The pandemic has laid bare the moral chaos at the heart of modern conservative politics. They depend, always, on the existence and/or the creation of what epidemiologists call “subject populations.” Except, in this case, the subject populations always are considered in many ways expendable. It’s about ignoring all the right people. Immiserating all the right people. And now, again, as was the case in the 1980s, when AIDS was burning through the subject populations, killing all the right people. — Charlie Pierce, ESQ Politics
Readers once helped track the origins of this expression. There are several variations, but at its pithiest it goes, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy” — investigative journalist Alfred Henry Lewis, circa 1906. Sometimes it’s only three, or four, or just two.
Or in our case, perhaps it is just one president who creates anarchy to avoid punishment for his actions/inactions.
There are clearly those who think of anarchy as a paradise of freedom. But not freedom from anything or to do anything productive, just freedom. Freedom as an idol. Freedom as an empty worship word. So much so that they’d spend hundreds of their hard-earned dollars on an inert AT4 rocket launcher or a wooden prop .50-caliber machine gun just so they can walk the streets, look badass, and pretend freedom means the potential to mow down “subject populations” if it strikes their fancy. Hell, yeah!
Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” must be inspirational in such circles, if they read. Or Lord of the Flies (the color version, of course) if they don’t.
Clearly, a fraction of our populace adhere’s to the “x meals between mankind and anarchy” vision of humanity. After all, many of them are raised from childhood on Sunday school lessons of their fellows as creatures of corruption, sons of iniquity (sans leather motorcycle jackets). This bleak vision of mankind, thankfully, does not hold up in the light of science.
As we’ve seen before:
Using simple puppet plays, researchers find that babies and toddlers exhibit a sense of fairness, and a preference for “helping” characters. They avoid “hindering” ones.
Unfortunately, these impulses are strongest among members of one’s own family or in-group. Still, in studying Turkana Boy, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey concluded:
Bipedalism carried an enormous price, where compassion was what you paid your ticket with. You simply can’t abandon somebody who’s incapacitated because the rest will abandon you next time it comes to be your turn.
Which is what we see in the doctors and nurses risking their lives daily to save strangers infected with COVID-19.
Rutger Bregman provides a real “Lord of the Flies” tale that better reflects human nature than Golding’s work of fiction. Six shipwrecked Tongan boys rescued in 1966 by Captain Peter Warner after 15 months on a remote Pacific island did not revert to behaving as animals. They retained their humanity. Indeed, they deepened it:
These days, ‘Ata is considered uninhabitable. But “by the time we arrived,” Captain Warner wrote in his memoirs, “the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.” While the boys in Lord of the Flies come to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year.
The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits. And their spirits needed lifting. All summer long it hardly rained, driving the boys frantic with thirst. They tried constructing a raft in order to leave the island, but it fell apart in the crashing surf.
Worst of all, Stephen slipped one day, fell off a cliff and broke his leg. The other boys picked their way down after him and then helped him back up to the top. They set his leg using sticks and leaves. “Don’t worry,” Sione joked. “We’ll do your work, while you lie there like King Taufa‘ahau Tupou himself!”
They survived initially on fish, coconuts, tame birds (they drank the blood as well as eating the meat); seabird eggs were sucked dry. Later, when they got to the top of the island, they found an ancient volcanic crater, where people had lived a century before. There the boys discovered wild taro, bananas and chickens (which had been reproducing for the 100 years since the last Tongans had left).
Go, and do thou likewise, Jesus said.
Bregman concludes:
It’s time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other. After my wife took Peter’s picture, he turned to a cabinet and rummaged around for a bit, then drew out a heavy stack of papers that he laid in my hands. His memoirs, he explained, written for his children and grandchildren. I looked down at the first page. “Life has taught me a great deal,” it began, “including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”
Update: Brigman has more in this tweet thread.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.