Today's Wisdom - Disease, Anger and Myanmar

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The Black Death demolished the economic and social architecture of medieval Europe. Between 1347 and 1353, the plague wiped out roughly one-third of Europe's population, in some cities, like Florence, half the population died within months. But the sheer scale of death is only part of the story as the plague also shattered the feudal order that had defined European life for centuries. Before 1347, Europe operated on a rigid system: peasants were legally bound to the land they worked, obligated to give most of their harvest to lords in exchange for protection and the right to survive. Labor was abundant and cheap, which meant lords held all the leverage. After the plague, that equation flipped overnight. With half the workforce dead, surviving peasants suddenly had bargaining power for the first time in generations, and they used it to demand wages, freedom of movement, and better conditions.

The labor shortage ignited a technological revolution. Faced with a sudden scarcity of workers, landowners were forced to innovate or collapse. This is when Europe saw rapid adoption of labor-saving technologies that had existed for decades but were never economically necessary: the heavy plow, the three-field crop rotation system, and water-powered mills all became standard. In England, the wool industry mechanized faster than anywhere else, as landowners converted cropland to sheep pastures that required far fewer hands. The plague essentially turbocharged the shift from subsistence agriculture to a proto-capitalist economy where labor had value and efficiency mattered. By the early 1400s, real wages in England had doubled compared to pre-plague levels, a gain that wouldn't be matched again until the Industrial Revolution.

Perhaps the most underappreciated consequence of the plague was its psychological reshaping of European consciousness. The randomness and brutality of mass death shattered the Church's narrative that suffering was tied to sin and divine punishment. This crisis of faith created space for the early stirrings of the Renaissance, as survivors sought meaning away from the afterlife in the tangible, human-centered world of art, science, and individual achievement. The plague also accelerated the decline of Latin as the universal language of power. With so many clergy dead, vernacular languages like English, French, and Italian became the default for legal documents, literature, and administration, democratizing knowledge in ways the printing press would later amplify. In a grim irony, the Black Death may have been the catalyst that pulled Europe out of the Middle Ages through the brutal economic logic of scarcity and the sudden realization that human life, when rare, becomes valuable.

Seneca believed that anger came as a result of the mind malfunctioning. In his essay "On Anger," written in the first century AD, he described it as a brief madness that drowns out reason while making you think you're being perfectly rational. Anger doesn't fix injustice, he argued, it multiplies it. Once it takes over, it demands more, invents justifications, and stops listening to anything sensible. For Seneca, the danger wasn't how anger felt but how convincing it seemed while it was in control.

 His solution was deceptively simple: wait. "The greatest remedy for anger is postponement." Force yourself to pause, even for ten minutes, and the madness usually fades. Seneca believed anger feeds on being caught off guard, which is why he recommended imagining problems in advance, calling it premeditation of evils. Picture the frustration, the insult, the failure ahead of time, and expect obstacles in the morning, so they lose their power to provoke you by evening. He even suggested looking in a mirror while angry, believing that seeing your own face twisted up might stop you right there.

The reason Seneca's philosophy endures is because it was forged in the furnace of real consequence. Seneca was the personal advisor to Nero, one of the most volatile and dangerous men ever to hold absolute power. For years, Seneca navigated a daily minefield of imperial paranoia, sudden violence, and the whims of a ruler who could order executions on instinct. Every piece of advice he gave, every letter he wrote, was composed with the knowledge that one misstep could be fatal. In 65 AD, that calculation finally failed, and Nero forced him to take his own life. He understood, from brutal firsthand experience, that anger doesn't make you powerful, it makes you predictable, reckless, and ultimately controlled by the very emotion you think you're wielding.

For nearly 80 years, Myanmar has been locked in what is often called the world’s longest-running civil war. The conflict is rooted in a fundamental disconnect between the country’s diverse geography and its centralized power structure. When Myanmar (then Burma) gained independence from Britain in 1948, the Panglong Agreement promised ethnic minorities a high degree of autonomy. However, the assassination of independence hero Gen. Aung San and the subsequent 1962 military coup by Gen. Ne Win tore that agreement apart. The military, or Tatmadaw, pivoted to a "Burmanization" policy, attempting to force a singular Buddhist and Bama-centric identity on a nation of over 135 distinct ethnic groups. This sparked decades of guerrilla warfare in the borderlands, funded by the Golden Triangle drug trade and timber, as groups like the Karen National Union and the Kachin Independence Army fought for the right to self-govern.

The current crisis exploded on February 1, 2021, when the military staged a coup to overturn a landslide election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. In a historic shift, the Bamar heartland, traditionally the military’s recruitment base, rebelled alongside the ethnic minorities. Young urban protesters fled to the jungles to form People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), receiving training from veteran ethnic rebels. By early 2026, the junta has lost control over more than half of the country’s territory, including vital trade hubs on the borders of China and Thailand. The military is currently overstretched, relying on forced conscription and indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian infrastructure to maintain its grip on major cities like Yangon and Naypyidaw.

The humanitarian cost of this stalemate is staggering. Over 3.5 million people are internally displaced, and the economy has largely regressed into a "war economy" fueled by illicit activities and cyber-scam centers. Geopolitically, Myanmar has become a tinderbox: China provides the junta with diplomatic cover and arms to protect its "Belt and Road" pipelines, while simultaneously maintaining ties with powerful ethnic rebels along its border to ensure regional stability. As we move deeper into 2026, the conflict is no longer just a struggle for democracy, but a fight for the very survival of the state. The outcome will likely determine whether Myanmar finally becomes a functional federal union or remains a fractured state for decades to come.

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Until next time... A Little Wiser Team