War is Bad

In my opinion, war is bad. I'm not saying that it's bad because I dislike violence or because I believe that there should be peace on earth, but because overall, war has proved to be for the most part, a bad thing for us. Through out history, our governments have resorted to wars as away to get what they want, but to what cost? Valuable money from taxpayers. Although we say money can’t buy us happiness, it sure can buy us health, or better said, help us be healthy. With money being used for war, as the war progressed and the government felt a need to prolong the war in order to win, they usually sought out to raise the cost. This in turn rose the percentage of population living under the poverty line, which led to malnutrition issues in families. But all the negatives that are usually cause by the government's need for war, including debt and lowering the economic status of the country, in the future, whether close or far, lead to improvement in living. Of course, that is only once the war has ended. When looking at individual countries and their progress after a war, most of the time, that progress is in such an amount, that if it were to be graphed, it would be highly noticeable. This is the good thing about wars, and post war times, people are brought together in search of a better way of living because war is a terrible time.

War is a terrible time. Although not in all wars, but in many through out history, men (mostly) were drafted and forced into fighting. Since in most families, it’s the men that were in charge of maintaining the family economically well, or as best as possible, the drafting that occurs in wars, such as in the Great War led to women having the chance to step up. This "stepping up" was a great step in women empowerment through knowledge. Its crazy how something as terrible as the Great War can lead to something as productive as the empowerment of women, through means of jobs. Another thing that war can do is can create job opportunities which in the long run helps pay off war debt and like in the United States, can boost the economy. But as we learned in class, while wars may have positives to it, it also has really bad negatives. For the Great War, millions of people from various places got together in a small area and fought one another for long amounts of time. We carry many viruses within us but we don't have a reaction to them since we've lived with them for so long, developing an immunity. This however, does not mean that others whom we meet wont get those viruses, that is exactly what happened in WWI. So all the interaction with people who carried various viruses and diseases got many people sick who later, if they lived through it, would return home and give it to others. So many people die not only because of war itself but also because of the conditions in which soldiers live in while in war.

How Bizarre Time Really Is..

If you really think about it, time is an incredible thing. Time is what makes our lives move. In history, time is different. Ten years can be anything and not important or it can be short lived but incredible. Usually, it is not important and basically, non-existent. But ask an average normal person how they feel about it and they’ll tell you, ten years, a decade, is a very large amount of time. Why is it? Well, I think it is because our lives are relatively short. Most of us try to hold on to everything and do as much as we can and I have come to believe that it is because through the advancements we have made, the speed at which things move along also increases, making time go by faster. But the idea of time is still fascinating and this change in the amount of things accomplished in a certain time frame also increases, as we get more advanced.

In this modern age, as humans, we are all moving at a fast pace. We are always busy. But how does time relate to history and to what we have been reading? Easy…

The Black Death. It was a terrible time, people were dying all over Europe and as time continued, it seemed as if it would never end. The expression forever relates to the feeling of something either highly desired or highly undesired seeming to continue for an extended amount of time, in this case, undesired. Meaning it went by slowly. Much of the world’s known population at that time was lost and all kinds of people were struggling to cope with the after-effects left by the plague. In other words, things were tough all over and life was basically at a halt for most people. Soon, things slowly went back to normal and life sped up again, to it’s previous, if not a little faster, speed. Although the pandemic was not terribly long lasting, the effect and influence it had in our capability to continue improving as a specie made it that much more important. It’s a good example of how things happening in short amounts of time can be highly influential and important.

The Industrial Revolution. It was clearly the moment at which time really began to pick up a faster pace. Humans became more influential to one another, interactions rose, and a day had more activities in it. The development of cities and the increase of population caused a constant need of supplies being provided, sources being used, and of energy circulating. The image that pops into my head when thinking of the revolution is of a petroleum pumper slowly increasing it’s speed, and also, the most commonly seen image, people walking and increasing their speed as their surroundings change. It’s interesting. The first image, the one of the petroleum pumper relates in my head to the symboliscism of earth not having unlimited resources and the second image relates to the so commonly seen sign of STOP.

That leads me to how they both connect to time and speed, literally, how. As our pace increases, is it possible that at one point, everything we know of will come to a sudden stop? Or will it reach a peak and just begin to fall?

Analysing: The Black Death in Europe by Giovanni Boccaccio

To start out, I would like to mention something that I noticed. This is not the author's, Giovanni Boccaccio, original piece, it is a translated version. I think that it would have been better for us to read his original work because we would pick up on key words used by the author to explain a certain something. While this version might be just as good as the original, it isn’t ideal. We have to rely that the translation stays true to the original text and does a good job transmitting us the ideals and emotions, along with mental images that Giovanni Boccaccio would have wanted his readers to experience.

P.A.P.E.R.

From what I understood, the main purpose of this article was to inform the reader about the black plague and it's impact as well as its possible reasons for spreading. The way that it is written, one would not immediately notice the references to religion because while it is not excessively noticeable it is also not non-existent. These references in the text are well woven in. This is because during the time in which the original author lived, religion was something that dominated and was a huge part of people’s everyday lives so it was normal for such references to be included into what was written. We notice such references as soon as we begin to read the article, “thirteen hundred and forty-eight years had already passed after the fruitful incarnation of the Son of God….” There is also a part where he mentions that the plague was so virulent that no medicine or praying/ faith could stop it. So basically, one can tell he is someone who has strong connection to religion. It is also noticeable that he is someone who is part of the high class because he talks about the way that most of the sick were those poor because they did not even have servants to attend them. He also says “ the plight of the lower class, and, perhaps, a large part of the middle class was even more pathetic,” while it could have been true, there were also those who belonged to the high class and fled their cities. The way it is said, suggest that he did not belong to either groups, meaning he was either middle class that did not flee or high class who according to him, had not need to. For the most part, as I read this, I found myself picturing him as someone who could have bee alive during our time because while religion is present, he also makes sure to include that things happened not because of God but because of our decisions and our form of living. It seems to me that the author intended the reader to be someone who did not experience the effect of the black plague, did not see it, or was unaware of it, it is shown by the way that everything black related in very emphasized and explained.

A few of the methods mentioned that were used to avoid getting the plague seem unreasonable to believe now a days but seemed to be very common back them We can also notice that while there were many that believed such methods, there were some parts that Boccaccio himself believed untrue. For example, he mentioned a few things by using “they believed” instead of stating the actions taken as facts. He also omits a few things, although it could be said that technically mentions it, he avoid telling it up front. He goes a few times around the idea of the plague spreading due to the repositioning of people to other plague-free places, and while telling it, he mentions certain groups instead of people in general which makes it as if he is trying to keep that information hidden.

In the other reading on the black plague we did on our text books, the idea that most people relied on both medicine and God to save them was shared with this article and so is the opinion that the poor were the ones who suffered the most and it makes sense because as there was a high increase in amount of doctors, only some of them actually knew what they were doing and those few were out of budget range for the poor which would explain why so many of them died.