Chris Zajner

The 1889 Russian (also called ‘Asiatic’) Flu epidemic can be described as one of the first modern pandemics. The development of extensive railroad and shipping networks during and prior to this period facilitated the previously unprecedented movement of goods and people around the world. It additionally propagated the process of shrinking the barriers between the countryside and major metropolises. While the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdown measures nearly worldwide and prompted widespread social, economic, and cultural disruptions, the Russian Flu was not accompanied by such drastic changes. In this article, it is argued that the blunted historical consciousness of this epidemic were a result of a combination of factors, including the nascent state of scientific research and understanding of infectious diseases, the circumscribed reach of media, implicit comparisons to other contemporary epidemics, temporal closeness to the Spanish Flu and suppression of memory, and most substantially the lack of an organized public health apparatus to act upon the epidemic. As a result, the 1889 Russian pandemic, though significant in terms of its mortality and economic impact, was quickly forgotten from the collective consciousness and has long been a hidden lesson from history.

William James considered Swami Vivekananda the paragon of monists. Yet he comes to reject Vivekananda's philosophy as a result of monism's ineluctable philosophical conundrums and because it ultimately did not suit his active temperament. James's simplified assessment of Vivekananda's philosophy, however, reveals he had only a limited understanding of Vedānta. It can be speculated that James's understanding of Vedānta was mainly the aspect of rāja yoga (the science of psychic control)—which is evinced by the fact that he disagrees with what he perceives as a lack of ability to justify meliorism and a zestful life. But this conception of James's leaves out of consideration karma yoga—or the active principle of Vedānta—which advocates work as the means to realize the divine. Contra James's conception, it is more illustrative to understand Vedānta not as a doctrine of extreme “monism” but rather an attitude that cultivates every particular temperament and disposition. With this rectification, it becomes much clearer that there are significant parallels in viewpoints between James and Vivekananda that have been underappreciated.