Not Quite The Walking Dead
I had a few minutes at the end of my evening, I decided out of curiosity to watch a few minutes of an episode of The Walking Dead. I have not followed the show. I didn’t care which segment was available on the TV. A friend recommended the series as an exploration of human nature. Small groups of survivors do their best to survive in a dystopian landscape, the “end of civilization” as we know it, wild, without institutions, replete with a variety of hazards, from the aggravating (a leaky roof) to the lethal, competing bands of survivors who may or may not slaughter you to take your meager supply of food. I know this sounds quite primal, a return to a beginning, — before the painstaking development of any rudimentary government, hospitals, and above all — schools. Of course there are always the obligatory “walking dead” the un-dead ghouls, the “biters” that lethargically attempt to infect the remaining humans… I wonder if these are no more than a distraction to the main arc of the story?
How do we survive the yawning failures of a mature civilization, the capitalist one in which we live? When instability metastasizes how will the change be manifest, and what pragmatically will be possible…?
I found a thought provoking essay, Disintegration and Dis-integration. Here are a few quotes:
History, like life is, a process. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.
I recognize no rule, no principle, no law save this one: human life and dignity is sacred. Within the framework of this moral imperative, everything is permitted. I struggle to help build a new kind of world, with social structures that are small, flexible, organic, and person-centered. I think about the results of my actions. The correct decision is never clear.
The only thing that supports our present reality is our belief in it.
The latest and greatest
are really just the old and moldy dressed up in new clothes.
Cultural precepts like patriarchy, hierarchy, the authoritarian family, religious ideology, fixed roles, alienated work, consumerism, and militarism are all accepted without serious challenge.
Enough.
