February 17 2013
Comparing the 14th Century with the 21st Century
Why would I compare our century with one of 700 years ago? Since I have no TV, blame books, which I read all the time. The culprit in this case: Barbara W. Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, the calamities of the 14th Century.
Take our favourite conversation topic: the weather.
The 14th Century is known as the start of the little ice-age. The Baltic Sea froze over twice, in 1303 and in 1306-7. Years of unseasonable cold, storms and rain followed. In 1315, and I quote: “after rain so incessant that they were compared to the Biblical flood, crops failed all over Europe, and famine, the dark horsemen of the Apocalypse, became familiar to all.”
Today we have the opposite: also Climate Change but in a different direction: February is the 340th consecutive month with an above-average temperature. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 28 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. Where 700 years ago too much rain and cold played havoc with the crops, now we have either not enough moisture in some places and too much in other areas, both threatening the food situation.
Our world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
As a result we now enter a new era haunted by hunger, because on the one end of the food spectrum there is population growth, rising affluence and the conversion of food into fuel for cars, all combining to raise consumption by record amounts. On the other side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless the trend reverses, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread.
Back 700 years the cold and rainy weather, the resulting shortening of the growing season as well as the reduction in crop yields had already weakened the health of the people, reducing the natural resistance to disease. When, in 1348, the Black Death reached the shores of Italy, infected fleas attached themselves to rats and then to humans and so spread this plague. It is estimated that between 25- 50% of Europe’s people fell victim to the pestilence. Not knowing what caused this fatal illness created total bewilderment and moral devastation. A second variation –pneumatic plague – attacked the respiratory system by merely breathing the exhaled air of a victim, an even more deadly kind. Death slowed food production, goods became scarce and prices soared. In France the price of wheat increased fourfold by 1350.
Environmental problems and moral decay go hand in hand, true now, where we suffer from a global fraud epidemic, true then in the 14th Century when the church and society were in total disarray. At one time there were three popes. I could argue that there is none now. Although the church then was the main financial beneficiary from the plague, it also became much more unpopular. When sudden death threatened everyone with the prospect of dying in sin, the church became the destination of peoples’ wealth. Writes Tuchman: “Human conduct was found to be wickeder than before, more avaricious and grasping, more litigious, more bellicose, and this was nowhere more apparent than in the church itself.”
Today that same church too is in real trouble. We are rushing to final questions and by that I mean that the Truth with a capital T is emerging, even though churches and clergy are obstructing it. The Christian church can no longer ignore the equality of women, can no longer deny that the earth is the Lord’s, that heaven is a myth. Islam cannot maintain male superiority forever. The Roman Catholic Church, governed by a few dozen old men, must, in the near future, admit that celibacy is not a divine ordinance while on a daily basis its clergy’s sex-related acts are being exposed. In the 21st century church attendance is rapidly declining with young and middle age people leaving the church in droves.
In the 14th century- as today – the rich became richer and the poor poorer. Writes Tuchman: “Division of rich and poor became increasingly sharp. With control of the raw material and tools of production, the owners were able to reduce wages in classic exploitation”. This sentence applies word for word to today’s economy. We increasingly read how in our Western world the middle class is disappearing, as good jobs are either outsourced to low wage countries, or replaced by robots.
As yet we have not had a pandemic but there are many indications that show that once a new virus emerges it will encounter a population that is quite unhealthy and increasingly old and vulnerable. The New Scientist reports that the so-called baby boomers, those born after the Second World War are less healthy than the previous generation. The survey indicates that half of the boomers do not exercise at all, compared with 17 percent of their forebears while 39 percent are obese compared with 29 percent of the previous generation. Now even new-born babies are loaded with scores of dangerous chemical compounds in their bodies. Also antibiotics are increasingly becoming less effective or even useless with the inherent danger that even a small infection may lead to death. All this suggests that when a pandemic does strike, the consequences may be devastating.
The 14th Century saw the One Hundred Year War between France and England, which actually lasted from 1337-1453 or 116 years. Will the 21st century see a Hundred Year War? Yes, and it is already there: it’s the Western World, especially the USA, versus fundamentalist Islam, especially the Taliban, the extreme version of the followers of the prophet Mohammed, a war that has already been raging for decades, and will never end.
War is often a symptom of decline or a sign of radical change. The end of the Hundred Year War heralded the Renaissance, and a totally different outlook on life. Out of the pain, the calamities, the unimaginable suffering of the 14th century emerged the Renaissance, the birth of a new world, a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life. Beginning in Italy, it spread to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, influencing literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion.
What is in store for us in the 21st Century? Here are some excerpts from an article written by Dr. Robert Jensen, professor of Journalism of the University of Texas. Under the heading: We are all apocalyptic now, or at least we should be, if we are rational, he writes:
“We’ve built a world based on the assumption that we will have endless energy to subsidize endless economic expansion, which was supposed to magically produce justice. That world is over, both in reality and in dreams. Either we begin to build a different world, or there will be no world capable of sustaining a large-scale human presence.
“When we take seriously what physics, chemistry and biology tell us about the health of the living world on which we depend, we all should be thinking apocalyptically. Look at any crucial measure of the ecosphere — groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of biodiversity, and the ultimate game-changer of climate disruption — and ask a simple question: Where we are heading? Scientists these days are talking about tipping points and planetary boundaries, about how human activity is pushing the planet beyond its limits.
“If we look honestly at the state of the world, it is difficult not to conclude that we are in end times of sorts — not the end of the physical world, but the end of the First-World way of living and the end of the systems on which that life is based.” (emphasis added)
Dr. Jensen speaks as a prophet: “We are in the end times.” That is now generally acknowledged. It’s also purely biblical. Just as the calamitous 14th century ended with New Life, the now called Renaissance, so our period will also see New Birth, the New Creation, which Jesus is busy preparing. Because we can’t do anything without Jesus, and Jesus won’t do anything without us, our prayer and action should be: “Prepare ye the Way of the Lord!”
Next week: agriculture versus horticulture.