The following are selected sections from a New Scientist article that appeared this week [23 July 2022] that discusses research examining a possible connection between pandemics and changes within societies, particularly with regard to a rise in religious interest as well a move towards choosing authoritarian governments, and an increase in xenophobia.
There has certainly been a rise in both the alt-Right and the Right in Europe and elsewhere. Hungary has been alarmingly successful in establishing a RW state, and other nations like Indian, Poland, and Britain seem to prefer populist and/or authoritarian administrations,. All of which presents a worrying [albeit interesting] prospect for the future of democracy..
https://www.newscientist.com/article...s-do-the-same/
The article starts with a brief comment on Akhenaten's new religion and new city and other academics have suggested that a flight from a plague might be part of the reason. However, with regard to the present day
There has certainly been a rise in both the alt-Right and the Right in Europe and elsewhere. Hungary has been alarmingly successful in establishing a RW state, and other nations like Indian, Poland, and Britain seem to prefer populist and/or authoritarian administrations,. All of which presents a worrying [albeit interesting] prospect for the future of democracy..
https://www.newscientist.com/article...s-do-the-same/
The Network Contagion Research Institute [NCRI] based in New Jersey has been tracking information trends across social media networks and has correlated them to real-world events. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic Joel Finkelstein, at the Institute, comments that it has has observed the rise of "essentially religious revolutionary groups that are breaking off from society in order to start something that will usher in a utopian era".
The article starts with a brief comment on Akhenaten's new religion and new city and other academics have suggested that a flight from a plague might be part of the reason. However, with regard to the present day
Others too have observed people turning to religion in times of pestilence, even in today’s increasingly secular age. Jeanet Bentzen at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, found “a massive rise” in the intensity of prayer in the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, as measured by Google searches for prayer texts across 107 countries. And in April 2020, the Pew Research Center in the US reported that a quarter of adults there said their faith had strengthened since covid-19 erupted. What people look for in religion at such times is less clear, but there is a strong case that for many it is a stricter social order. Michele Gelfand at Stanford University in California has long argued that a society’s norms tighten up in response to ecological threats such as disease, famine and natural hazards. These demand prosocial behaviour and large-scale cooperation, and one way to encourage such action is to invoke a vengeful god who punishes norm violators. In 2021, Gelfand’s group reported that US states with high historical levels of ecological threat also have high levels of belief in punitive gods.
Religion isn’t the only way to tighten a culture. In a study involving nearly 250,000 people in 47 countries, Leor Zmigrod at the University of Cambridge and her colleagues found that as infectious diseases become more prevalent, so do conservative, authoritarian attitudes – even after controlling for income, education and other factors. Intriguingly, the correlation only holds for diseases that are transmitted from person to person, rather than via an intermediate host or vector. This suggests that whatever is driving the authoritarian turn is profoundly social – to do with how we perceive others. Although the research predates covid-19, people’s behaviour during the current pandemic has reinforced these findings. “This very social disease, this disease that can be acquired from other people, has led to a wave of authoritarianism around the world,” says Zmigrod.
In a worrying historical parallel, Kristian Blickle at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that, among German cities, the higher the death rate during the 1918 flu pandemic, the greater the share of the city’s votes for the Nazi party in the early 1930s – again controlling for factors such as income and unemployment. “There is a real fear of chaos in [epidemic] settings, so it’s this desire for tightness that I think predicts support for strict gods and governments,” says Gelfand. And wherever people seek control, she adds, it seems to involve reinforcing group boundaries and a greater preference for one’s in-group.
Last year, Brian O’Shea at the University of Nottingham, UK, and his colleagues reported that the main factor driving this is aversion to germs in “outsiders” – whether they are foreigners different ethnic, religious or other subgroup. We have seen this in the past two years, of course. For example, the NCRI has tracked the rise of the anti-government boogaloo movement, which includes white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Although it predates the pandemic, it really took off at the reopen rallies held across the US in spring 2020. Its followers, some of whom have since been charged with serious crimes, stood out with their Hawaiian shirts and Pepe the Frog badges, and online with apocalyptic memes including #DOTR for “day of the rope” and #RWDS for “right wing death squad”
Covid-19 has also brought a wave of xenophobic attacks on people of Asian origin and a deluge of antiSemitic disinformation online.[...] Control and exclusion aren’t the only possible reasons for the coincidence of pandemics and social upheaval, though. Nina Witoszek at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Mads Larsen at the University of California, Los Angeles, study the role of narrative in cultural evolution, and they believe that what people are looking for is a new story. When we feel threatened, we have anxiety,” says Larsen. “To ameliorate that anxiety, humans need a story to commit to. ”A plague challenges the “master narrative” told by the spiritual or secular leaders and allows new stories to emerge that explain where things went wrong, and how to put them right. [...]
We have a lot of clear evidence that major transformative change comes on the heels of big societal disasters – but it’s not automatic,” says Daniel Hoyer, project manager of Seshat, a repository for global historical data. For change to happen, the society must take advantage of the disruption by correcting course, he says. If it doesn’t, it risks being even more vulnerable to the next shock. “Few if any society so far has collapsed solely as a result of an epidemic,” says Kelder. But it is true that the same forces that make societies vulnerable to contagion – widening inequality, population explosion, globalisation – also make them susceptible to revolutionary ideas, and they ignore these ideas at their peril. So, we should expect today’s pandemic to bring change, says Hitchcock. “History suggests that…the post-covid normal is unlikely to look much like the old normal.”
Religion isn’t the only way to tighten a culture. In a study involving nearly 250,000 people in 47 countries, Leor Zmigrod at the University of Cambridge and her colleagues found that as infectious diseases become more prevalent, so do conservative, authoritarian attitudes – even after controlling for income, education and other factors. Intriguingly, the correlation only holds for diseases that are transmitted from person to person, rather than via an intermediate host or vector. This suggests that whatever is driving the authoritarian turn is profoundly social – to do with how we perceive others. Although the research predates covid-19, people’s behaviour during the current pandemic has reinforced these findings. “This very social disease, this disease that can be acquired from other people, has led to a wave of authoritarianism around the world,” says Zmigrod.
In a worrying historical parallel, Kristian Blickle at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that, among German cities, the higher the death rate during the 1918 flu pandemic, the greater the share of the city’s votes for the Nazi party in the early 1930s – again controlling for factors such as income and unemployment. “There is a real fear of chaos in [epidemic] settings, so it’s this desire for tightness that I think predicts support for strict gods and governments,” says Gelfand. And wherever people seek control, she adds, it seems to involve reinforcing group boundaries and a greater preference for one’s in-group.
Last year, Brian O’Shea at the University of Nottingham, UK, and his colleagues reported that the main factor driving this is aversion to germs in “outsiders” – whether they are foreigners different ethnic, religious or other subgroup. We have seen this in the past two years, of course. For example, the NCRI has tracked the rise of the anti-government boogaloo movement, which includes white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Although it predates the pandemic, it really took off at the reopen rallies held across the US in spring 2020. Its followers, some of whom have since been charged with serious crimes, stood out with their Hawaiian shirts and Pepe the Frog badges, and online with apocalyptic memes including #DOTR for “day of the rope” and #RWDS for “right wing death squad”
Covid-19 has also brought a wave of xenophobic attacks on people of Asian origin and a deluge of antiSemitic disinformation online.[...] Control and exclusion aren’t the only possible reasons for the coincidence of pandemics and social upheaval, though. Nina Witoszek at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Mads Larsen at the University of California, Los Angeles, study the role of narrative in cultural evolution, and they believe that what people are looking for is a new story. When we feel threatened, we have anxiety,” says Larsen. “To ameliorate that anxiety, humans need a story to commit to. ”A plague challenges the “master narrative” told by the spiritual or secular leaders and allows new stories to emerge that explain where things went wrong, and how to put them right. [...]
We have a lot of clear evidence that major transformative change comes on the heels of big societal disasters – but it’s not automatic,” says Daniel Hoyer, project manager of Seshat, a repository for global historical data. For change to happen, the society must take advantage of the disruption by correcting course, he says. If it doesn’t, it risks being even more vulnerable to the next shock. “Few if any society so far has collapsed solely as a result of an epidemic,” says Kelder. But it is true that the same forces that make societies vulnerable to contagion – widening inequality, population explosion, globalisation – also make them susceptible to revolutionary ideas, and they ignore these ideas at their peril. So, we should expect today’s pandemic to bring change, says Hitchcock. “History suggests that…the post-covid normal is unlikely to look much like the old normal.”
Comment