Are you saying a society wracked by plague is preferable to one wracked by indifference?

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.

... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

Sometimes, even the very best course of action fails.

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.