Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

by Jennifer Wright

People don’t seem to regard giving up their higher reasoning for a life of untroubled bliss as a good trade. If you want to read more into that statement, you could probably say this implies something great about humanity. Perhaps we prioritize a life of meaning over one of simple happiness. You can be happy by basically obeying all your impulses and fondling your genitals and not worrying about anything—which seems to describe the “happiness cult” that Becky and countless other less enthusiastic patients seemed to have joined. But if you want to have a meaningful life, where you take care of others, and maybe leave the world a tiny bit better than it was when you came into it, you’re going to need your frontal lobes.

Given the current state of our country it seems as if many of us have metaphorically given up our frontal lobes in exchange for meaningless entertainment and the ability to just 'go with the flow'. While this is happening many of the steps forward that we have made are currently being reverted back to times of prejudice, discrimination, and a general disregard not only for others but for the world and environment as a whole. Though we may be evolving technologically we are failing to learn basic lessons from the past that we seem doomed to repeat. It's as if people are once again lining up for the services of Walter Jackson Freeman II, to be purposefully and permanently given an excuse for their inaction and tacit acquiescence.