Zombie Apocalypse
Now
The
Zombie Apocalypse has begun.
“Hold
on!” you say. “I don’t see hoards of zombies wandering the streets, trying to
eat me or turning me into one of them with a bite!”
Well, let’s take a look at just exactly what a zombie is.
Well, let’s take a look at just exactly what a zombie is.
The
dictionary will tell you that a zombie is a reanimated corpse, whose origins
are in Haiti and West Africa. This is the part of the world where “Voodoo”
originated and made its way to Louisiana. The word is also related to a snake
deity, a fetish (god) called “Kikongo Zumbi”. Also, a ‘Zombie’ is a tall mixed
drink consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice which, I must
admit, sounds delicious.
This is not the kind of zombie that we have come to know-and-love in our U.S. of A. and not the kind of zombie I’m talking about here. Our popular culture has developed the notion of the zombie as a person who has been infected with something that kills them, until they get up again and start moaning and biting everything. They are dead in the sense that all higher reasoning has ceased and their basic bodily functions have ended. So, no choice, no heartbeat, no lung, kidney nor liver function, but in some mysterious way (that is contagious) their lower brain and spinal columns have reanimated their limbs to propel them to attain nourishment which their bodies don’t need since they are post-mortem. The lower brain’s instincts compel our zombies’ bodies to consume needlessly and mindlessly.
This is not the kind of zombie that we have come to know-and-love in our U.S. of A. and not the kind of zombie I’m talking about here. Our popular culture has developed the notion of the zombie as a person who has been infected with something that kills them, until they get up again and start moaning and biting everything. They are dead in the sense that all higher reasoning has ceased and their basic bodily functions have ended. So, no choice, no heartbeat, no lung, kidney nor liver function, but in some mysterious way (that is contagious) their lower brain and spinal columns have reanimated their limbs to propel them to attain nourishment which their bodies don’t need since they are post-mortem. The lower brain’s instincts compel our zombies’ bodies to consume needlessly and mindlessly.
Remind
you of anyone you know?
The
popular zombie has replaced most of our monsters such as the Werewolf, the
Vampire, and the Alien. A myriad of variations on the zombie theme have been
the central focus of many movies and TV shows. Nationally, people have
organized ‘Zombie Walks’ and even the CDC has recently used the zombie
apocalypse as a matrix to demonstrate how to respond to a pandemic or
devastating natural disaster. Zombies are at once, scary and fascinating to us.
The
scary part is obvious; they’re hopelessly dead, decaying, and they want to eat
you. If they don’t eat you, their bite will turn you into one of them… just
wandering, decaying, unthinking, and hungry. The fascination with and
elaboration on the zombie motif is of more subtle importance, but I’ll come
back to that after I make the argument that you
are in fact, a zombie.
Firstly,
you are a zombie because you should be dead. If you’re reading this, then you
have likely been vaccinated or suffered an illness in your lifetime which would
have likely resulted in your death were it not for the current state of medical
science and basic sanitation. Medical science has inoculated you but it has
also taught you to wash your hands with soap and water, and to cover your mouth
when you cough. Such basic sanitation is the single greatest boon to human survival
and propagation that the world has yet seen. That your body didn’t at some
point actually suffer real death is irrelevant. You are re-animated in some
way; something, somewhere, somehow, would’ve otherwise shut your little life
down but yet here you are, and so you qualify as the living dead.
Secondly,
you are a zombie because you crave that which you do not need. Addicts don’t
need Heroin, Crack, nor Booze. Fat people and cops don’t need doughnuts,
Gamblers don’t need Blackjack, and as horny as you may be, you do not need
porn. Even though you may not crave any of the above, the fact remains that all
you need is drinking water, nourishment, shelter, and a social group to
cooperate with in order to secure such things. Drinking water doesn’t need
plastic bottles, nourishment doesn’t need genetic modification, shelter doesn’t
need a mortgage, and social cooperation doesn’t need ‘American Idol’. You may
not crave drugs, nor fat, nor porn to get you through the day, but you do need
whatever it takes to make that mortgage or rent payment on time. That shelter
you make payments on, enables everything and anything else. Participation in
debt, addiction, and pop culture makes you a mindless consumer.
Thirdly,
you are a zombie because you have no higher reasoning. You are incapable of
real joy, fear, love, nor hate, and you have abandoned both doubt and faith.
You are cranky and absent until you get your first cup of coffee, your first
cigarette, your first happy pill, your first drink, your first bong hit… your first
fix. From there, you continue to self-medicate throughout the day. Without
these, who’s to say who you really are, and what sorts of decisions you might
truly make? If you have any higher reasoning left after you’re properly
drugged, it is exposed relentlessly
to commercial imagery, which further serve to marginalize whatever individual
creativity and higher reasoning is left. So here you are, living the sad life
you never imagined you would live. Your dreams of youth have been subsumed to
the demands of bills. Before bed, you look in the mirror and lament your age.
In the morning, you fight the crowds in order to stand in line for your coffee,
then flip through a ‘People’ magazine which informs you of exactly who is more
attractive than you and reinforces how shallow and worthless you are…
especially since you still can’t afford that new Be-Am-Double-You that you
always wanted. Every last emotion and thought you have left is channelled into
an ever-changing mist of egotistical desire. You have no higher reasoning.
So, you are a zombie. You are a re-animated automaton with no higher reasoning, which mindlessly consumes for no reason.
So, you are a zombie. You are a re-animated automaton with no higher reasoning, which mindlessly consumes for no reason.
I
believe that we have become so culturally fascinated with the zombie because
the zombie is us. We seem to be as
less scared of them as we are deeply aware yet confused as to the extent to
which we resemble them. I am not a zombie, or am I? It’s the rest of the world
that appears to me to be zombified, but I may be infected. After all, the
zombie affliction spreads by bites, and who is most likely to bite me? Most
likely it is someone I know: my family, my friends, and my acquaintances are
more likely to be around me, and therefore more likely to zombify me… or
consume me. So I am in a sea of potential threats that could be my mom, dad,
sister, brother, coworker, or even the guy running the hot dog stand I love so
much. Everything familiar to me is a potentially lethal threat, if they turn
zombie. The fear and the fascination present themselves simultaneously to the
subconscious; the hickey nip my girlfriend gave me could turn me zombie like
her and even though we’d both be zombies, we’d be incapable of loving each
other anymore in the way we are accustomed. But if we keep holding hands and
our credit cards don’t expire, maybe we could both still contribute to Black
Friday.
What
scares us most about zombies is nihilism: the futility and ultimate
meaninglessness of human life. It’s easy to recognize the mindless automaton
among us… or is it? The movie “Shaun of the Dead” illustrated how long it would
take for the average person to recognize that the zombies walked among us,
since their behavior is now so commonplace. My biggest laugh of that movie was
at the end, when it had been determined that the undead could still serve a purpose
doing menial work such as collecting grocery carts.
But I
digress. Nihilism: meaninglessness, oblivion, The Void. What scares and
fascinates us so much about zombies is that the zombie fate is an existential
dead-end (pun intended). There’s no Rapture, no Revelation, no atomic oblivion.
Where’s the justice, the retribution, the rationale, the intervention of a
personal savior? How does the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ define the culmination of
human consciousness through history? How does such an end to humanity define
who we were?
The
answer to the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is that there is nothing but mindless,
purposeless consumption, roving the earth forever and ever until shit runs out.
Remind you of anyone you know?
Remind you of anyone you know?