A Rostrum speech I prepared back in 2003.
Good afternoon chairman, members, and guests. “The Age of Fear”. It conjures up images of a dark, bleak future, where we live in perpetual terror, where an indiscriminate Death steals our souls. An age where fear rules our waking moments, and nightmares rule our sleeping ones. Since the event that has now become labelled as “9/11”, and closer to home and just as shocking, Bali, journalists have been quick to say that we live in The Age of Fear.
Do we really live in the age of fear? Must we consider our future dark and bleak? I think it is not as bleak as all that. Our times are no more troubled than those that have come before – in fact, should we have been born in almost any age in the past, we should have more cause for sheer terror than now in almost any aspect – our ability to conduct our lives in peace, to lead healthy lives, and to think freely. We should then reflect upon this, and consider whether we really do live in the Age of Fear by comparison.
During the Hundred Years War between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, it was said that some children’s great-great-great-grandfathers, and all their ancestors between, knew only war and not peace. War was a brutal thing, where you would be hacked at and left to die slowly on the field of battle. There were no POW’s – if you were left wounded on the battlefield, and your side lost, you were quickly put to death. Devices to kill and maim were fiendish – hot sand was poured onto the besiegers of towns and cities, where it lodged in the Knight’s armour and scalded upturned faces. While he was dancing around trying to dislodge the sand, he was cut down with arrows or bludgeoned to death with whatever was handy.
You could hardly blame the besiegers, though, for the much-vaunted “code of chivalry” entitled any besieger to rape, pillage and put to death the inhabitants of any town that did not open its gates to the besiegers.
More recently, Coventry was devastated during World War 2, with the Blitz in full swing. During the first night of the Blitz in London, 2000 people died. And those that didn’t had to endure the next eight months of the blitz. Certainly to be alive in any of these times was to live in fear of other nations’ bellicosity. Today we have some of these fears, but they are today more the exception rather than the rule.
Medically, as well, we have far less to fear. Until the end of the Renaissance, “doctors” had endured extensive testing, examination, and schooling in the science of healing. That which they studied was ancient, revered, and complete bollocks. Their medicine dated back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. All medicine was based upon the theory of humours, which said the body was made up of four humours, and when they were out of balance, the body needed to be recalibrated through a good bit of blood-letting, sweating, or purgatives. Not surprisingly, the cure was often worse than the disease, and physicians were not popular people.
During the times of the Black Plague, when over a third of Europe died, medicine was powerless to help. The theory of humours said that you daren’t bathe, as that would open the pores on your skin and all your humour would leak out, and the plague would leak in.
The most popular theory for the reasons behind the black plague was that the Jews were in league with Satan and were planning on taking over the world. The fact that the Jews were dying in equal numbers did not appear to rate a mention and so, since they couldn’t find Satan, the great unwashed rose up in great numbers and promptly slew any Jews they could find. Of course the great unwashed continued to die in great numbers. Perhaps they should have looked to the filth, muck and completely unhygienic conditions in which they lived for the cause and gotten a broom and a bar of soap instead.
Now, up until the end of the 19th century or so, the general rule was that people with the longest lifespans were women whose husbands died in the many wars. And those with the shortest lifespans were women whose husbands continued to live. Yes, death in childbirth was pretty much the number one cause of death in adult females, but we know it doesn’t happen this way anymore, so when facing sudden death is important to have resources like wrongful death attorney New York to get help with this. Complete ignorance of the process, and a prevailing view that it was a “woman’s business” and that death in childbirth was punishment for Eve’s carryings on in the Garden of Eden, tended to result in a low batting average for this most natural of processes.
A boil today could mean a death-shroud tomorrow – and this was the case until fairly recent times. Medically, then, it is fairly clear that our forebears lived in a time of abject terror.
As for freedom of thought, well, there really hasn’t been any of note until recent times. If you disagreed with the ruling classes, then you were pretty likely to die in a very nasty way. Witches – usually illiterate old women with a penchant for boiling toads and turning them into a nice curry – were slaughtered in their thousands if they admitted to being witches after days of torture. Of course, if they didn’t admit to being witches after days of torture, they obviously were witches and were put to death immediately.
In 1819, citizens of England protested that they wanted England to return to freedom of speech and representation in Parliament. In response to such dangerous ideas, cavalry charged the assembled men, women and children and killed eleven, and wounded hundreds.
Closer to home, racial intolerance and prejudice could be disastrous. In 1880, in Kingsborough – on the North Queensland goldfields near Chillagoe, 57 Chinese miners were killed with picks, shovels and spears by white miners because of accusations of claim-jumping. Not really speaking English probably didn’t help their defence.
So, whether you were a witch in the middle ages, a citizen of England in the 19th century, or a Chinese miner on the Australian goldfields, you could be guaranteed of at least one thing: you were very right to be afraid, very, very afraid.
So now in conclusion, let us reflect. There is now far more peace now than there ever has been in the world, and you are far less likely to die in war or from acts of terror than your forebears were. Medically, too, we are without equal throughout the ages. Diseases of yesterday that would kill and maim for life are today often less than inconveniences. Our chances of catching some disgusting skin disease and dying are far less than those of our forebears. Finally, we must trust and hope that in today’s environment, acts of barbarity as payment for being different or for expressing ideas and thoughts that do not conform with the mainstream are rarer than in the past.
So we should contrast the age in which we live with the ages of those that have gone before. No doubt there are times when our future seems dark and bleak, but we still have a bright beacon of hope ahead of us. Our forebears truly have lived in the Age of Fear. By comparison, we do not.