Requiem for Universities: A Historical Cycle is Over

 

After some 10 centuries of existence, universities have arrived to the end of their historical cycle. It is the way things are: it is the great cycle of life. The universities will be gone, something else will come that will help people who want to learn and people who love to teach to find each other. And the cycle of life will continue. Even Simba the Lion knew that. 

Here, Sinéad Murphy has kindly given me the permission to reproduce her recent post "Requiem for Universities" on "Cassandra's Legacy." Her conclusions are similar to mine, as expressed in the post I wrote with the title of "The Fall of the Citadels of Science."

 

Requiem For Universities

Published 21 January 2021 on "Lockdown Sceptics"

by Sinéad Murphy

Universities have been dying for some time. As their prospectuses have grown glossier, their gateway buildings more spectacular and their accommodation for students more stunningly luxurious, the Humanities subjects have been gradually hollowed out.

Academics’ intellectual work has been streamlined by the auditing procedures of the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ and by growing pressure to bid for outside funding, which is distributed to projects that address a narrow range of approved themes – Sustainability, Ageing, Energy, Inequality…

Student achievement has been dumbed down by the inculcation of a thoughtless relativism – Everybody’s different; That’s just my interpretation – and by the annual inflation of grades.

The curriculum has begun to be tamed by continual revision – never broad enough, never representative enough – and by the drive for ‘equality and diversity’.And teaching has been marginalized by the heavy requirements that it represent itself on ever proliferating platforms and review itself in endless feedback loops.

Universities, in short, have been gradually transforming into what they proudly trumpet as a Safe Space, a space that has been cleared at greatest expense to Humanities subjects, a space in which the slightest risk – that a thought might lead nowhere, that a student might be uninterested, that an idea might offend or that a teacher might really persuade – has been mitigated by so many layers of bureaucratic procedure that most of everyone’s time is spent in wading through them.

Safe Space universities have been divesting themselves of real educational content, their plush marketing ploys concealing the decline – of their Humanities subjects at least – into little more than holding patterns for directionless youths.

But up until March of last year, there was still some space and time to act as if. To attempt, in the midst of the decline, to teach, to learn, to think, as if it were really possible to do so.

Because you could still meet your students, and use the small chance you had to teach them to introduce ideas which they might just be taken by and which you, in the process, might deepen your understanding of. And because students could still meet each other, form friendships, gather together, lift themselves out of the lives they grew up with, if only as a temporary reprieve.

It was not much, that is true. And acting as if can too easily collapse into the corruption of an all-out cynicism – quoting Heidegger in the original German to students who are visibly disengaged.

But acting as if can also, sometimes, work; the pretence can actually catch on. Two centuries and a half ago, Kant urged us to act as if human beings are rational, convinced that that would eventually make us so; and it did seem to work… for a while, at least.

But even the pretence is over now; even acting as if, no longer an option. Safe Space universities have come to their culmination. No space is safer than an empty space. And universities are empty at last. The shell has cracked and fallen away. The university is no more.

---

A couple of weeks ago, following a year’s leave, I stood in a tiny office on the tenth floor of a university tower.

From here, all teaching for the coming semester was to be done.

Lectures were to be given into the void, recorded for access in a space and at a time of students’ choosing. Hour-long tirades, with only your Panopto reflection for your guide, without even commonplace reference points to scaffold the event – the time of day, the weather outside, the furnishings, quirks in the technology: no experience shared, nothing to bind you to your crowd.

Seminars were to be run from here too. These, at least, were to be ‘live’; when it was morning for you, it would be morning for everyone else too. But – open and earnest discussion with students locked up in their family home, sitting on the bed they tossed in as a child? I am told that they turn off their video, sometimes their audio too, attending the class in name only, suspended in a box on the screen.

A brand new desktop computer blighted the tiny office on the tenth floor. Its oversized screen: the black hole into which teaching and learning were set to disappear.

For how long? Long enough, I am sure, for the sheer implausibility of the prospect to lose its edge. Long enough for what is now deemed necessary – the remote university – to begin, at last, to seem possible.

But it is not possible. Philosophy, at least, cannot be taught by giving a speech to yourself in a room on the tenth floor. Philosophy cannot be taught by orchestrating a grid of nametags. Philosophy cannot be taught on a screen.

The classic model of Western Philosophy is Socrates, who wandered about asking questions of those who would listen, inviting his fellow citizens to discussion of the good life. The gadfly method, it is called – meant to get under your skin. Exactly the opposite of Covid-compliant.

Philosophy does have other models – the grand treatise, or, most suitable now, the solitary meditation. But for teaching Philosophy, dialogue has never been bettered. And dialogue is live, up close, and between bodies.

In any dialogue, most of what is communicated is non-verbal, even if the dialogue is formal, even if it is aimed at instruction. You pause for effect, your muscles stilled. You raise your eyebrows in scepticism. You circle your hands in approximation. You deepen your tone for emphasis. You move from side to side to keep your thoughts in train. You repeat yourself at the sight of a furrowed brow. You re-energise at slumped shoulders. You play for laughs. You stop for hands in the air.

And philosophical dialogue goes even deeper, making your stomach churn with existential abandon, your heart beat at the reason of humanity, your head throb at the nature of the sublime.

Add to this the surface body-language of dialogue generally – the still muscles, the raised eyebrows, the circling hands and the rest ­– and the room in which Philosophy is taught should be a theatre of bodied intensity, a far cry from the tenth floor with its grotesque blank screen.

In the tiny office on the tenth floor, you cannot begin your lecture with a question, or an accusation, or a taunt, or anything else that might get your students involved. There is no one there and you cannot be a gadfly alone. You must speak instead as if from the podium, body hemmed in, a talking head. Except that, from the podium, you might still at least feel your audience there, and what you say might still have a chance of sinking in.

In the tiny office on the tenth floor, you cannot act as if. There is no one to play to, nothing to get the show on the road.

And what must it be like, to sit on your bed in a room in your parents’ house and switch on a tirade-from-nowhere? With your social life (or what passes for it) pulsing through competing portals, does the window to your Philosophy class let in any light at all?

Real learning is done by our bodies – by heart, it used to be said, though the phrase is out of favour. An argument should be grasped, rhetoric should be savoured, and metaphysical truths should make our hairs stand on end. Anything else is just words.

And just words are not only lifeless and cold; they suck the life from you, they leave you cold. Remote teaching and learning actually do you harm.

The university now continually directs its students to its twenty-four-hour support service, in implicit acknowledgement of the harmful effects of its remote provision, which does not merely fall short of the mark but imposes the kind of out-of-body experience that most students find disheartening and many cannot cope with at all.

We are told that it is necessary, the Safe Space university of just words – to save lives. (Our union has just invited us all to an event called “Saving Lives At Work”.) But that something is deemed necessary does not suffice to make it possible – of all lessons, that is the one we ought most to learn from this past year.

We are told also that it is temporary. But we will only ensure that it is temporary if we do not act as if it is possible. We should refuse to carry out their exceptional arrangements, or their exceptional arrangements have a chance of becoming the rule.

The Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, as early as May of last year, wrote what he titled a “Requiem For Students”, in which he described very well the impossibly corrupted character of the Covid university, whose technological barbarism he called out for what it is, and whose students he exhorted to refuse to enroll.

As educators, we are supposed to lead forth. We should go first, and refuse to teach on screens.

It is time to stop acting as if.

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Sinéad Murphy teaches philosophy at Newcastle University. She is the author of "Zombie University" 

 

The Ghosts of 2020. And the Ghosts of 2021

 

 

The devil scene from Walt Disney's 1940 "Fantasia" movie. A fitting representation of the nightmare that 2020 has been. 

This clip is especially fitting because you may notice how the devil doesn't really do anything bad during the whole scene. He summons ghosts and demons, they scream, they fly, they dance, but they don't touch anything, don't harm anyone. Evil is a characteristic of our mind: we create evil and we suffer its consequences because we believe in our own creation.

Perhaps we could hear bells dispelling evil in 2021, as it happens in the movie at 5:40? Maybe, but it is also possible that we'll create even worse ghosts than anything seen in 2020. Whatever the case, as always, we'll remain dominated by the ghost that we ourselves create.

 

 

 

War and Censorship -- Difficult Times in Italy

A post by Miguel Martinez, originally published in Italian on his blog on 23/11/2020. Italy was the first European country to be struck by the COVID-19 pandemic and the first to implement a national lockdown. At that time, Italians would display the flag on their balconies and sing aloud in a show of national unity. That time is past and gone. 

 

The media gives the alarm: news of danger and a call to arms, together. When the message is inseparable from mobilization, it becomes propaganda. Since "propaganda" today has a bad name, let us immediately specify: propaganda can say absolutely true things and defend right causes, but it remains always propaganda.

The state of mobilization puts an end to disputes: in war, everyone must be in solidarity around a human figure, the leader, able to embody all passions.

Young people run to enlist volunteers. Fear, excitement, optimism. It's Gonna Be Okay!

We grit our teeth, citizens cleanse themselves gel and unmask the traitors, actually mask them – but we will win soon!

People who, until the night before were ready to file a complaint because they were not served the cocktail they had requested, or because the plane left five minutes late, meekly lock themselves in their homes, place the tricolor flag out of the window, and prepares to see the enemy fall to the ground.

 

Above: "I stay home -- checkmate to the coronavirus"

 

The first deaths are celebrated: both as innocent victims of the wickedness of the enemy, and as brave fighters.

 

"A nurse dies of coronavirus refuses to see her husband for the last time and saves his life"

But there are also the first victories, a united people, let's open the windows, it's spring!

Our leader is leading us to triumph and we will dance in Sardinia all summer!

 

The image shows Giuseppe Conte, prime minister of Italy. The text says, "Let's stay away from each other today to embrace each other tomorrow. Let's stop today to run faster tomorrow."

Phase Two.

Autumn and darkness arrive, and it turns out that we didn't win the war at all and that, after a few months, living in air raid shelters loses its charm.

 

Image: Air raid shelters in Italy during WWII.

 

Suddenly we understand the real cost of war. It is not so much the casualties, but the destruction of an entire social class – the majority discovers the uncomfortable truth, that is, they are not essential.

Suddenly, the society that seemed so united begins to split according to new lines, not those of the previous political play.

The euphoria is over for everyone, but the majority still trust the leader.

Many even begin to doubt the cause. The ubiquitous propaganda begins to sound strangely empty, almost ridiculous.

Doubt arises in a thousand different ways, but above all because everything in which people had invested their lives seems lost forever.

Then all it takes is a true or an alleged abuse, a leaflet, a well-made reasoning, the suspicion- -- God forbid! – that someone is cheating. The secret of every war are the arms dealers, and when the arms merchants are also the owners of the communications system (not just of the media, of the system), they are also those who decide what you must see as the truth, then suspects are unleashed.

It is a moment of visions: everyone knows Our Lady of Fatima who complained about the Portuguese volunteers who went to war during WW1, but the historian Cesare Bermani discovered a proliferation of pacifist Madonnas also in Italy, guarded by the military police and kept secret.

Trade collapses, businesses close, the Great Leader begins to print money and throw it at the crowd, which at first applauds, grateful.

 

Phase Three

Society splits, largely according to the perspective that everyone has for their own future. Those who feel guaranteed generally stay with the Great Leader.

More and more people are beginning to rebel because they have nothing to lose, but they have to invent an explanation for the world of why they rebel. The Great Leader has a monopoly on academics and those who do not align themselves take great risks.

People not accustomed to indulging in the luxury of theoretical thought are called upon to provide a reason themselves.

And people without political precedent take up arms, in the ways our generation can.

"everything will be well"

Those who have remained faithful react with anger: the rebels, they say, are opening the door to the Enemy, who will massacre us all.

At first, the Traitors are only mocked, or accused of belonging to some evil sect: the Journal of American Medical Association seriously explains that those who do not align themselves are probably suffering from front-temporal dementia.

And at first, the conformists may even be somewhat right. We are beings selected for social conformism; and the first ones to break ranks may well be a little crazy. 

Then, when it turns out that they are many, we try to divide them: the good ones are only victims of the Manipulators. They are simpletons, who are convinced by the first thing they hear.

It's a bit strange that they don't let themselves be convinced by television, school, notices posted on the street, and doctors. In reality, the rebels are shocked by statements (no matter whether they are factually true or false) that respond to something they already feel inside: that is, that those in power do not count the numbers right, and that behind a war that demands enormous sacrifices, there may be even more enormous interests.

Or that governments that introduce emergency laws are not necessarily just well-intentioned.

This is the beginning of the internal war against the Traitors: they must be censored, beaten, and the chronicles are searched to find in the words of the rebels their most absurd and confused phrases, which obviously are not lacking.

Debate in Berlin

But the Traitors are potentially a whole society in disintegration.

The Great Leader doubles the money thrown from the windows of his palace and announces that the Wunderwaffe is almost ready.

The Great Leader is still followed by the majority, but he knows that even those who incite him today to hang the traitors from the light poles, may tomorrow ask for his head.

Because just as people erroneously attribute victories to an individual, they are ready to attribute defeats to him.

The leader governs by decree, he can impose things that were thought impossible, but - like the Dictator in Ancient Rome - then he still has to justify himself to an entire political system, and he knows that one day he may be dismissed.

Phase Four

Does the Wunderwaffe really exist? And if so, will it bring Victory?

 

Will the uprising be crushed by fines, mockery, media coverage, censorship, or will it spread everywhere before the Victory?

The majority of the people usually stay at their windows until almost the last moment, supporting in words the strongest, but with their antennas ready to perceive any weakness in the Great Leader's position. Things can change in an instant.

Let's give it a date, in spring, to see how it is going. Let's say around April 25 would you be okay with that? (*)

Note:

Obviously here we are talking about what happens inside a closed system. The Italy of today is part of a global system, from which it cannot prescind. But also the global system is involved in this war, and probably these reasonings are valid also for several other countries.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

(*) In Italy, April 25 is the anniversary of Italy's Liberation, also called the anniversary of the Resistance

Managing the Pandemic: A Costly Mistake we are Making

 

This comment by Olga Milanese is related to the situation in Italy, where it is common to talk about the pandemic in terms of the "Maximum Precaution Principle." This term is not much used elsewhere, but similar concepts are expressed in different forms in other countries, for example stating that no level other than zero is acceptable in regards to the pandemic (see, e.g. this exchange). Unfortunately, the consequence is that other problems are neglected. Here, Olga Milanese writes some interesting considerations from her viewpoint of a lawyer about the "principle of precaution." These considerations apply not only to the pandemic, but to many facets of the situation as it is nowadays. Facing multiple existential threats, from climate change to resource depletion, the human tendency, now as in past history, is to select one as "the" threat, and convey all the efforts on it, without realizing that some of the perceived "solutions" may do more harm than good.

 

By Olga Milanese

The PRINCIPLE OF MAXIMUM PRECAUTION is not what it seems! 

 

First of all, there is no principle of "maximum" precaution, but of precaution ... and that's it! The difference is fundamental. This principle contemplates the need to adopt protection and prevention measures even when it is not absolutely certain that a particular phenomenon is harmful, but there is a SCIENTIFICALLY RELIABLE doubt that it could be. 

 

This means that the legislator and the public administrations, in the exercise of their discretionary powers, must act cautiously when there is a potential risk. In these cases, we speak of "technical discretion", since the choices are made as a result of an evaluation based on the knowledge and the means provided by the various sciences. Even in the common conception, precautionary action is "justified only when there has been identification of the potentially negative effects (risks) based on scientific, serious, objective and available data, as well as a rigorously logical reasoning and, nevertheless, a 'wide scientific uncertainty about the "extent" of the aforementioned risk ". 

 

It is, therefore, true that the precautionary principle operates where there is no scientific certainty about the damage and when the delay of interventions could lead to an aggravation of the potential damage, but it is equally true that its statement can NOT translate into the possibility of listening and acting upon any kind of story or rumor, and this for many reasons. 

 

First of all, precisely because it must be considered that precautionary measures are NOT adopted, by their nature, on the assumption of absolute certainties, but on the basis of hypotheses and probabilities. Secondly, for the no less important consideration that the aforementioned measures are destined to involve a certain current or future, often high, sacrifice of other values, rights, or principles. 

 

To remedy this immanent conflict, a balance of interests must be used which results in the need of PROPORTION between the degree of probability and severity of the risks and the degree of incisiveness of the precautions to be taken on the freedoms or antagonistic rights. This should already make it clear why a precautionary plan that contemplates the cancellation of any activity (school, work, health in the broad sense of the term, etc.) due to a danger that is not immediate and not based on a deep-rooted scientific CERTAINTY, is intended to violate the application conditions of the same precaution. 

 

But that is not all! Failure to respect the proportion and balance of interests leads to an infringement of the REASONABLE principle, for which the public action MUST comply with the canons of OPERATIONAL RATIONALITY and AVOID ARBITRARY AND IRRATIONAL DECISIONS. This latest principle is of primary importance in the democratic management of a country, since the values ​​of equality, impartiality and good performance of administrative activity converge in it, so much so that its violation configures the vice of EXCESS OF POWER!

 

Wanting to be less technical, we could say that one thing is to establish the need to take a series of precautions when handling an unknown device whose power and harmfulness we have no scientific data about. It is quite another thing to decide that we do not even want to try to defuse the device, choosing to paralyze the life of an entire community to avoid the risk that someone could, by chance, approach it. 

 

The first conduct constitutes the correct application of the precautionary principle, as understood by our legal system and in EU law; the second is an arbitrary distortion of that principle, originating from a single cursed insidious adjective ("maximum") thrown there next to the word precaution. That became fashionable at the beginning of the pandemic in order to legitimize the denial of the right to education, the right to work, the right to a fair remuneration, the right to social equality, the right to health care made up of all-round care and assistance, in short, the right to the protection of human dignity, in every area in which his personality takes place. 

 

A single word, pulled out of the drawer of politics, has brought about the "mutation" of a principle that arose to guarantee citizens in a pretext to free state administrators from the burden of studying thoughtful solutions, but above all from the weight of the responsibilities of a any decision or choice. 

Olga Milanese is a civil lawyer. She deals mainly with aspects related to the protection of rights in the business, family and in relation to medical and professional responsibility, as well as the issue of the protection of human rights

Time for a new Witch Hunt? The pandemic could change more things than you would have expected.

 

A detail of Benvenuto Cellini's "Perseus and Medusa," a statuary group created in 1554 and presently in Florence, Italy. It is considered a work of art, but it is also the depiction of an extremely violent act: the beheading of Medusa, shown as a young woman in the group. It is rarely noted that this piece was created in the midst of the rise of a wave of violence against women in Europe, exterminated as witches. Clearly, Cellini's scene is influenced by this trend, even though witches were normally burned at the stake rather than beheaded. (but that had a tradition, too!)

 

 

Which historical period saw the largest number of witch hunts? If you answered "the Middle Ages," you were wrong. Surprised? Don't we all know that the Middle Ages, were the "Dark Ages," a time of barbarism and superstition, surely it was at that time that witches were hunted and burned. Who didn't see the "Burn the Witch" clip by the Monthy Python? It takes place in a typical medievalish setting.  

But, no. Burning witches was NOT a medieval thing. Look at the data. Trials and executions for witchcraft picked up well after that the Middle Ages were officially over, at some moment around the end of the 15th century. 

 
At the highest moment of this homicidal frenzy, about 2500 people per year, mostly women, were burned in Europe for a total estimated as about 50,000-100,000. Not a very large number in comparison to the population of the time, but a significant number, nevertheless.

Why did that happen? Why were Europeans obsessed with killing people, mostly poor women, who were doing little or no harm to anyone? And who were these witches, anyhow? There is a long story to tell here, so let's try to condense the main points of it.

The idea of evil women using poisons and magical spells to kill people is very ancient and it appears in many human cultures. The first report on this subject that has numbers in it comes from the Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC - 17 AD) who tells us about two episodes of witch-hunting that took place in 331 BC and 180 BC. In both cases, a spate of executions (perhaps a few thousand) occurred after that a mysterious and deadly sickness had swept the land. According to Livius, Most of the executed people were women, accused of having poisoned the population.

Apart from Livius' report, witches (sometimes termed striga‎e in Latin) exist in the literature of Roman times mainly as fictional creatures. But we do read of evil women poisoning people in the real world. One such case is that of Munatia Plancina, a noblewoman accused of having poisoned Germanicus, a popular general, at the time of Emperor Tiberius. Plancina could have been sentenced to death for veneficium, but she committed suicide before her trial. 

So, it seems that in Roman times, women were not normally the target of mass extermination, but they could be punished as evil murderers. And, indeed, there is no lack of vilification against women in the Roman literature. Just as an example, Seneca (sometimes said to be a wise man) is reported to have written that "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." 

Maybe it was not Seneca's fault if he lived perhaps in the most male-oriented society in history. But I think the Romans had noted something well known to us: that the number of children a woman has is inversely proportional to her degree of instruction. There follows that, in order to have their legions, the Romans had to do all the things that today we associate with a "natalist" policy: keeping women at home in a subordinate position. As long as they kept at their role, they were left more or less in peace. Otherwise, they could be harshly punished.

Things changed when the Roman Empire collapsed (and, incidentally, the last Roman emperor who truly ruled the Western Empire was a woman, Galla Placidia -- it would have been unthinkable in earlier times). It was the turbulent time that led to Christianity to take over -- a religion that claimed that all men and women were equally sons and daughters of God. Of course, the practical application of Christianity was often far away from the ideals it claimed to uphold, but it was a change that was necessary at the time. And it was clear to the early Christians that there didn't exist such a thing as "witchcraft." Not that some ignorant women couldn't be deluded about being able to make a pact with the devil, but they were to be educated, not punished.

With this change, the voice of women started being heard. And what a voice! Think of Perpetua of Carthage and her diary ("Passio"), written maybe during the early 3rd century. If you read it, be careful, because it is powerful stuff,  not for the faint-hearted. It took time, but as centuries went by, the voice of women was more and more heard: strong, clear, moving. Just think of figures such as Hildegard Von Bingen (1098 - 1179), intellectual and mystic at the same time, she would have been impossible even to imagine in Roman times. Or think of Heloise, (1100-1164) and of her passionate letters to her lover, Abelard. Or Marguerite Porete (1250/1260 – 1310), the Beguine mystic author of "The Mirror of Simple Souls." (try to read it, if you have time, it is fantastically outlandish, eerie, and moving). And many more. To say nothing of the diffusion of the literary genre about courtly love that idolized women. A story such as the one of Tristan and Iseult would have been completely incomprehensible in Roman times.

And then, something changed, again. With the end of the first millennium, Europe went through a crisis of overgrowth. With wars, there came famines, the first was in 1315. It preceded the Black Death that was to arrive in 1346 and that would continue for centuries in intermittent waves. It was a painful transformation that would turn Europe from a backward peninsula of Eurasia into a forge of empires.

Europe was not just fighting external wars, but also internal ones against perceived internal enemies. Here, we need to digress briefly to consider the relationship between heresy and witchcraft. The two are often seen as being almost the same, but it is not so. Both had elements of challenge against the mainstream religious views, but witches were mostly poor women trafficking with healing herbs. Heretics, instead, were often intellectuals of some repute. They were also connected to political movements that challenged the powers of their times -- it was a completely different story. 

During the early Middle Ages, matters of faith were supposed to be solved by discussions, that was the reason for the ecumenical councils of the Christian churches. It was only when the political situation in Europe deteriorated that the Inquisition of the Catholic Church was established in 1250. Despite the harshness of the judicial system that was starting to appear, heretics were normally given a chance to recant and abandon their "errors." In this way, they could avoid the harshest forms of punishment. Remarkably, many of them refused, including Marguerite Porete who was burned at the stake in 1310. Galileo Galilei was not so brave when he was tried for heresy in 1633. He saved himself by abandoning his "false belief" that the Earth was turning around the Sun.

With time, things got worse: the European states needed soldiers for their worldwide campaigns and women had to go back to become child-making machines. Heresy started to overlap with witchcraft as a crime. And note that witches couldn't just repudiate their false beliefs in order to escape the fire: they were supposed to had committed heinous crimes for which they had to be punished, even though they might have repented. Joan of Arc (1412–1431) was burned at the stake after having being accused of several crimes, including both heresy and witchcraft.  She was given no choice to survive: her destiny was sealed when she had decided to abandon her traditional role of submissive female. 

A strong push in the direction of punishing witches in the same way as heretics came with the publication in Germany of the book by Kramer and Spengler "Malleus Maleficarum" (The Hammer of Witches) (1486) A horrible libel that reproposed the misogynistic views of women that had been typical of ancient Rome, it was the crack that caused the dam to collapse. 

So, for at least a couple of centuries, women in Europe could be accused of witchcraft and burned. And many of them were. Of course, nobody wanted to exterminate women, they just killed a sufficient number of them to give the example to the others, so that they would stay in their place. It is difficult to assess how well that worked, but surely witch hunts were an important element of their times. That's clear by the large number of the pictures we have of people being burned at the stake, but also for the resilience of the concept. The term is still popular with us, nowadays, and we use it to describe the persecution of people for their belief on superstitious or ideological grounds. 

Witch burning in Germany in 1550 (image source). Note the gruesome details, the methods of execution and the setting was is all studied to impress, scare, and intimidate people. An early version of the "shock and awe" method, well known nowadays.

 It was only in later times that women started to regain a voice in the Western society. The industrial revolution made women useful as workers and that generated the need for a certain degree of instruction for them (it was also discovered that women made excellent snipers). It was a gradual process, and don't forget that it was only in 1920 that the right to vote was granted to women in the US. But, in time, we arrived at the current situation where "gender equality" has become the rule. 

But now? Don't forget how witch burning is often associated with plagues and stress for society. Of stress we have aplenty and, about plagues, we are experiencing one right now. So, could we see a new age of witch-hunting in the West? I mean not just in figurative terms, but with people -- especially women -- actually executed?

Of course, we tend to think that we are way too enlightened for burning witches, nowadays. But things change fast. The reaction to the current pandemics is taking various forms, one is the typical attitude toward natural disasters: looking for a scapegoat. In this case, the scapegoat is taking a form different from the typical scapegoats of earlier times. Whereas witches were supposed to have actively caused plagues, nowadays the anger is directed against the "Covid deniers," not just the people who deny the existence of the virus (they are rare, but they exist), but often toward those who simply doubt the mainstream view of the remedies for the pandemic, lockdowns and the like,

So far, "deniers" are considered more or less in the same way as heretics during the Middle Ages. They are supposed to be gently pushed to abandon their false opinions and, of course, they are prevented from diffusing them. In some cases, deniers are considered somewhat deranged or actually insane for their "false belief" -- a stance that reminds very much the trials for heresy of old times. (see, e.g. this article)

But, in the future, could we see the same evolution that we saw with the end of the Middle Ages, that is a move toward actively punishing deniers? Could very well be. The last spate of witch-hunting, the one that took place in the 1950s in the US against supposed Communists, didn't have specific anti-feminism connotations. But things are changing and there are clear elements showing that the struggle between men and women is not over. Take a look at this piece of statuary by Luciano Garbati, recently installed in New York. It shows us a woman who just beheaded a man, it is, obviously, the symmetric and opposite version of Cellini's "Medusa". Apart from not even remotely matching the earlier piece in terms of artistic qualities, this image is worrisome. It shows that men and women of our age can't find a middle ground of mutual respect, but tend to fight for dominance. And, historically, we know that males tend to win this struggle. 

Garbati's piece, just as Cellini's one, is just a symptom of the ongoing struggle. If the battle escalates to even higher levels, as it seems to be happening, we might well see a strong backlash against women in the West. Could it be that women would be accused again of plotting dark and dire things against humankind? And maybe burned at the stake? I don't know, but some hints that I read on the Web are ominous. Take this comment to the Malleus Maleficarum that appeared on Google Search. Hopefully, it is supposed to be a joke.... perhaps. And it is not the only one of this kind that appears in the site.

 

As usual, the future is impossible to predict. But never forget that the future always takes you by surprise. Hard times may be coming, but one day men and women will learn how to live in harmony with each other. Even Benvenuto Cellini, after all, shows to us a lovely image of Medusa, not as a monster but as a woman. Maybe he, too, had understood that men and women are not enemies to each other.

And, as I was thinking of these matters, there came back to my mind the song by Leonard Cohen "Joan of Arc" -- beautiful, sweet, moving, and delicate. May these times never return -- or at least so we can hope.

 

 

 

 

The Pandemic in China: a Governance Lesson to the West

 

China:  Oct 1st, 2020, celebrations of the national day. From this and other pictures, it is clear that the Chinese are not too much worried about getting close together, even without wearing face masks (source)

 

The text below is the translation of a post I published in Italian on the Facebook site "Pills of Optimism" on Oct 26th. There are still many things we have to understand about how China managed to control the COVID-19 epidemic. But one thing is certain: it was controlled and it is still under control. 

In China, stopping the infection required little more than a regional lockdown that interested a small fraction of the Chinese territory: the Hubei province, about 4% of the total population of China. Coupled with aggressive tracking and isolating, it was enough to get rid of the virus. There have been no COVID-related deaths in China since March 2020. The Chinese economic machine is in motion, people move, travel, shop, walk around, often without face masks. In short, life is normal. And it has been normal during the past six months, at least.

In comparison, the epidemic in the West has been so badly mismanaged that one feels like crying of rage. A threat that never was overwhelming was magnified to the point that it risks destroying the very fabric of the Western economic machine. How could it happen?

Within some limits, the collapse of the Western economy was unavoidable for reasons related to the decline of the availability of natural resources. But that it happened so fast is bewildering. So surprising that some people maintain that it was a conspiracy against the West concocted by China or even a plot by the evil Western elite to get rid of their useless Untermenschen. 

Maybe, but it is more likely that, simply, the West lost control of its governance system that went on by itself like an individual immune system that suddenly attacks its host. 

What can we learn from this story? Mainly, that we can't afford to be dominated by the waves of self-reinforcing hysteria that go through the media and the social networks. How can we manage that? Well, good question. Imitating China would mean giving most of the power to the Communist party, and that doesn't sound so viable, nowadays, in the West. But, seriously, we must rethink our governance system, otherwise the next serious crisis will truly destroy us. (supposing that we survive the current one)

 

China: the epidemic is over. How did they manage that?

Di Ugo Bardi, University of Florence, Italy (1) - 26 Oct 2020 

(translation slightly readapted for an international readership).

💊💊💊 From the data arriving from China, it seems that things are going very well with the COVID epidemic. In China, as well as in all of East Asia, mortality was much lower than in Europe and no deaths have been reported since March. There are still many things to clarify in this story, but China can teach us that it is possible to stop the spread of the virus without harming the economy. 💊💊💊

Do you remember when, in January, the Chinese (or those who looked like Chinese) were insulted in the street in Italy by people who believed they were spreading the plague? Things have changed quite a bit and today it is the Chinese who believe that we Italians are the plague spreaders. In China, there have been no deaths from COVID-19 since about mid-March. As for positive cases, there have been only occasional outbreaks of a few dozen cases, almost all of them imported (2). The Chinese economy has restarted to move and is now running at full capacity. 

 

From what we can read in the international media and from what colleagues who live and work in China tell me, the country is completely open. All commercial and industrial activities are in operation. The shops and restaurants are open and there are no restrictions on internal travel. Wearing face masks is optional and many people don't wear them. From the photos that come from China, we see that people do not pay much attention to the gatherings of people without masks. (below, celebrations of the National Day in Wuhan, Oct 1st)

 

 

 

Of course, the authorities are still on their guard and they intervene as soon as small outbreaks emerge. For example, the authorities of the city of Qingdao recently discovered an outbreak that, according to the international media, may be related to a batch of imported frozen cod on which someone would have observed viruses still whole. True or not, hard to say, but in any case, the local government is committed to testing all the 9 million inhabitants of the city! (3). 

 

But, overall, it is clear that in China and elsewhere in Asia the epidemic is under control without the need for a lockdown or other harsh measures of containment. Not only does the epidemic seem to have disappeared in China. It also created very little damage, at least according to the government data. The total number of victims is reported to have been about 4,600 out of almost one and a half billion people. That means 3 deaths per million against about 600 in Italy and other Western countries. Even if we only consider the European regions where the virus has hit the hardest, we find that the province of Hubei still did better. (4) 

 

How is such a thing possible? We often read on social media and on the media that the Chinese cheated us and that they are continuing to cheat us. Since China is a dictatorship, it is said, it follows that everything the Chinese government tells us is false by definition - including the fact that the epidemic is gone. Could it be that people are still dying of the COVID in China, but the government doesn't tell us?

 

Governments are not known to be reliable sources of information. We saw in a previous post how at least one European country, Belarus, may have partially falsified the data on the epidemic (5). As for China, there are previous cases of falsified data. For example, an analysis of fisheries data arriving from China in the 1990s indicated obvious falsifications to hide the depletion of stocks (6), (7)). But an epidemic is a far more serious and more extensive business than a fraud in a specific commercial sector. It would also be very difficult for the Chinese government to hide it if there was one in progress. 

 

So, if we want to believe that the Chinese are telling us lies about the epidemic we must bring some evidence on this. Remaining with the example of the fishery data, one of the reasons that led to mistrust the validity of the Chinese data were the anomalies that were noticed when comparing with data from other similar regions. Can we find any such anomaly for the pandemic? Apparently not: the data on the spread of COVID-19 in China are comparable to data from other neighboring Asian countries which, in general, have had minimal or no mortality. 

 

For example, Taiwan did even better than mainland China with a total of 7 deaths per 23 million inhabitants (less than one death per million). Other countries did a little worse but still remained at very low mortality levels. Singapore reports 5 deaths per million, Hong Kong 13. Neighboring Japan also suffered only 13 deaths per million. Then, both Mongolia and Macao even report zero deaths. Sure, one might say that Mongolia doesn't count because it's a country of camel drivers living in tents in the middle of the desert. But, of course, that's not the case. The capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator, is a metropolis with over one million inhabitants. Macau, then, is a city of 700,000 inhabitants with a very high population density, perhaps the highest in the world. And the epidemic went through both Ulan Bator and Macau without leaving a single victim! It is hardly credible that all these governments have agreed to hide an ongoing epidemic from the rest of the world. 

 

But why are things so much better in Asia than here? Did the Chinese have used particularly effective containment measures? In some ways, this year's Chinese lockdown may have been more drastic than the Western one, but it didn't last longer than in Europe. It is not even possible to say that it was more timely if, as the Chinese themselves say, the virus was already circulating in December. The lockdown was established in Wuhan only on January 23 and a few days later for the entire province of Hubei.

 

In terms of "social distancing," we all know that in Asia there is a tendency to avoid physical contact between people. But it is also true that if you have ever taken the subway in an eastern city (for example in Tokyo (8)) you will have a very specific idea of ​​the meaning of the expression "squeezed like sardines". If you never had this experience, take a look at this link to an impressive video of the Beijing metro (9). Eastern metropolises are extremely crowded and, under certain conditions, it is simply impossible to avoid physical contact.

 

Could it be then that the trick was in contact tracking and isolating? From what we can read, it seems that Asian countries have been very aggressive in tracking and isolating people who have been in contact with people affected by the virus (10). This is an interesting explanation, but tracking and isolating was done in Europe, too. Maybe we haven't done it well enough? It is possible, but we have no quantitative comparisons that can tell us if this is the only explanation for the whole story. 

 

There is also another possible interpretation that has nothing to do with what governments have done or not done. It may be that the Chinese have been exposed to the virus for longer than we in the West and therefore approached herd immunity first. You probably heard of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who first noticed cases of abnormal pneumonia in December and who later died of contracting the infection himself. Initially, he was not believed, but today he is considered a hero in China. 

 

Li had begun to sound the alarm towards the end of December 2019, but nothing prevents us from thinking that the virus had already existed in China for some time, perhaps even in slightly different forms from the one that then hit Europe. It was just that those affected were diagnosed as normal cases of pneumonia. Is it possible that the Chinese population had been exposed to the virus long before the declaration of the emergency? There is a fact that could give us a strong indication in this regard: excess mortality. If the epidemic already existed in November-December 2019, or even earlier, we should see an abnormally high mortality in China, compared to the average for that period. 

 

Good idea, but with a problem: nowhere on the Web we can find data on the additional mortality in China during the COVID pandemic. Note that this does not mean that the Chinese government is hiding anything from us. Hardly any government in the world disseminates these data in an easily accessible form. Europe is an exception with a database on excess mortality called "Euromomo" managed by a network headed by WHO, but there is no such thing for East Asia. So, for the moment, the idea of ​​an early start of the epidemic in China remains a hypothesis.

 

There are other factors we could look at but this virus has accustomed us to the fact that predictions and interpretations always turn out to be wrong. Even in a recent article in Nature (11), the authors frankly said that "we are not yet able to provide a generalized explanation for the observed quantitative mortality differences between countries". Thus, we must content ourselves with saying that the epidemic has done much less damage in Asia than it did for us for some reason that, at the moment, we cannot identify with certainty. 

 

But let's stick with what we know, which is that at the moment things are going very well in China and in the whole East Asia, just while the West is experiencing a "second wave." At least, we can conclude that we are not facing an invincible enemy. It is possible to beat the Sars-Cov-2 without necessarily having to destroy the economy with prolonged and generalized lockdowns. Of course, we are in a very difficult moment here, in Europe, but there is no reason to think that we will have to continue living in terror for centuries to come. 

 

 The author thanks Chandran Nair for his comments on the situation in China. 

1. https://ugobardihomepage.blogspot.com/2016/04/ugo-bardis-personal-home-page.html 

2. http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/yqtb/202010/2fbce5a9836d4b09a89a0d85a2e05ac2.shtml

3. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1203836.shtml

4. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=176464484012617&id=111172767208456 

5. https://ugobardi.blogspot.com/2020/10/pandemia-e-possibile-che-qualcuno-ci.html

6. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11734851/

7. http://www.fao.org/3/Y3354M/Y3354M00.htm

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7kor5nHtZQ

9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ulY7N3dZ9k

10. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-25/these-elite-contact-tracers-show-the-world-how-to-beat-covid-19

11. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0

Hunger in Italy? It is Coming Faster than Expected

 

 A malnourished Dutch girl during the "hongerwinter" of 1945. It was the last famine recorded in Western Europe -- but for how long?

Olga Milanese, Italian lawyer living in Salerno, not far from Naples, wrote the post below as a comment in a Facebook group. I thought it was interesting enough to be reproduced here, and I do that with her kind permission. It seems that things are really collapsing in Italy. In a certain way, it was unavoidable, but it is amazing that it is happening so fast. The Covid crisis never was impossible to manage with a reasonable effort, but the Italian government bungled almost every aspect of the crisis, overreacting to it, using it as an excuse to terrorize people, while being totally ineffective at upgrading the health care system in such a way to handle the situation. In the process, the government managed to destroy the sources of income of the poor and of the most vulnerable sections of the Italian society -- and with that wrecking the whole economic system. Now, things are getting worse every day. Eventually it will end, I figure, but not before we reach the bottom, and it may be a hard landing.

 

By Olga Milanese

Can I say something a little strong? Then I'll really shut up, disappear and no longer speak, because I consider it useless by now. I understand all positions, really. Already in June I felt that the situation had not changed, that, at least in my opinion, the same mistakes continued to be made in the sanitary districts. (having visited some of them several times), that the health care units were absolutely unprepared, as were the general practitioners. 

Nothing, absolutely nothing has been done, not even by those same doctors who, first and foremost, should have denounced openly and without hesitation the disgusting inactivity of the government already  before the summer not in the autumn crisis, those same doctors who today invoke the lockdown!!!

I invite them to come to suburban homes, to popular buildings, for God's sake, to the lower reaches of the city to see with their own eyes the misery that exists there!!! From the group that deals with helping the families who lost their jobs in my city, yesterday I had a young mother, whose husband, a pizza chef, was left without work, with two small children, a 3-year-old male and a 6-year-old girl, two gaunt creatures, like their mother, fragile, almost invisible, who lacked EVERYTHING, everything !!! From food, to soap for washing, to detergent for clothes. They are not the first and they will not be the last. 

I'm a drop in an advancing ocean. I really invite these doctors and all those who invoke general closures or even just the stop of work to come to these places and look them in the eyes of these children, these parents deprived of dignity, smile, desire to live, without feeling shame and disgust for that. that we are becoming. Sorry for the outburst, but these situations exist, they are one step away from the doors of our house. Is there a valid reason to ignore them without falling into inhumanity ??? 

Do you choose to do something for them too or do they have to die forgotten by God, in the name of medicine and science? For me only the first way makes sense. In my view, there are no alternatives to humanity! And there is no fear of openly denouncing those measures that have reduced those children to hunger! This kind of appeals above, as I see it, must be condemned straight away, no hesitations!

 

Olga Milanese is a civil lawyer. She mainly deals with aspects related to the protection of rights in business, family, and in relation to medical and professional responsibility, as well as the issue of the protection of human rights

 

 

 

 

Original in Italian

Posso dire una cosa un po' forte? Poi veramente mi taccio, sparisco e non parlo più, perché lo ritengo ultroneo ormai. Io comprendo tutte le posizioni, veramente. Da giugno avvertivo che la situazione non era cambiata, che, almeno dalle mie parti, si continuavano a fare gli stessi errori nei P.S.(essendoci andata più volte), che le Asl erano assolutamente impreparate, così come i medici di base. Nulla, assolutamente nulla è stato fatto, neanche da quegli stessi medici che, in primis, avrebbero dovuto denunciare apertamente e senza remore il disgustoso inattivismo del governo da prima dell'estate non nella crisi autunnale, quegli stessi medici che oggi invocano il lockdown!!! Io li invito a venire nelle case di periferie, nei palazzi popolari, santo Dio, nei bassi della città a vedere con i propri occhi la miseria che c'è!!! Tramite il gruppo che si occupa di aiutare tutte le famiglie che hanno perso il lavoro nella mia città, ieri a me è toccata una giovane madre, il cui marito, pizzaiolo, è rimasto senza lavoro, con due bambini piccoli, un maschio di 3 anni e una bambina di 6 anni, due creature smunte, come la madre, fragili, quasi invisibili, a cui mancava TUTTO, tutto!!! Dal cibo, al sapone per lavarsi, al detersivo per i panni. Non sono i primi e non saranno gli ultimi. Sono una goccia in un oceano che avanza. Io veramente invito questi medici e chiunque invochi chiusure generalizzate o anche solo lo stop del lavoro a venire in questi posti e guardarli negli occhi questi bambini, questi genitori privati della dignità, del sorriso, della voglia di vivere, senza provare vergogna e ribrezzo per quello che stiamo diventando. Scusate lo sfogo, ma queste situazioni esostono, sono ad un passo dalle porte di casa nostra. Esiste un motivo valido per ignorarli senza scadere nella disumanità??? Si sceglie di far qualcosa anche per loro o devono morire dimenticati da Dio, in nome della medicina e della scienza? Per me ha senso solo la prima strada. Non esistono, nella mia visione, alternative all'umanità! E non esiste la paura di denunciare apertamente quelle misure che hanno ridotto quei bambini alla fame! Questo genere di appelli qui sopra, per come la vedo io, vanno condannati in tronco, senza se e senza ma!