7-B. Society and Disaster (Short Version): How Civilizations Respond -- ExperiencingtheHumanities.org

7-B. Society and Disaster:
How Civilizations Respond
- Short Version -

This is the short version (about 4000 words) of this chapter. If you'd like to read a longer version (about 7500 words) with more detail, explanation, and discussion, go to Long Version.

The above words from famous poet William Butler Yeats describe what many people experience in a disaster. Most people on our earth now can say they have lived in a time of disaster. We all now have in common, as this chapter is being written, the experience of the COVID-19 disaster. Some of you have been part of others disasters. What is your own experience? Just what qualifies as a true "disaster"?

Regarding our worldwide disaster, COVID-19, it is a "pandemic." The word means "a world epidemic (world spread of infectious disease)." Our recent COVID-19 pandemic is the worst worldwide spread of illness in one hundred years.

How can we best understand disasters? There are typical patterns that we can discover. Using them, we can compare and contrast old disasters with new, and one type of disaster with another. This chapter looks at typical societal patterns that occur in all disasters , and also at patterns that are different for each major type of disaster.

Facts, feelings, and future: One overall pattern for all disasters is the facts, feelings, and future about them. These three elements are the three main sections in this chapter:

Facts--What are the facts
(climate change, pandemics, wars, genocides, and shifts in belief)

Here in what follows are patterns of "facts," "feelings," and "future" in disasters.

It is very important to get all of the facts right about disasters. In this way, you can better see the patterns from the past. When a major disaster strikes a society, a nation, or an entire civilization, usually--to most people--the experience feels like a blow from an axe cutting the stream of history in two, the "past" from the "new." Most disasters generally are unexpected, as in the current rapidly developing COVID-19 pandemic, which not even most researchers expected to occur with such severity.

At other times, a disaster may be anticipated, even predicted. An example is when the United States and many other nations slowly began seeing the need to defend themselves before World War II actually broke out. However, Even in "planned" disasters such as war, when people know it is coming, the actual birth or beginning of it is like a disaster, whether unrolling or occurring quickly or slowly. For most people, even a planned disaster is a change--similar to having a child or starting a new job--that is not fully anticipated. No matter how much you prepare for it, is still largely is an unknown concerning what it will do to your life. And in any kind of disaster, this change appears most often to society, in its beginning, as a negative experience.

First, climate changes are not new to the earth. One of the worst climate changes occurred about 66 million years ago. In the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, about 75% of all life on earth died, including most of the dinosaurs, from an asteroid hitting the earth and causing vast changes in our climate. A smaller climate change, one that had a dramatic historical effect, was a disaster of having no sun, or what we might aptly name the "No-Sun Disaster" of 535-536 CE (AD). It may have been caused by a massive volcanic eruption in Southeast Asia. It reportedly blotted out the sun in a sky filled with dense clouds of dust for eighteen months in many countries. As a result, there was no harvest in many countries for two years, creating mass starvation, the spread of bubonic plague that killed up to one hundred million people over the next two hundred years, and mass movements of whole societies to better territories that caused wars for generations and caused the final fall of the Roman Empire.

This event may have been the single most powerful combination of factors that led to the medieval, middle, or Dark Ages. The Dark Ages, you may remember from history, lasted for hundreds of years in large parts of the world, and for almost one thousand years in Europe.

Second, pandemics also have been a major type of disastrous change. Pandemics are world epidemics of illnesses. They have killed entire species of animals long before humans developed on earth, and many millions of people in recorded history. The bubonic plagues that swept the world, mentioned above, were repeated in the Black Death in Europe in 1347-1666. Also known as the Pestilence or Great Plague, it also was a type of bubonic plague. It killed 30% or more of Europe's population in waves of infection and re-infection for over three hundred years.

An example of a more recent pandemic was the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic, a flu that was unusually lethal. It may have been the second biggest pandemic killer in earth's recorded history, infecting up to 500 million people in the world during a three-year period and killing 15-100 million people throughout the world, or between 1.5% to 5% of those who caught it. The death rate for COVID-19 may be similar: 0.5% to 4% (predicted as of August 2020). Actual death rates can be hard to estimate: in countries with excellent health care, the rate of deaths may be much smaller, while in very poor countries with poor health care, the rate of deaths may be much larger. We may not know the final death rate for years, as COVID-19 will continue to spread through poor, third-world countries long after the first vaccines are produced and sold in rich countries.

War is a third type of disastrous change. There have been many great wars in the history of the world. In the last 2000 years alone, major wars have killed up to 435 million people or more--not counting secondary effects such as famines, genocides, and illnesses following the wars. That 435 million is the equivalent of wiping off the map the entire population of the United States and Canada, or of all the European Union countries.

The period of two World Wars in the 1900s in particular killed up to 135 million, the record for one country being 27 million Russians who died in World War II. The World Wars were somewhat different from earlier ones. In wars from early times, there have been large casualties of civilians in addition to soldiers; however, in WWII, especially, civilians often were directly and indirectly targeted.

Fourth, genocide is yet another type of disaster. It is similar to war, except that it is less visible to the dominant culture and can last for dozens or hundreds of years. "Genocide" means the killing of a race or cultural group of people, or the attempt to completely wipe out its cultural heritage.

The infamous killing of 6 million Jews in World War II concentration camps is one example. Another is the massacres of Native Americans throughout North and South America. The Americas--North and South America--had an estimated Native Indian population of over 100 million before European invaders came; afterward, only about 10-20% still lived. Even after the killing stopped, they were forced onto infertile reservations where many starved to death or experienced life-long ill health. These and other continuing affects still make Native American societies more difficult places in which to live than the average European-American town.

African-Americans also experienced a slow-moving genocide, one that used them for financial gain. In the 1500s-1800s, 12 million or more Africans were taken in slavery to the Americas. About 2 million died in shoulder-to-shoulder storage in slave ships. The average lifetime of some field slaves in the Caribbean, nearly all of whom worked in high heat and humidity planting, weeding, and harvesting sugar cane, was as little as five years. The 400,000 African slaves who reached the United States grew, by 1860, to 4.4 million African-Americans, 90% of whom were slaves; by then, they made up 60% of all slaves in North and South America. They, like Native Americans, still experience the effects of genocide in racism, poverty, illness, and limited housing.

Other types of disaster also occur, though often they are only regional in the world or a part of a country. History records, for example, that Egypt had a host of disasters such as locusts, flies, lice, and frogs in Biblical times. Such plagues are common throughout history. Now, for example, Africa, Pakistan, and India are currently experiencing, in 2020, a plague of billions of locusts that started the year before. In one day, an average swarm can travel one hundred miles and eat as much food as thirty to forty thousand people. The current plague is causing hundreds of thousands to face starvation.

Additional types of disasters--breaks in dams, hurricanes, and torrential rainstorms--cause floods in which hundreds or sometimes thousands die. Industrial accidents cause major local or regional disasters, too, such as the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster that eventually killed 15,000-60,000 people and contaminated 1000 square miles of farmland and villages with dangerous levels of radioactivity. Economic disasters also are common. The Great Depression of 1929-1939 affected the whole world, leaving millions worldwide in greater danger of starvation and of early death. In the U.S. it caused Dan unemployment averaging 14% for years, peaking at 25%.

Paradigm shifts also are an important element of disasters. A "paradigm shift" is a change or shift from an old paradigm (old theory, belief, or way of seeing a scientific or societal problem) to a new one. Paradigm shifts in science and society likely occur more often--or more quickly--during disasters.

For example, our COVID-19 pandemic is creating a paradigm shift in how societies search for a vaccine. Formerly, the development of most vaccines took years, an absolute minimum of two years. Now, though, countries are changing laws and procedures to race to create a vaccine and also distribute it to billions of people in a year, if possible.

In ending, disasters can happen quickly or slowly; they can last briefly or for many years. In addition, the longer they last, the more they tend to change a society, setting it on a different course in history. The type of disaster--and how short or long it is--also can have profound affects on a society's emotional energies--as discussed in the next section, below.

The emotional energies that a society feels in the short- and middle-term of a disaster can vary dramatically. Feelings may run high for many. And often the emotions of a disaster are initially negative. For some, they stay negative; however, others work to develop neutral or even positive feelings. As a society first begins to realize it is in a disaster, and then as the disaster proceeds, waves of emotional energy cycle through the population.

Famous cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead observed that a society can change in as little as one generation. Disasters often are a cause of a society's quick change. Another anthropologist, Anthony F. C. Wallace, developed a related and well-known theory of a society's "revitalization"--of positive change. Wallace argued that when a period of major stress occurs in a society, it must work to "revitalize" itself--to grow, change, and become better. If it does not, the society is in danger of failing or, at least, becoming significantly dysfunctional.

One famous model about emotions, developed by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, an American-Swiss psychiatrist, well summarizes five important emotions in people as they react to a disaster. They lead from negative emotions to a final, positive one, which is "Acceptance." This final one, "Acceptance," is like Wallace's final goal of a society successfully "revitalizing" itself.

Kübler-Ross's well-known model is charted below. These five emotional groups show how people handle grief. Originally, this was a psychological model meant to explain how terminally ill individuals and their loved ones often react to the news of their own or others' impending death. However, the Kübler-Ross model also is helpful in understanding how a society and sub-groups within it respond emotionally to a disaster:

In the "Denial/Shock" experience, the chart above notes that "Denial" may bring one or more of the following feelings: "Avoidance, Confusion, Elation, Shock, Fear." It is relatively easy to see how Kübler-Ross's element of "Denial" applies to a society in a disaster. Clearly, in the beginning of a crisis, many people deny it, consciously or unconsciously. They often start with shock or surprise. Then they may deny is by thining, "It is false news," "nothing like that could seriously happen," "it won't come to our area," or, even more simply, "Let's just ignore it and continue on as normal." For example, in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, many people's first reaction was that the virus would remain in China and never enter the U.S., then that it would not enter beyond U.S. coasts or major cities.

In the "Anger" experience as in the chart above, there is "Frustration, Irritation, Anxiety." Many people feel anger when a disaster is happening. It is a natural emotional reaction. They may be angry that they have to deal with the disaster or even angry towards those who are announcing it. In many disasters there is anger toward another society that is blamed for causing the disaster. For example, at the beginning of World War II, each country that was attacked focused its shock and fear by becoming angry at the enemy attacking it. Newspapers and politicians inflamed this anger, turning it into fuel for the will to fight the enemy.

For the emotional experience of "Depression," the chart above lists the following characteristics: "Overwhelmed, Helplessness, Hostility, Flight." In a disaster, many feel overwhelmed or helpless. They may fall into depression or despair. If they cannot exercise or get the right foods, this may further cause them depression or despair. Some types of depression or despair are "high energy," with restlessness and sleeplessness. Some types are the opposite, with a loss of energy, more frequent sleep, and a lack of energy or will to do anything. When the disaster strikes individuals very directly and personally, there is even more likelihood of their experiencing this emotional element.

For the emotional experience of "Bargaining," the chart above lists "Struggling to find meaning, Reaching out to others, Telling One's Story." For some societal groups, a period of bargaining may begin. Kübler-Ross means the term "Bargaining" to refer to a bartering, negotiation, or a trade-off to keep the disaster away or, at least, less worse than it is. For example, groups within a society may think they can make ask spiritual powers to stop the disaster. Others may tell the stories of their life to show why the disaster should not be happening. However, in a disaster, the event itself marches on in often predictable, if sometimes terrible, ways. Kübler-Ross says that to get past "Bargaining," a person must learn to accept the factual existence of his or her personal disaster. Likewise, a society must learn to accept that a disaster cannot be avoided.

In the graph's list, above, the element of "Acceptance" includes "Exploring options, New plan in place, Moving on." Acceptance does not mean giving in and giving up. Rather, when applied to a disaster, it means, first, that you actually are willing to accept that a societal crisis is happening and that facts must guide what you do. Second, functional societies believe that if you have a skill that might help--and if you are economically, physically, and emotionally able to use it--then you should. People help each other. An society that is good at "Acceptance" recognizes what is happening, informs everyone, and helps each other. Such a society values science, the gathering of real news, and a politics of helping.

However, a society that cannot reach "Acceptance" is in danger of failing. If it remains in the stages of "Bargaining" or "Depression," it obviously is a wounded society that cannot move forward very easily. If it is stuck in an even earlier state of "Denial" or "Anger," then it is not moving forward to dealing with the disaster, which significantly places the society in a position of failure.

An alternate approach to understanding negative emotions in disasters is by psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren and Stacey Colino. They describe four "Emotional Reactor" personalities. The first, the "nervous reactor" person, tends, in negative situations, to be "anxious, worried, fearful, or apprehensive" and unable to "escape a feeling of unease." The second, the "revved-up reactor" person, can be "frenetic, agitated, hyper-reactive" and wants to "swing into action" right away, without knowing what to do. The third, the "molten reactor" person, feels "irritation, indignation, maybe even anger and hostility" and may be "inclined to push back or lash out." To see more about these four types of negative reaction, along with the source of these quotations, go to "Four Emotional Reactors" (in the long version of this chapter).
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In conclusion, Kübler-Ross's "Five Elements/Stages of Grief," when used flexibly, can help you better understand what happens with the emotional energies experienced by a society in disaster. Next are theories by professional sociologists that also can help.

Finally, in a disaster's future--in the middle and long term--a society becomes more aware or mindful of what it needs to do. People reexamine what they should do as individuals and as a society. Great Britain's World War II leader and Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, said, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” How, in fact, does a society mindfully become better during and after a disaster?

Three main theories can help us understand the patterns of how such mindfulness might occur. These theories are important in the humanities discipline of sociology. Sociologists observ how people behave in groups, societies, and civilizations. Three of the main theories of sociology are, in terms of a disaster:

Symbolic interaction theory tells you how a society shares important information through radio and talk (oral language), TV (oral and visual languages), and the arts (artistic languages). In all these types of communication, symbols are important.

What if, for example, the main symbols in a war are videos and images of people dying? That often was the case during the Vietnam War. U.S. newspapers and TV showed a large number of photos of death. As a result, the images caused reactions to death such as shock, anger, and depression. Compare that to the typical images showed by U.S. newspapers and on posters in World War II. They were patriotic images of heroic individuals such as "Uncle Sam," "Rosy the Riveter," and tanks overcoming the Nazis. As a result, the images caused reactions of patriotism, determination, and acceptance. In any disaster, the symbols that are communicated help determine how people will react.

Symbolic interaction theory also would point out, regarding a crisis, that some symbols have different meanings to people, thus causing contradictory interpretations in society. For example, a picture of elderly people bedridden from a deadly virus like COVID-19 causes sorrow among some people; however, other people feel righteous indignation for the elderly who are suffering more than others; and among other people, the picture might cause a secret feeling of relief because the viewers are much younger and think that only elderly people will get sick. People can see symbols in very different ways. A mature society learns to use symbols that are both honestly factual and in some way positive or helpful.

In sociology, conflict theory looks at several aspects of conflict in a crisis. One aspect is how the society as a whole suddenly must deal with an often dramatic change, whether war, a pandemic, or other crises. Another aspect is how that conflict causes trouble in society.

Who or what, for example, does a society blame for the disaster? Does it blame nature, another society, or some part of its own society? Regarding the former, for example, in any war, conflict theory shows that the enemy is made into a dangerous, even evil "Other"--which makes killing the enemy easier. Regarding the latter, conflicts within the society itself, again in World Ward II, for example, the U.S. was so intent on blaming Italy and Japan, both countries enemies of the U.S., that Italian-American and Japanese-American citizens were, by the thousands, taken from their homes and businesses, and they were placed in American prison camps for the duration of the war. The great majority of them were innocent and supportive of the U.S. war effort, but the U.S. saw a conflict in allowing all of them to remain free.

Now, in the COVID-19 pandemic, some parts of society are blaming Chinese and, to some extent, all Asians, for the disaster. Other parts of society are blaming lack of preparedness by their own countries' governments. Still others are blaming the world organizations such as W.H.O.--the World Health Organization. Still other parts of society are arguing that each country must stop blaming and start working on solutions. All of these arguments are conflicts that sociological conflict theory examines.

Sociology's functionalist theory explains how people interact in different parts of society to share and make improvements. This means, in a crisis, that a society must believe in making the best of a disaster. Sometimes functionalists also examine how this positive attitude might be misisng in a society.

For example, functional society will start a draft of eligible soldiers if it sees a war disaster approaching it. The U.S., for example, requires all young males to be registered for military service. Other countries actually require one or more years of active training and/or military service, such as Mexico, Norway, Sweden, China, Russia, and others. Many countries develop vast stocks of supplies such as war weapons, medical supplies, and storable food that they might need for one or more years in advance. And for the possibility of pandemics, some countries build large national stores of medical supplies and equipment. And for climate change, some governments large or small will use scientific data to determine how to plan housing, flood protection, and other details for years in advance.

In ending, all three of these theories--as well as others not included here--help us understand how conscious awareness--mindfulness--operates to deal with a disaster. On the positive side, the rational assumption is that a society functions and acts best when it is consciously aware of itself as a society, and that by increasing its own awareness or societal mindfulness, it can make appropriate changes for a better future. Sociology also recognizes, however, that not all societies are willing to make necessary changes; as a result, says sociology, it is possible to chart--to predict--how some societies may fail.

If a disaster happens in your society--or in your civilization--what can you do? Experts in both crisis management and psychology say that you should recognize your negative responses, develop rational, positive responses, and start working for a better future. You can join groups who do this or work on your own. Additional advice is to replace what you have lost with similar activities: for example, in the COVID-19 world pandemic, a large number of people began using online social-meeting software programs to see each other and talk together on their screens.

Disasters can be mild to major, and they can differ dramatically in how they affect you, your larger societal groups, and all of society itself. You can choose, a a human being in the culture in which you now live, to make the worst of it or the best of it.

1. Imagining the bad: that something bad happens to your group of friends, your community, or your town, city, or state. Make a rough outline or description of what this event is: What would it look like? How would people react? How would it affect you personally? After writing your rough outline or description that answers these questions, make another rough outline or description answering the question "How might you personally respond negatively to the event, and how might you also (or instead) respond positively?"

2. Describe the worst event or result of the COVID-19 pandemic for you. Then describe the best event or result that happened in, during, or because of it.

3. How did you think of war--its causes, meanings, and/or purposes--before reading this chapter? Has this chapter changed your mind about any of that? If so, what and why? If not, why not?

4. Answer these questions on paper or in a group. Did you know all of the past history of genocide against Native Americans or African Americans? What was new to you? What have you known for a number of years? How do you feel about what has happened to Native Americans or African Americans in their worst years--centuries ago--when people were trying to exterminate them (Indians) or enslave them (Blacks)? How do you feel about either or both groups of people now? What do you think they should do? What do you think you can do to make things better for them or others?

5. Regarding the subjects in "4" above, create a quick, rough-draft list of ten to fifteen questions that might create a good debate in your class--questions that could reasonably be debated as either "pro" or "con," or perhaps simple factual questions worthy of more research. Then revise your list of questions by combining some and deleting less important ones so that you are left with a list of five to seven good debate questions. Then you or your classmates could choose some of the questions to either debate or to research.

6. If you had to go through a drastic, immediate climate change such as from a super-volcano or a large asteroid creating two years of no sun, what would you do? Your family? Where would you go? How would you best survive?

7. How does thinking, reading, and/or talking about disasters like in this chapter make you feel? Why? Does that lead to any change in the way you think, feel, or act? Is that change good or bad? Why or why not?

Camus, Albert. The Plague. A short novel published in 1947 by the famous existentialist author about how the plague strikes a French town, and how people respond, eventually conquering their fears. This novel is a short and very accessible book-length introduction to Camus' French existential philosophy, as well as an excellent picture of what a plague is like. The full-text version is available free at https://archive.org/stream/plague02camu/plague02camu_djvu.txt.

Dafoe, Daniel. A Journal of the Plague Year. A short novel first published in 1772 about a young man's experiences in the 1665 Great Plague of London. Though somewhat fictionalized, Dafoe makes a great--and successful--effort in giving exact details and statistics of what happened in London during that bubonic plague. Full-text book available free at www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm.

Diamond, Jared. He advocates looking at history through multiple disciplinary (scholarly) lenses. Two of his popular science books are especially worth looking at in terms of disasters and how they affect societies:

(1) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997; won journalism's Pulitzer Prize). It is Diamond's most popular book. It is a scientific, sociological, and historical consideration of why and how Eurasians conquered other people, not because of natural genetic advantages but rather because of where they lived. Part I examines how plants and animals made a significant difference in the development of Eurasians. Part II examines how this led to growth of populations, culture, and epidemic diseases. Part III examines differences in food and societies in different parts of the world.

(2) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005). Diamond examines how societies thrive or fall apart over time, using nine main societies (including Montana in the U.S.) as examples. The National Geographic Society 100-minute film of Collapse is available free at www.rottentomatoes.com/m/collapse_based_on_the_book_by_jared_diamond.

"A Giant Volcano Could End Life on Earth as We Know It." New York Times, 21 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/opinion/supervolcano-yellowstone.html. The earth has twenty "super-volcanoes." An explosion of one of them, however rare, could create results similar to the 535-536 CE (AD) "No-Sun Disaster" for better or worse.

Keys, David. Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization. This book, published in 2000, suggests how the Middle Ages--also known as the Dark Ages--started, all from one big climate-age event. Thoroughly and exhaustively researched, it still is exciting reading if you enjoy nonfiction. The research still holds up fairly well as of 2020.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, and David Kessler, On Grief and Grieving. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler first published their groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying, in 1969, establishing what they called the "Cycle of Grief." Before her death in 2004, Kübler-Ross and Kessler finished an update, On Grief and Grieving, with new materials added about the meaning of grief and how to handle it. It was first published in 2005 with a more recent edition available.

Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, fourth ed., 2012. This book about history and science by philosopher Kuhn was groundbreaking in both fields when the first edition was published in 1962. In this book, Kuhn explains how science moves forward with some steadiness in regular times but may spurt forward, even in entirely new directions, at others, and how this change is not just a speeding up, but an introduction of new ideas.

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*Image in Chapter Title: "The Family Circle," Pierre Daura, c. 1954. Oil on cardboard. Copyright Martha Daura / Estate of Pierre Daura, non-commercial use permitted. https://collections.artsmia.org/art/61193/the-family-circle-pierre-daura. Retrieved 4 April 2020.

Most recent revision of text: 19 Oct. 2020

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