The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Will we enter new Roaring ’20s?
Imagine we’re in the year 2030. In looking backward, what will the years between 2021 and 2030 have been like? Will there be a pattern similar to what happened in the United States after the 1918-19 pandemic? That was followed by a decade tagged as “The Roaring Twenties.”
The 1920s had their good aspects. World War I was behind us. The peace that followed raised the standard of living. Millions of women voted for the first time. It was the beginning of America’s love affair with the automobile. And people danced away to the toes-in, heels-out twisting steps of the Charleston.
There was also a dark side to that 10-year span. The Prohibition Act in 1920 outlawed saloons. The booze business went underground with bootleggers and speakeasies flourishing. Crime followed with the likes of Prohibition Agent Eliot Ness in patrol cars chasing thugs such as Al Capone down Chicago’s side streets.
Moreover, the 1920s was a time of exuberance as Scott Fitzgerald depicted in his 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby.” It was also a time of a free-for-all excessiveness that led to the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Cole Porter later embodied the mood of that era in his song,“Anything Goes.”
How about other pandemics? Did they lead to transformations? History.com lists 18 major pandemics that ravaged human populations and eventually resulted in changing history. Several wiped out sizable segments of the world’s populations.
In Athens, in 430 B.C., a pandemic took two-thirds of the population. The Justinian Plague in 541 A.D. resulted in the loss of 50 million lives over the next 200 years.
Between 1347 and 1351 the Black Death eradicated 75 to 200 million people across Europe and Asia. The 19181919 Spanish Flu Pandemic took 50-100 million lives globally. In the United States, the toll was 675,000.
(Recently, I heard someone being interviewed say, “We’re at 530,000 right now. If we don’t go past that 1918-1919 mark of 675,000 from a 100 years ago it won’t be so bad.” His “it won’t be so bad” rang in my ears. First, there is little comfort in such comparisons when loved one are taken from us. Secondly, in 1918 the United States had 103.2 million people. In 2020 it was 331 million. So, the percentage of deaths to the total population was much higher a century ago.)
Undeniably pandemics and other virulent diseases have decimated populations. That perhaps is a major constant throughout history. Diseases kill people. And this in turn changes the everyday lives of survivors.
History has shown that pandemics, plagues, and pestilences have transformed religious beliefs. For instance, during the late middle ages in Europe mysticism expanded following the spread of plague. In other settings Christianity replaced paganism. They have also contributed to the heightening of bigotry and prejudices against minorities — as may have happened recently with the increase of hate incidents against Asians in the United States.
So, what will the post pandemic bring us? Among the prognostications about everyday life are no more handshakes. Touching elbows will be in. Cash will no longer be used, as in the “Star Trek” TV series. Online shopping will keep growing. Malls will continue to disappear.
Will training and education sessions at all levels be primarily on Zoom or its likes? All I know is that my five grandchildren’s distaste for being quarantined grew exponentially with each shutdown. Atop the list of their hopes is to be back in school ... in person.
What about questions addressing more transformative changes? Will the balance of power between the United States and China shift in the latter’s favor? And if it does, how will it affect each of us? Will pandemics such as the COVID-19 one be fully conquered? Will this pandemic affect the direction our country takes in addressing climate change? These are but a few of the many major issues that will be facing us, our grandchildren, and possibly their children.
I for one as many others foresee change. I don’t know what or when. But that pent-up anxiety will end as COVID-19 is eventually halted and we shed our restricting bubbles. There will be a period of exuberance as there was after the 1918-1919 pandemic. As a forever optimist I like to believe the 2020s will roar steadier than the 1920s did. And we’ll be OK, so long as we remember what has happened in the past.
Maybe George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher and poet, hit on a truth when he said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”?