How the Pandemic is Launching a New Renaissance (again)

What Goes Down, Sometimes Comes Up Higher

Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay

In the grip of the pandemic, many of us looked to the heavens and cast a wish to do things differently if we should make it through this dark hour.

We’d say “yes” more to people, to challenges, to artistic expression, to going for our dreams.

Now, starting in America, as vaccines squelch the fire of the virus, people are getting that “second chance.”

And it’s not the first time this happened. In fact, one of the greatest transformations in world history occurred following one of the worst pandemics of all: the Black Death.

After that plague ravaged civilization, social order was completely transformed, which scholars believe set the stage for the Renaissance.

We’re talking Michelangelo sculpting, da Vinci designing, Columbus sailing the ocean blue searching for new trade routes, and Galileo unleashing the scientific method.

“After the Black Death, nothing was the same,” Gianna Pomata told the New Yorker. Pomata, a retired professor at Johns Hopkins’ Institute of the History of Medicine, said he now expects something just as dramatic to happen. “Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new…