The Zombie Apocalypse Is Real

 

In a park near you

I have long been intrigued by the strange attractiveness of the zombie meme—to me as much as anyone. It seems clear to me that it must reflect a common life experience. Indeed, I have long been aware that it reflects my own. Many people these days seem zombies, NPCs.

More recently, I have seen it confirmed that zombies have always been with us. They are in the Bible.

Matthew 8: 21-22

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

 Most people, the gospel is saying, are zombies. They move about, they die again in some sense, so as to occupy graves, but they are actually dead; dead in spirit, dead within.

And that to me seems exactly right. Many people seem to live lives no more significant than those of cockroaches: taking advantage of whatever the day offers, grabbing whatever is within reach, eating, mating, dying. They operate on instinct; the instinct for sex, the drive for power, or money, or prestige. All of which counts for nothing once you’re dead, and does nothing for future generations. They drink alcohol or take other drugs or seek purely escapist entertainment to dull whatever higher faculties they have. And then they die, and their life never mattered. Maybe to a small circle of friends and relatives; but then, if these friends and relatives in turn are doing nothing but operate on instinct, that only delays oblivion and meaninglessness for another generation or so.

This seems actually more true of highly “successful” people in most walks of life than of anyone else. They have generally wasted more, wasted more God-given potential, if they have accomplished nothing of eternal significance. It was my overwhelming sense at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg: that it was a wasted life.

So what’s the alternative?

According to this brief passage in the gospel, the alternative is to follow Jesus, and with full commitment—to drop everything else. 

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

It is not enough to mouth the name. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”

It is not enough just to be baptized. One has to be born again: “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”

Baptism is the water. But as the child is not yet fully self-aware, the rebirth of the spirit cannot yet occur. That must wait until past the age of reason.

This is the significance of the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic tradition; in evangelical Protestantism, it is the experience they call “being born again.” But it does not happen automatically when the bishop anoints you with oil and slaps your cheek: the spirit, the will, must be engaged. 

It is a moral commitment each of us makes, usually in early or mid-adolescence, of our lives either to gross self-interest or to the truth and the good as we perceive it. Christians call the truth and the good “Jesus.”

“I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father except through me.”

Either one serves one’s instincts to sex, power, and prestige, or one serves truth, justice, and beauty. This is as true for pagans as for Christians; it has always and everywhere been true. But there is a second step for Christians: it is not just a commitment to truth in the abstract. That is not yet enough. We must see truth in personal terms, as a person and an independent will, and have a personal relationship with it—with him. Because, as Blake explained, no human can conceive of anything greater than a perfected human. Therefore, so long as our conception of truth, beauty, and justice does not have a personality and a human face, we do not sufficiently value or understand it. It remains, to us, mere abstraction, and subject to self-interested rationalization.

We must, in a sentence, love it: with our whole heart and mind. Blake again:

“Picture a cloud as holy: one cannot love it. But picture a holy man within the cloud: love springs up.”

We must have a personal relationship with Truth and Justice and Beauty, we must love him with an all-consuming love. We must speak to him as a person, at our rising and our lying down, with gratitude when our instincts are satisfied, and at random moments during the day. As we might text a lover.

Is it a terrible burden to do so? 

Is it a terrible burden to be in love? In a sense, it is; yet we all crave it.

What proportion of mankind does this? What proportion has ever done this? It is surely a minority. Perhaps a small minority. 

For the rest, zombies.

The Undead

 

Werewolf: Cronach the Elder

We generally tell ourselves that nobody is beyond redemption until the point of death. It seems uncharitable to suppose otherwise. But is this clearly true?

In 1 John, the evangelist tells us there is no point in praying for someone who has committed a truly grave sin. 

When the scribes and Pharisees appear at the Jordan for repentance, John the Baptist rejects them. 

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham says evangelization of the rich man’s relatives is useless: not even a miracle can make them repent. 

And Jesus advises us not to cast our pearls before swine.

That actually sounds pretty cut and dried: some people are apparently beyond redemption.

Further evidence is a folk image found all around the world: of soulless beings in human form. The most familiar modern expression is the zombie—and it seems significant that we find the image so compelling. It speaks to something in our experience; we have all met zombies, NPCs. They are being played by some demon vice. The parasitic demon or idolatry has supplanted altogether their soul.

Vampires are a variation on the theme. Like zombies, they have no soul, and survive by draining others of life energy. That is how some people are. Like zombies, they are “undead.” In other words, they are still animate, but the soul has departed. It is perhaps already in hell.

Similar figures are the werewolf, the rakshasa in India, the wendigo among the Algonquins Indians, the Nephilim in the Bible, the witches and ogres and sirens and lamia and melusines of European fairy and folk legend. It is arbitrary to see them as distinct beings; they are different takes on the same being. They are spiritual portraits of people who have surrendered their souls to vice. Modern psychology calls them narcissists.

Lycaon transformed into a wolf.

Lycaon, a figure in Greek legend, seems to have been the first werewolf. He was transformed into a wolf because he served u his own son as a meal—the wolf form was the outward expression of his true bestial nature. He had a beast’s soul.

“Ever since the time of Lykaon a man has changed into a wolf at the sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, but that the change is not for life; if, when he is a wolf, he abstains from human flesh, after nine years he becomes a man again, but if he tastes human flesh he remains a beast for ever.”

On the mountain on which Lykaon killed his son, it is said, no man casts a shadow.

The rakshasa likes to kidnap and devour children. She can at will appear as a beautiful woman. She is driven by lust, gluttony, envy and anger, without restraint.

Lilith

She closely resembles Lilith, the female demon of Judaism and the ancient Middle East. She was the first wife of Adam—so she must take human form. Unlike Eve, however, she is still around, devouring children—so undead.0

The wendigo lives in the forest and devours any human he encounters. He generally appears as human, but his spirit is that of a beast. He is a shape-shifter. “The wendigo is said to invoke feelings of insatiable greed/hunger, the desire to cannibalize other humans, and the propensity to commit murder in those that fall under its influence.”(Brightman, Robert A. 1988. "The Windigo in the Material World.)

The Nephilim are supposedly a human tribe. 

“The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” – Genesis 6:1

“And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” – Numbers 32

From these passages, the Nephilim are taken to be gigantic in stature. But perhaps this refers not to their physical size, but their self-image and boastful nature—their narcissism.

They were apparently prone to unbridled lust. “They married whomever they chose.” And they are the reason Yahweh sent the Flood to purify the world. He considered them beyond salvation.

Ogres are sometimes also thought of as giants; yet they are also able to make themselves small, and pass as ordinary people. 

"I have been moreover informed," said the Cat, "but I know not how to believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the smallest animals; for example, to change yourself into a rat or a mouse; but I must own to you, I take this to be impossible."

"Impossible?" cried the Ogre, "you shall see that presently," and at the same time changed into a mouse, and began to run about the floor. (Perrault, Puss in Boots).

 

Despite the affection which he [the prince] bore her, he was afraid of his mother, for she came of a race of ogres, and the king had only married her for her wealth.

It was whispered at the court that she had ogrish instincts, and that when little children were near her she had the greatest difficulty in the world to keep herself from pouncing on them. (Perrault, Sleeping Beauty)

So again, the large size perhaps refers to their self-image. They too eat children, and male ogres rape women.

Sirens, mermaids, or lorelei may or may not be driven by lust; but they lure with lust. They are apparently driven by a desire to devour; as are lamia and melusines. They lure unwary suitors to their death. This resembles the “love bombing” familiar to those who have dealt with narcissistic romantic partners.

There are features common to most or all of these imaginary creatures.

They fear the light, and crave darkness. In other words, they hate the truth. Vampires are killed by sunlight. In the original zombie classic, “Day of the Dead,” the zombie assault actually takes place over one night. And the zombies fear fire—light. Werewolves transform and do their deeds at night, under the moon. Sirens and melusines hide their fishlike nature under the water line, emerge from the unknown depths, and will flee if their nakedness is uncovered—if they are seen in the bath.

Narcissists are enemies of the truth—it requires systematic self-delusion to submit to vice. One is hiding from conscience. This is why they attack anyone spreading pearls. 

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

These various revenants are often suave or charming or superficially attractive. The female rakshasa, or the Melusine, lamia, or siren, generally can make themselves appear beautiful. The vampire is courtly, well-mannered. 

Lacking conscience or ethics, narcissists are commonly charming in this way. They can say whatever is to their advantage; so they become skilled at manipulation. In other words, they are shape-shifters. 

Several of them have the power to infect their victims with their vice: vampires and zombies do. Those who do not, directly and literally, often lure their victims by appealing to a vice: the lamia, the siren, the rakshasa. This is indeed true of the narcissist: he or she badly wants to lure others into vice. Moral behaviour in their presence is a threat to their conscience.

Many of these monsters seem to target children and the young. That is apt for narcissists too. It is not just that children are the most vulnerable victims; they are objectionable to the narcissist for their innocence and sincerity; as well as for the nagging thought that they might outlive the narcissist. Those they cannot tempt into vice they will persecute.

And so, while popular focus currently is on narcissistic love partners, the greater danger is the narcissistic parent.

There are zombies among us.

The Living Dead

Why are zombies so compelling? And not compelling only to me; they have earned a central place in popular culture. 

And if they are so compelling, where were they in the past? Our modern conception of zombies dates only from Night of the Living Dead, 1968.

I think everyone half-understands what the zombies represent. We knew in the 60s. They represent the growing postwar trend to godless materialism. To reject God and the absolute—truth, beauty, and the good—is to lose one’s soul. One is just a walking carcass.

The zombies are antifa, the postmodernists, the critical theorists, the Nazis—see Ionescu’s 1959 play Rhinoceros. All these mass movements that rely on aggressively enforced shared delusions.

And they are coming to get you.

The Zombie Apocalypse Is Real

I suddenly understand why zombies of the cinematic sort have now become such a popular theme in various forms of entertainment, in graphic novels and on screens large and small; why the simple plot line of a zombie apocalypse has become so compelling.

It is because we are all living through it.

The strange deep sense of satisfaction that the zombie stories produce is the serenity that comes from at last confronting some unspoken truth. It is catharsis, in Aristotle’s sense; it is like lancing a boil.

I am not referring to the coronavirus; even though, eerily, in most iterations of the zombie apocalypse, it is a virus that zombifies.

It seems more as though the Wuhan pandemic has thrown the other, more serious infection into stark relief: like a bolt of lightning lighting up the night sky. The “zombie apocalypse” that dates back to Night of the Living Dead in 1968, has been growing within our imaginations like a vivid premonition, a bit disjointed, as in dreams.

There’s been a virus going round since about then.

Many press voices, as the coronavirus hit North America, were most concerned that it not be called the “Chinese virus,” and with the “racism” of people who suddenly were not eating in the restaurants of Chinatown. Those were the lead stories.

Many journalists, commentators, tweeters and social media memes are blaming Trump for the virus and saying that he murdered everyone who has died from it. Others are blaming the virus on Christian evangelicals. Others blame it on the lack of tax-funded public health care in the US.

Objectively, of course, these are perfect non sequiturs; and show a dangerous lack of focus.

For more traces of some strange zombification, witness the mainstream Democrats who have locked down in line behind Joe Biden, continuing to insist that he is the one man America needs as president; despite obvious indications of a narcissistic personality, and now clear symptoms of dementia. Also a dangerous disconnect from either reality or ethics: objectively, aside from policies, electing such a man would be perilous for the republic. A recent editorial in the Atlantic headlined something like “Just Don’t Die, Joe Biden.” It looks like the selection by zombies of a zombie president. I’d say intentional, if zombies had intent.

Or witness the congresshumans and US senators who insist on imposing carbon emissions reductions on airlines getting relief aid in an emergency bill; or they will not support the bill. Let everyone die, then. Or demanding additional minority hiring quotas for businesses getting relief; or they would not support the bill.

These people seem to be operating without a functioning brain. Or rather, more properly, without a soul, without real awareness. The brain, as a mechanism, still functions, driving the legs forward one after the other. Zombies; the same sense is expressed by the currently popular gamer phrase, “NPCs.” “Non-player characters”: people who seem to be only simulating consciousness, like the algorithm-generated opponents in a computer game. Their reactions are mechanical, predictable, and over time reveal that there is no thought behind them.

The coronavirus, with such other uncanny events as Biden’s abrupt dementia, or the locust swarms in Africa, simply reveal to us where the zombies are. Hand of God, perhaps.

What is the real virus? Something that infects brains. That much our premonitions told us. “Postmodernism” and its intellectual littermates have stripped modern thought, beginning with the academics and spreading out through the professional elites, of its moorings, the essential guiding principles of the soul: the Good, the True, the Beautiful. Sat, Cit, Ananada. You can say “God,” to combine the principles, but even outside of monotheism, these three navigational goals remain the meaning of life.

Contemporary thought has turned away from all of them. This amounts to zombification at the mass level. To remove all spiritual moorings is to remove the soul. One simply lurches around responding to simple instincts, like hunger. Eat. Brains.

A real crisis, calling for a serious response, reveals the problem.

If this meaninglessness virus corresponds to postmodernism on the intellectual place, on the psychological plane it corresponds to narcissism. Narcissists have pulled out all their moorings. They seem to live to a limited script, unable to see what is really around them. Fliess described them as “ambulatory psychotics.”

Unfortunately, it is further the case that narcissists, postmodernists, zombies are programmed to destroy. It is Pope St. John Paul II called “the culture of death.” Like a virus, the prime directive is to spread, by eating the next brain.

Perhaps the current crisis is a godsend. Perhaps we can now rally and fight.

Where All Those Zombies Are Coming From

Danse Macabre: German, 15th Century

Here's my latest relaxation tip: The Walking Dead. Cheaper and faster then a vacation, much healthier than drugs. When I really need to get away from it all, I just cue up another episode.Very soothing.

Eh? The Walking Dead is a horror series. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? I've noticed the effect for a while, and I suspect it is behind the whole zombie thing; but I haven't been able to figure it out until recently.

I think it’s a memento mori. This a traditional theme in Medieval art was, broadly, something to remind you that you were inevitably going to die, and it could happen at any time. Skulls on the table, Death with cowl and scythe, that sort of thing. I suppose to some people this is disturbing. I'm not sure why it should be. It helps you rise above all the things that are unimportant: “how much of all this will matter after I’m dead?”

Meme chose, French, 15th century.

So it is with zombies: just a whole lot of dead people rising from their graves to remind you of the fact of death. The zombies of The Walking Dead are the traditional Dance of Death: always moving on, touching one or another person at random, and they too die. The random victim might have been a bishop, a king, or a peasant; it does not matter now. Death comes to all.

For no obvious reason, modern zombies, since Day of the Dead, move quite slowly. There is also no malice in them; they are automatons, animated fungal growths. This is not the way to make them frightening. It is the opposite: a way to make the mask of death seem as normal, natural, and non-threatening as possible.

Death poses for Hans Holbein.

Thinking of death as ever-present keeps life simple. Just as life is simple for those people in the zombie movies: just a matter of avoiding the walkers and scrounging what they need for another day. No more vanities or pretense. Come to think of it, the same dynamic is probably behind the current popularity of Breaking Bad as well. For too long, thoughts of death have been a taboo in our society, and that is very spiritually unhealthy. We may well see much more of this as the demographic bulge of the Baby Boom tips into its twilight years.

Tupperware People

My wife observes that “most people are made of Tupperware.”

A brilliant image, that works in a variety of ways. Plastic, mass produced, without a soul, materialistic, out for the main chance, superficially attractive, morally plastic, adaptable to whatever the environment requires, concealing, cheap, ready to prostitute friendships for material gain.

Obviously, many others feel the same way; that perception is surely behind the current craze for zombies. Soulless living dead interested only in eating their neighbour.

Is this too cruel? If so many see others as zombies, can it really be true? Is it only true when we view others from a distance? If we knew them well, if we loved them, if they were members of our own family, would we still see them as Tupperware people?

On reflection, I think we would. My wife responds that there are indeed Tupperware people in her own family. My good friend says the same about his. We’ll leave mine out of this, for now.

And the Bible says the same thing. Most people are not on the path; most people are made of Tupperware. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

Not that anyone is soulless; but in some the soul is no more than a low flicker, a pilot light, while in others it is a blinding fire almost visible behind the eyes. We all have an inner zombie. We all have Tupperware shells of different thicknesses.

A good measure of how zombified we are is how we respond to art; another is how we respond to humour. Another is whether we are depressive. Since the least zombified are the ones who are most inclined to appreciate art—not high art, but real art--there is still a large audience for art that portrays a zombie-apocalyptic view of the world.

The Zombie Apocalypse is Here

Zombies from "Night of the Living Dead."

My wife is growing frustrated with “Plants vs. Zombies.” Apparently those annoying zombies keep eating her brains.

There is something deeply satisfying and primal about the image of the zombie apocalypse; so much so that it has become a touchstone of current pop culture.

Obviously, it says something about the present time that rings true to a lot of people.

In other words, we are in some sense in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

The original modern zombie apocalypse movie was, of course, “Night of the Living Dead.” It was released in 1968. It was really a commentary on the breaking down of social norms in that decade—and the apparent inability of all the established authorities to do anything about it. In a zombie apocalypse, all social order dissolves.

Mmmm--brains!

We seem to face a much worse breakdown of civil society now—with the culture wars, the turning of government and elite against religion, the loss of public confidence in the public school system, the never-ending recession. The Sixties were only a distant early warning for what is happening now.

And the zombie depicts the problem, as understood by artists and by our group unconscious.

The ancient Greeks, ancient Egyptians, and ancient Chinese—perhaps all the ancients—understood mankind to have several different souls. Aside from the higher pneuma, to use the Greek classification, there was the emotional psyche, and the simple anima. The anima even the lowest animals had; it was our instinctual soul, our hungers. The Greeks understood the anima to be mortal, like the body, while pneuma and psyche were immortal. The Chinese, at least, feared that this soul, the po, so close to the body, could remain with the body after death. This is why important Chinese corpses were commonly encased in jade: the jade prevented the anima, the “hungry ghost” from emerging or the body from reanimating. This was particularly necessary in the case of prominent corpses, because prominent people had correspondingly powerful lusts. This is no doubt also why great houses are always haunted.

Han Chinese jade burial suit.

The zombie apocalypse image posits that society is suffering from a general collapse of the higher spirit, the soul, in favour of the basic animal lusts. And this, inevitably, is leading to a breakdown in civilization and in civil order, as everyone begins to pursue their personal appetites instead of anything nobler.It's increasingly a zombie eat zombie world.

We are eating our own brains. We are turning into robotic parasites.