I’ll be a zombie

The better question is – who would *want* to survive a horrific dystopia? Right now 1 in every 9000 living people each year commit suicide, and that rate would go way up in the types of dystopias described here.

There’s such a worship of “survivalism” and “bravery” in this type of narrative that all manner of common sense is discarded. These systems always focus on the “survivors” or those who choose to want to continue to live in this world, without addressing WHY they want to continue to live in this world.

It’s *assumed* that surviving is better than dying, so by this logic in The Matrix it’s ASSUMED that the people who become human batteries were wise for choosing that over suicide.

There’s an underlying concept of eternal hope which fuels these dystopias. There’s an underlying concept of transforming the dystopia into something at least approximating normality, summed up in the phrases “repopulating the human race” and “making the desert bloom”.

Dystopias are being used as a Biblical Flood – they are *desired* by some people in order to cleanse the world of “unworthies”, thus allowing the “humans” to repopulate the world in THEIR image.

It’s like a Jason Vorhees movie. The reason Mr. Vorhees’s victims are silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility young people is the same reason that children are told about the boogeyman – to scare them straight.

Dystopias are supposed to scare us straight – into becoming protectors of the world, into “making the desert bloom”, into “repopulating the human race”. In dystopias we can no longer *afford* to be silly, freewheeling, oversexed, no-responsibility people.

The dour, sour, finger-waving, piously moralizing among us celebrate the slashes of Mr. Vorhees for cleansing the world of immorality, and they celebrate dystopia for cleansing the world of “unworthies” – just like Noah after the Great Flood the humans left alive will be free of “scum” which was holding them back from “repopulating the human race” and “making the desert bloom”.

Such is the myth that is being created and will be further extended in the dying earth of the 21st century. The reality is that the people left alive during the 21st century dystopia will be the wealthy – those who are POWERFUL enough to survive, who can hide behind their gated communities maybe long enough to escape the earth, or at least long enough to see themselves as King of the Burning Hill prior to their own immolation.

At the heart of the global empire, in the land of Hollywood and Goldman Sachs, these myths allow the wealthy to hide while the servants of the wealthy are treated to idealized images of themselves as rugged McGuyveresque survivors who through their own capability can, too, survive the dystopia of the 21st century, at the expense of billions of “unworthies” who are humans transformed into “zombies”, “aliens”, “monsters” – whatever justifies their mass murder.

In dystopias, just like in video games, “we” save the world, one corpse at a time. Those human beings with a conscience give a lot of thought to whether they want to be part of the “we”.

The enemy aren’t the poor people who we callously transform into zombies so that we don’t feel bad about murdering them – the enemy are the people driving all of this – who care about nothing beyond their own survival and whose only desire is to be King of the Burning Hill. They are only giving us these flattering images of ourselves as rugged survivors in order to extend their own lives – we’ll be sacrificed as “monsters” just like the poor are, only a few decades later.

If all that matters to you are those few decades and you’re willing to sacrifice the lives of billions of people to get it, then reach for your shotgun, get your supply of duct tape and canned food in order, and cheer for the apocalypse. You’ll be the “human” blowing the heads off the “zombies” while fantasies of “repopulating the human race” pass through your ravaged mind. You’ll be all you ever wanted yourself to be. You’ll, finally, be happy.

I’ll be a zombie.

Advertisement