We've Been Through Death and Life Together

Oh, we won't give in

Let's go living in the past

--Living in the Past, Jethro Tull

The longer I've delved into the past, the more I've come to the conclusion that the present day is the best place for me. 

That's not how I expected a medieval
prostate exam to look like.
From Memebase.

That's not to say that I don't find the study of history and archaeology fascinating, but rather an acknowledgement that if I were born at most other periods in the past I would have likely not lived to adulthood.

That doesn't take into account all the times that I developed bronchitis or strep throat, but the earliest major illness I had was scarlet fever when I was about 4 or so. Were it not for antibiotics, I would have likely died from it. That's just the most obvious instance of an illness that required a dosage of antibiotics to survive, and really, any of the dozens of illnesses requiring amoxicillin or an actual shot of penicillin* could have killed me, but Scarlet Fever was the earliest (and likely worst) illness of the lot.

I was also a curious kid, and I broke my collarbone when I was 2 when I fell down the stairs. I was one of those kids who was able to unlock multiple locks --driving my parents crazy-- and I did so on that fateful day when I slipped and rolled down the steps, landing on the concrete basement floor. If you took those antics and transported them into, oh, 16th century English farmland, I would have been the sort to provoke a horse and get kicked in the head.** Or fall in a pond and drown.

Even if I didn't actually die from doing anything stupid, if I had merely broken my collarbone it would have potentially maimed me for life. After all, a physician would have had to set it properly and restrain it so that it would heal, and without an x-ray people might not even believe that I had a broken bone, since it wasn't something obvious such as an arm or a leg. And being two years old, it's not like I was able to sufficiently articulate what was wrong with me aside from "it hurts".

Myself aside, my wife would have likely died during the birth of our first child due to a medical condition that was easily solvable today, but would have likely proven fatal only 140 years ago. And that's not even counting issues with infection and disease that accompanied childbirth because doctors couldn't be bothered to wash their fucking hands.

***

Why those gloomy thoughts? Well, I was thinking about long term survivability in the past and how it fed into people's religious beliefs. 

"A Furore Normannorum libera nos Domine."

--An 8th Century Prayer***

I think it is difficult to understand just how much terror the Vikings struck in the populace of Europe, because we have no modern equivalent in the US and Western Europe.

In a similar fashion, the recent global pandemic is but a faint echo of the Black Death of the 14th Century. In terms of death, it wasn't even as bad as the 1918-1920 Flu, and we have modern medicine to thank for that. 

But when death is omnipresent, it can affect your view toward the world. 

With so many people dying around you, what do the survivors cling to? Do they adhere to the straight and narrow of their religious practices? Do they change their worship because their god(s) obviously abandoned them? Or does their old societal structure break down due to so few survivors?  

***

I don't have the answers here, because I don't have enough exposure to psychology to speculate properly. What I do know is that in the past the fear of hunger, especially during the Winter months, was very much in the forefront people's minds. When you're laser focused on one thing, it can be difficult to appreciate the beauty of small things. 

A couple of months ago I was up earlier than usual for some reason or another, so I made some coffee and sat in the kitchen, looking outside as the sunlight kissed the frosty yard. I was struck then at how beautiful the morning was, but if you had other things on your mind you would have missed it. 

And worrying about such things as the amount of grain you have left in your stores or whether that smoke you see in the distance are Viking raiders would probably qualify as "other things on your mind".

'Nuff said.

***

But let's turn this thought exercise on its head and focus on life instead. What would be the impact on a society where people could be brought back from the dead? 

That core mechanic of RPGs --both pencil-and-paper and video games-- is used primarily to keep a game going forward without having to create new characters on a regular basis. But how would society change if death wasn't something to be truly feared, since you could be brought back? Or maybe more precisely, you could be brought back if you had enough money?

Think about the implications of that little chestnut, where the rich and powerful could pay to be resurrected on an ongoing basis. Does that mean they could live forever? And what does that mean to the mass of people who couldn't afford to be raised from the dead? 

How does religion respond to that? Religions today have enough trouble explaining why some good people are "saved" when others who are just as good aren't, so it's not a big leap imagining priests struggling to explain that while "some" people are worthy of being raised from the dead, the rest of you heathens aren't. Religion as the opiate of the people indeed.

Monty Python poked fun at the unexpected
side effects of being healed in the movie
Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Then again, in most RPGs deities and pantheons are not only present, but actively so in the world. They grant their priests the ability to cure and smite in return for following their teachings. But what do those deities think of the grifting performed by their priests in their name?

Or, in the case of World of Warcraft, why does the Holy Light allow such fanatics as the Scarlet Crusade to wield the power of the Light against obviously good people who merely disagree with them? 

I guess those are questions that can't be answered without going deep down the rabbit hole. And to be fair, trying to retrofit these obvious gaps into an already extant game is the path to madness anyway. 

*And let's be honest here: if you've ever had an actual shot of penicillin in the ass, you know it hurts. My pediatrician said the shot needed to be done where there's "a lot of meat on you", and I guess my ass qualified, but damn I dreaded those shots. The sharp smell of alcohol, the harsh rubbing of soaked cotton on skin, and I knew what was coming. If I could have ran, I would have, but in those times I was too sick to squirm away, but those shots hurt like hell. And when I heard what the cure for rabies was, 20 shots in the stomach or 5 in the arm, that encouraged me to avoid all wild animals as much as possible.

**Assuming my ancestors could even afford a horse, since the peasantry could rarely afford to do so themselves. I'm not so foolish as to think that my ancestors were merchants or nobles; given that there were far fewer of those two groups than there were of the peasantry. I've seen enough census records of my ancestors to know that most of them fell under the broad job description of "laborer", which is not the sort of thing you put down for someone whose family came from a higher social status.

***Translated from Latin, it means "From the wrath of the Northmen, save us, O God."