ABSTRACT
The life history of any society is an incessant fluctuation between periods of comparative well-being and those of calamity. For a given period the society enjoys peace, order, prosperity, and freedom from notable catastrophes. Again, its life is darkened by calamities which, singly or en masse, assail it and destroy its previous well-being. This chapter explores how calamities modify our emotional and affective experience and discusses the general principle of the diversification and polarization of these effects in different parts of the population. When psychosocial starvation gives place to physiological starvation, appetite tends to disappear and is replaced by a very different experience, that of hunger. Pestilence affects also the emotional life of all those who are in contact with the sick. Their emotional tone is also profoundly disturbed. War arouses in individuals fear concerning the nation, the local community, and the family circle.
