I just happened to stumble upon the Lord of the Flies film on IFC one night at the perfect age of a kid. Was like, “oh wow cool bunch of kids trying to survive on an island this looks like a cool movie!” … an hour later and I grew up real fast.
Same here. I was the age of the kids in the movie or a little younger. Learned some things that day.
Funny thing is I’ve heard of a study where they did something similar (safer and more controlled I’m sure), and the boys all cooperated with each other and got along very nicely.
Not every group is going to adapt and react the same way though. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities for the lord of the flies situation to happen, but what’s the rate. 10%? 1%? 50%?
Studies on the phenomenon called Elite Panic suggest that people in general are more cooperative in disastrous events than normally assumed by the elite, and often a lot of the rest of us too.
Like, the elites would panic in a survival situation. But I have real survival skills that would allow me to survive until rescue. Someone like Bezos or Musk would starve quickly, or eat something poisonous without knowing whether it was safe or not.
No, Elite Panic is people in power or with money assuming that the rest of us plebs are going to go wild stealing their stuff and eating each other. They therefore believe they need to get a strong police or military force in place to control the situation, because we can’t be trusted. Many times in the past this happened it caused more issues and deaths as they don’t prioritize human life.
Quoting from the wiki: Philip L. Fradkin detailed cases of “elite panic” during the Great Chicago Fire, the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[10] After the San Francisco earthquake, Mayor Eugene Schmitz authorized the use of deadly force against “anyone engaged in looting”[11] – chiefly poor and working class victims of the earthquake. While residents of Chinese descent evacuated the disaster areas, and were segregated from white victims of the earthquake, Chinatown was itself looted by soldiers and members of the city’s upper classes.[12]
Another: During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, evidence of “elite panic” included the extensive media coverage of and political focus on reported looting and violence, the authorization of deadly force in response to reported property crime and the circulation of rumors about the behavior of New Orleans’ lower class and residents of color.[6] Mayor Ray Nagin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and claimed “hooligans [were] killing people, raping people” in the Louisiana Superdome.[7] President George W. Bush subsequently dispatched the United States Army to the city, where they prevented residents from leaving disaster areas.[16] On September 1, 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco called off search and rescue efforts and diverted the attention of emergency services towards looting, warning that residents of New Orleans caught looting would be shot by veterans of the Iraq War.[12] Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was later held responsible for the crisis, despite official guidelines stating that leadership during times of crisis fell to the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, who at the time was Michael Chertoff.[12]
The Superdome thing is especially egregious, because a ton of people had worked to convert it into a refugee camp, including several armed patrols to make sure people didn’t steal shit they didn’t need.
True. It is plausible. At the same time I have to think that if the human race hasn’t evolved to factor cooperation in tribes in most cases, we wouldn’t be here discussing this.
I kinda want the next one to a prison barge, just get the normal situation and and the massive outlier as the first two, just to mess with it for the next dozen until the pattern forms.
Cooperation is beneficial to each individual’s survival when most in the population are cooperative. Pragmatic self-interest is beneficial to each individual’s survival when most in the population are selfish and pragmatic. I think most people tend to be cooperative, but there are plenty who will opportunistically fuck over cooperative people. The results would probably depend on the tendencies of the majority of the individuals in that situation.
It depends entirely on how much established power the individual fucking over the others has.
If it's as ephemeral as holding a seashell, they'll probably get their shit beat in. But if it's far more established and hierarchical, yeah they'll end up with more power over the others.
Is it? A lot of people seem to have come to the conclusion that its characters are realistic.
The novel is styled as allegorical fiction, embodying the concepts of inherent human savagery, mob mentality, and totalitarian leadership. However, Golding deviates from typical allegory in that both the protagonists and the antagonists are fully developed, realistic characters.
Golding’s work is a powerful exploration of the inherent capacity for savagery within human beings when societal structures are removed. The novel touches on themes such as the loss of innocence, the struggle between civilization and savagery, and the fragility of societal norms.
it serves as an interesting look at the dark side of human nature and how no one is beyond its reach. Plus, anyone who had a bit of a rough time in high school will probably not find the events in this book a huge leap of the imagination
The scary thing about this book is how real it is. The Lord of the Flies bespeaks the brilliance of realistic dystopian fiction, it gives you a possible world scenario, a bunch of very human characters and then it shows you want might happen when they are thrown into a terrible situation: they act like monsters (or humans?)
the author very realistically portrays human behavior in an environment where civilization no longer has meaning.
If you have never experienced the amount of destructive power that is possible in that short time-span, you might think Golding exaggerates. Unfortunately, I can see any group of students turning into the characters in The Lord Of The Flies if they are put in the situation.
I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.
So not necessarily allegory. It seems more a bleak worldview portrayed through fiction.
Great read but I am highly sceptical of Rutger Bregman, just from watching his attitude in motivational videos. He reminds me of people mostly interested in promoting themselves. I hope I am wrong.
Sorry for the paywall but the readable introduction reflects concerns similar to mine. he doesn’t appear to be a bad person, but also not quite as altruistic as he tries to come across. More like “hey - let’s try to profit with books and talks from positive stories”
For those who would like a book recommendation, that explores reading history through this lens, take a bit and read Rutger Bregman’s “Humankind: A Hopeful History” archive.org/details/humankindahopefu0000breg
The author dives in deep on why the Lord of the Flies trope is so persistent and why people believe it more, the richer they are. TLDR: dopamine is a hell of a drug.
I don’t think it’s complete bullshit. Not a universal truth as some make it out to be, but not completely false. Cultural background plays a role, as well as social setting.
The Tonga boys were all from the same group for one.
In Lord of the flies, they were separate groups.
Tonga boys had a shared culture.
Lord of the flies groups had 2 separate cultures: 1 religiously militant, the other not.
That second factor might be the most important one. If you’re taught growing up to villainize and hate an “other”, that’s what’s more likely to happen.
Or to put it in a more US centric way: if 7 kids from deeply racist families were stuck on an island with 4 black kids in the 1960s, would they still have gotten along as well as the Tonga boys?
I think this is a great point. However, and I don’t think this takes away from what you are saying, the kids (in your US-centric example) would have a better chance of getting along than if they were kept together in society. For one, shared hardship has been shown to be a very effective means to breaking down tribalism. For two, being left in society would mean they’d have external forces bearing down on them to keep them in tribal lines. It’s precisely “civilization” that creates and inculcates these prejudices. But people take the opposite lesson home: that apart from “civilization”, humans become brutal and violent.
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