissed because he disclosed the manner in which coronavirus was managed aboard his ship.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/05/coronavirus-latest-news/?utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&wpisrc=al_

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus died of the plague, the Antonine Plague, Antonine after his complete name.

Sources and Resources

Past Pandemics that Ravaged Europe (BBC.UK)

Love to everyone 💕

Medieval illustration of the Black Death

The bubonic plague killed an estimated 137 million worldwide (BBC.UK)

More on Boëthius & rising to someone’s defense

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Music, Sharing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Aberdeen Bestiary, Alfred Dreyfus, Émile Zola, beauty, Boëthius, Louis XIII, Marcus Aurelius, rising to someone's defense

The Yale, the Aberdeen Bestiary

Aberdeen Bestiary

More on Boëthius

Surfing the net in search of appropriate pictures and music for Boëthius, I was surprised to find that he had many admirers.

Among the material I discovered on You Tube is a German-language account of his death. I have put a link to this website at the very bottom of this post. It provides a more detailed account of his life than mine.

For instance, I did not mention that Boëthius was accused of treason when and perhaps because he rose to the defense of ex-consul Cæcina Decius Faustus Albinus who had just been accused of treasonous correspondence with Justin I, the Byzantine emperor. Boëthius pointed out that if Albinus could be accused of treason, so could he, which is precisely what happened.

Rising to someone’s defense

So poor Boëthius learned, for the duration of his imprisonment, that one does not question the judgment of the “great.” Given his rank and the nature of his position, it could be that Boëthius believed he was at liberty to defend Albinus. But the nature of his position also allowed communication between Boëthius and Justin I. Boëthius was an accomplished Hellenist.

We are now better protected against false accusations, but the fact remains that rising to the defense of an unjustly accused person is dangerous, which may explain why so many of us will not help victims of an injustice. By and large, people in high places will not lift a finger to help a person who is the victim of an injustice

Émile Zola: the Dreyfus affair

When Émile Zola published his: “J’accuse” in an effort to help Dreyfus, an army captain falsely accused of treason, he [Zola] was tried and convicted but managed to flee to England. The traitor was Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (16 December 1847 – 21 May 1923) who never had to face punitive measures.

And it goes on and on. This morning, I posted a short message on President Obama’s Facebook page and was immediately deluged with mostly unsavoury mail. When President Bush discovered the US was facing a financial collapse, averted by TARP, I lost a third of my pension fund. President Bush was bailed out by the Democrats and my situation has improved, but I thank God and Lady Fortune for the fact that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and that I was born in a country that has social programs.

Finally I thank Boëthius for writing The Consolation of Philosophy (524 ce). He could not avoid torture and death but he reminded us that the scenario is always the same: from ashes to ashes. And he also reminded us that life which sometimes brings the worst can also bring the best. It can be ornamented.

The above picture has both nothing and everything to do with this blog. It is a thing of beauty, naïve beauty, and therefore a small pleasure. When I receive unsavoury messages, I turn to beauty wherein I find a temporary refuge. Marcus Aurelius looked upon his soul as his best refuge. It could be that my soul is also my best refuge, but I need a guardian angel as I struggle to reach it.

How does a blogger say to her readers that she is there for them?

Der Tod des Boëthius (524 n. Chr.)

Bourbon Louis XIII (1601–1643 ): Ballet de la Merlaison

(please click on titles to listen)

22 February 2012

The Human Mind: Ideas

17 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

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creativity, Descartes, invention, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Steve Jobs, tabula rasa

In my last post, I quoted Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (26 April 121 – 17 March 180 CE) concerning the manner in which a text can take a life of its own. But I have since thought that the quotation I used might be one of many ways to depict the process of discovery. If a text takes a life of its own and will not remain inside your plan, this is perhaps what happens to discoverers, persons who, like Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011), can change the world forever, as did the ‘ideas’ of other scientists.

Only a little while, and Nature, the universal disposer, will change everything you see, and out of their substance will make fresh things [ideas], and yet again others [ideas] from theirs, to the perpetual renewing of the world’s youthfullness.

No wonder Steve Jobs left college to start working on “inventions.” His thinking had led to unexpected ‘ideas’ that could lead to inventions. What happened to Steve Jobs may have happened or may happen to other creative minds. He had an ‘idea’ and he used it to create extraordinary inventions and products.

In his Reflections on Geometry in General: On the Geometrical Mind and on the Art of Persuading, section II De l’Esprit géométrique et de l’art de persuader, section II (1657-1658), Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662), states that there are two entrances to the soul, “deux entrées par où les opinions sont reçues dans l’âme.” These two entrances are reason, or l’esprit de géométrie, and instinct, or l’esprit de finesse. Now instinct could be the element which, in a brilliant mind, leads to the ‘idea’ that leads to the invention. Steve Jobs produced the first user-friendly personal computer: the Macintosh.

Pascal’s father was a tax-farmer (tax collector) and spent a lot of time counting. So his son had an ‘idea’ that led to the invention of a mechanical calculator he called the pascaline. As well, Blaise was the first person to come up with the idea of public transportation. Public transportation was the carrosses à cinq sols, the short-lived five-penny carriages.

So I believe that when Pascal insisted that reason, esprit de géométrie, alone was an inadequate investigative tool without the support of instinct, or esprit de finesse, he may have added a precious dimension to the scientific method devised by Descartes, and that element would be intuition, or finesse, or instinct, or the above-mentioned ‘idea.’ The ‘idea’ would be the fountainhead of creation and invention, including practical inventions. We use Steve Jobs’s gadgets.

In no way do I intend to marginalize Descartes’s essential contribution to science, the formulation of the scientific method. On the contrary! Until René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), experiments were not conducted methodically and scientists had to work within the Catholic Church’s narrow view of the world and, particularly, the Catholic Church’s view of the cosmos. Before undertaking a scientific investigation, Descartes took everything off the table (tabula rasa), but he left aside any mention of the ‘idea,’ seminal ‘ideas.’

However, in the second century, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, wrote about “fresh things” leading to other “things.” At first, the creative or inventive mind may be thinking within the box, but there comes a point when thoughts, an ‘idea,’ takes the investigative mind well outside the box.

Pascal always combines instinct and reason (Thoughts, 112-344). For Pascal, the human mind was divided into instinct and reason. There is constant symmetry. Instinct may well be the ‘idea,’ or ‘ideas,’ leading to a “perpetual renewing of the world’s youthfullness.”

So let this be my tribute to the human mind and, particularly, to the mind of Steve Jobs.

* * *

October 16, 2011

Those who came back

11 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Uncategorized

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compassion for the tortured, compassion for the torturers, homes for the veterans, jobs for the veterans, Marcus Aurelius, meaningful lives, WordPress

In one of his Meditations, Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) wrote: “To stand up – or to be set up?” (7:1)

It could be that the United States was “set up” or provoked into invading Afghanistan and Iraq. If so, given the consequences, the harm inflicted upon the United States is senseless and cruel in the extreme. I am thinking of all those who were hurt, all those who suffered horrific losses, but at the moment, the fate of those who came back is foremost in my thoughts.

The United States did not find Weapons of Mass Destruction in the countries it invaded. Nor did these countries harbor Bin Laden. Bin Laden eluded capture for nearly ten years, to be found in Pakistan, not by soldiers, but by the intelligence community, and then seized by commandos: the élite Navy Seals.

So today, the United States and the world mourn not only the death of the victims of the attack of September 11, 2001: New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but the United States and the world also mourn soldiers killed or maimed in serving their nation and veterans whose mental stability may be forever lost. And we mourn the suffering and humiliation endured by tortured prisoners most of whom were innocent but some of whom died under torture as well as the suffering, a sense of guilt, that may forever torment the torturers. Torture is not acceptable.

For my part, I suspect that no one won and that we may never know whether or not the United States “[stood] up” or was “set up.”

But we do know the story of 9/11. It is the story of one devastating day, the day of the attacks, followed by years of devastation, not to mention the final bill.

I feel compassion for the families that lost a dear one or dear ones on 9/11. I also feel compassion for the families who will never again be complete because a soldier died, as well as for the couples who are now forever separated because a soldier died.

But also, and perhaps most of all, I feel compassion for those soldiers who came back but came back to an empty world, those veterans who may be disoriented, but are physically fit, and don’t even have a job.

The dead are spoken of as heroes while many of these veterans are sleeping under bridges. That’s not right.

So, why not make today the last day of the many days of grief that followed the attacks of 9/11?

Why not simply pay the bill—that’s just money—and let life be, perhaps not pentiful, but nevertheless generous and meaningful.