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.