Working class employee of the Sashatown Central News Agency, the official news service of the DPRS Ministry of State Security. Your #1 trusted source for patriotic facts.
Even if I wasn’t an absurdist at a universal atheistic level, it’d be hard to be a communist without being an absurdist at the societal level Camus is writing at. Trench warfare and line go up and electoralism are absurd things which drive you crazy enough to believe in them if you can’t admit how arbitrary and meaningless they are. When you break from that idealism, Camus has the right confrontational framework for what comes next.
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16. Myth of Sisyphus.pdf
All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The gods cursed us to roll a rock up a hill. We don’t know why and they probably don’t either by now. I push the rock because doing so makes me hate them more effectively and at some point I might become strong enough to kill them for that. If I was arbitrarily born into 18th century France and my rock was to starve for the aristocracy, I’d push it because there’s a guillotine over the horizon. I’m arbitrarily born into the late 20th century and my rock is to starve for the corporate aristocracy, I push it because I or someone like me will get to turn their bunkers into brazen bulls. At no point in history could I have been born without some rock to push and it’d always mean existential damnation for me, but I’d purify my hate pushing it.
Can I adopt you as my second-favourite dog? You aren’t as smart as mine but you’re loyal to a fault and I wouldn’t feel bad at that final vet visit.
I’m so glad we aren’t federated with such fucking losers.
Someone translated the antiquated diagnoses: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/r0g9fs/causes_of_death_in_london_in_1632/
Bear in mind that there was neither modern medicine, diagnostics or autopsies in the 1600s, so diseases we would treat separately would be lumped together.
Abortive and stillborn – mostly natural miscarriages and stillbirths, but there was always someone who knew how to induce a miscarriage with either herbs or physical interventions.
Affrighted – it’s not really possible to die of fright, but if you died for no reason, or had a stroke or heart attack which left your face twisted in an expression of fear or pain…
Ague – the alternating fevers and chills associated with malaria
Apoplex and megrom – strokes and other catastrophic brain damage, such as burst aneurysms (megrom is migraine, migraines don’t kill you but it’s a sudden, excruciating pain in the head, some of which are a symptom of something fatal).
Bit with a mad dog – rabies, or, just a dog bite in a bad place such as by an artery or one that got infected.
Bleeding – any number of causes, just like today.
Bloody flux, scowring and flux – various ways of shitting yourself inside out.
Bruised, issues, sores and ulcers – self-explanatory. Sores and ulcers that got infected would almost certainly kill you. Severe bruises could be indicative of some sort of haemorrhagic fever.
Burnt and scalded – homes were heated by and food was cooked on open fires. Only five deaths from burns and scalds in a year is a miracle.
Burst and rupture – could be appendix, but unlikely as that would almost certainly require autopsy to diagnose. More likely hernia.
Cancer, and wolf – discussed in other comments but the same thing, essentially. Wolf was particularly aggressive tumours that ate someone alive from the inside.
Canker – ulceration of mouth and lips from herpes. Secondary infection was what probably finished you off, but a mouth full of sores will make it difficult to eat.
Childbed – women would make their will shortly before they were due to give birth, because it could go so wrong in so many, many ways.
Chrisomes and infants – Chrisomes were babies who died within the first month of life, around the time they were baptised, the chrisome is the cloth used during the baptism.
Cold and cough – wrap up warm or you’ll catch your death.
Colick, stone and strangury – all sorts of pains in your intestines, hernias, colic, bowel obstructions, appendicitis, difficulty urinating.
Consumption – probably tuberculosis, but possibly other lung diseases such as lung cancer etc.
Convulsions – epilepsy or other fits, possibly febrile convulsions in infants.
Cut of the stone – death during or after surgical removal of kidney or bladder stones. This is the 17th century. No anaesthesia, no aseptic surgery, imagine how desperate you would have to be from pain to let some butcher in his bloody apron anywhere near you.
Dead in the street and starved – homeless and froze to death.
Dropsie and swelling – symptom of heart disease and early stage failure.
Drowned – fairly self- explanatory. Could be accidental or deliberate.
Executed and prest to death – executed is obvious. Pressing was a form of torture used if a prisoner refused to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, they would have heavier and heavier weights placed on their chests until they either gave in and entered a plea or died under the weight.
Falling sickness – epilepsy
Fever – could be anything involving a high temperature
Fistula – almost certainly obstetric fistula. Women who labour long and hard can incur all sorts of physical injury, a fistula is caused when the pressure of a baby that can’t get through causes necrosis as the blood supply to the genitals is cut off. In extreme cases, the bowel, vagina and bladder become one big hole through which urine and faeces pass uncontrollably. Fistula has other causes, if you want to horrify yourself you can read the wikipedia page.
Flocks and smallpox – flocks is a euphemism for syphilis, smallpox is smallpox, hurrah for vaccines, we don’t have this one any more.
French pox – syphilis
Gangrene – infected wounds
Gout – err, gout.
Grief – how many times has one of a couple died and the other one followed them shortly after?
Jaundice – liver disease.
Jawsaln – lockjaw, also known as tetanus. Get your shots, especially if you fertilise your garden using horse manure.
Impostume – abscesses in various places. These can cause septicaemia
Kil’d by several accidents – this just means “several people died by various accidents” it doesn’t mean some poor unfortunate soul fell off the roof and was hit by a cart and then fell in the Thames.
King’s evil – scrofula, a tuberculosis infection of the bones and glands in the neck. It was believed the king or queen could cure it by touching the affected place.
Lethargie – presumably some sort of chronic fatigue
Livergrown – swollen liver, could be caused by various diseases.
Lunatique – insanity of one sort or another.
Made away themselves – suicide
Measles – measles
Murthered – there’s been a murder! It’s of course almost certain that some of the other deaths were murders, especially those of babies, the accidents, and drownings.
Overlaid and starved at nurse - Overlaid is either what we these days would call smothering, usually caused by an adult sleeping in the same bed as the baby and either rolling on top of them in their sleep or trapping the baby under the blankets, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Or, of course, deliberately stopping a child breathing.
Starved at nurse could be what used to be called “failure to thrive” or issues with the mother or wet-nurse’s milk supply. In the case of wet nurses, they would often take on too many babies and couldn’t produce enough milk for all of them.
Palsie – paralysis or uncontrolled tremor of muscles. Some cases were probably Parkinson’s.
Piles – these can cause septicaemia
Plague – febrile disease carried by the fleas that normally live on rats or other rodents.
Planet - afflicted by the astrological influence of a planet. People believed that the planets had a significant influence on people’s moods, behaviour and health. Could be applied to any sudden death such as a heart attack or aneurysm.
Pleurisie and spleen – pleurisy is a chest infection, I’m not sure why spleen is grouped here, I’ve had pleurisy and I definitely knew my spleen wasn’t involved.
Purples and spotted fever – typhus or any other disease which causes subcutaneous haemorrhage. Severe bruising. Broken blood vessels caused by underlying disease.
Quinsie – a complication of tonsillitis, an abscess in the back of the throat.
Rising of the lights – the coughing and choking as your lungs fill up with fluid as your organs fail. Sometimes asthma, croup, pneumonia, anything characterised by a feeling of choking.
Sciatica – sciatica. This can be crippling if not treated.
Scurvey and itch – scurvy can cause death. It stops wounds healing and it also reopens old wounds and death results from either bleeding or infection.
Suddenly – heart attacks, strokes or aneurysms.
Surfeit – an excess of something. Either eating too much of something which is toxic in excess (Henry I and his lampreys), or untreated diabetes, or drinking too much.
Swine pox – swine pox isn’t transmissible to humans, this is a euphemism for syphilis.
Teeth – either babies who died as their teeth were coming in, or deaths from abscesses.
Thrush and sore mouth – sores make it hard to eat. Could be a bad case of mouth ulcers, herpes, a number of things.
Tympany – a swollen abdomen that sounds hollow when tapped. Fatal if caused by kidney disease.
Tissick – the wheezing and coughing associated with asthma or TB
Vomiting – long-term vomiting can prove fatal.
Worms – a thoroughgoing worm infestation can fuck you up good and proper. If it’s really bad, you can hear them, rustling inside you. Rustle rustle rustle.
Three things stand out to me:
The disparity between military and civilian certifications. If you’re a mechanic on a specialised machine, it’s easy to become a DOD contractor on that same platform. If you’re an officer, you can say you’ve managed X people. If you’re a medic, your scope of practice is command-by-command. You might work above an LPN level but leave the military with an NREMT EMT-B certification at most which qualifies you for a minimum wage job way below your scope of practice. There are only a handful of slots for advanced schools that give you any worthwhile certification, and the paperwork required to become an LPN ($55k/year~) is very difficult to amass. If you’re a machine gunner, you spent 4+ years mastering a skill that doesn’t transfer to any civilian job and you can only sell yourself as a whipped horse with a broken back.
Military culture itself is traumatic. It’s closer to feudalism than it is anything in the civilian world. There’s a rigid hierarchy and set of standards for every aspect of your life. You have a pathological obsession with being 15 minutes early because your lord can have you arrested if you don’t do everything perfectly. You’re supposed to embrace the toxicity of every part of your day, much less being a cog in the demon machine that hates you as much as it does its victims, and tie your self-worth to that scripted performance. The outlet for dealing with any of that is alcoholism and/or smoking. You can’t afford or make the time for civilian therapy, while military therapists are inquisitors that can have you arrested or end your career.
There’s no blueprint for civilian life. The allure of military life is that you know exactly what every expectation is. You can turn your brain off because you know what to wear and how to wear it, what to do and how to do it, and how doing A will result in B for your career. Your chain of command is a line of narcissistic older siblings and parents strictly directing you down that path. You have that stick incentive of being arrested if you violate any part of the carrot plan. All of a sudden you’re removed from that very traumatic environment and it’s replaced by a much more abstract system where nobody follows the rules you’re conditioned into.
Maybe you make that deal with the devil knowing you’re a good fiddler and you get a golden fiddle for it. If you didn’t explicitly do that for that reason and get the right paperwork for that goal, you leave with nothing and probably hate the field you were trained for but not meaningfully certified in.