Lord of the Flies October 3, 2006
Posted by khalidmir in Films.trackback
Why does the desert or the desert island always tell us something essential about ourselves? From the nomadic spirit of religion to fantasy islands to economic and political models. Islands are also Utopian places, spaces where nature is uncorrupted and primordial innocence is regained.
Lord of the Flies. It is the conch that unifies everyone-big ‘uns and little ‘uns alike. Sound as the unifying factor, the shell as a symbolic axis around which people can gather. This is not the simple story of what happens to society when order breaks down, when the rules are relaxed-at least that’s not the most interesting part of it. It is the little things that are equally revealing the way in which there is a reluctance to shed blood but also how, once this has been done, this violence can be transferred to other ‘objects’. It is the frenzy of the first kill, the sheer thrill of it , the heightened sense of awareness that ensues as a result of the pursuit, the release of energy in the kill that fascinates. It is all these things that make the tearing of flesh such a memorable experience and something that stays with mankind.
But there are other themes as well. ‘Piggy’ is the first storyteller, the unsung hero who is always rejected, but who was there before everyone else. Ridicule and laughter are also something that can unite the tribe. But it is ultimately his stories that help pass the time, that sooth the nerves of all those who fear the onset of darkness. It is Piggy who can hear and relate what cannot be uttered: the presence of the Beast. What would a tribe be without its storytellers? It is he who knows how words acquired their original meaning (Camberly). Is it the storytellers who first learn how to bind men together and initiate us into the first political community? Even if their influence is sporadic and tentative, it still has its functions, and we are still spellbound by its rhythms. It is also his glasses which serve as the key to their survival: fire.
Ralph and Jack are the first estranged brothers. The election of one sows the seeds of resentment that fester in his heart until a break from the original unity is affected. From then on he is to remain a wanderer, an outcast. Ralph is the Socratic King , with his practical wisdom. He understands that the little ones must be cared for. For Jack and his pack of hunters such compassion is of little use. Other children are only important in so far as they need him, the provider, only as long as they affirm his power over them. The hunters were , it must be remembered, first of all the ‘priests’ (the choir). The original split: royal power and the power of the priest-king.
And then there is the final scene, as the elements rageand fire and water are mixed, the crowd forms, swarms, driving itself into a delirious state, into the realm of pre-consciousness; the rhythmic music reinforces this cosmic unity. They all dance around the fire-man’s first stomping grounds. Is the murder intentional or unintentional? This question can never be resolved. But perhaps, as one of the small children hesitatingly says, the true horror, the unfathomable mystery, is that the beast is in us.
Exactly, the beast is born anew within each human heart. Religious folk who believe in some external devil turn their backs on the only beast they can conquer: their own. And it usually ends up rearing its ugly head and doing all sorts of damage.
By the same token, any god that exists also must exist within our hearts. Embracing that makes fighting the beast within a veritable piece of cake.
(Excellent analysis, btw.)
Honestpoet, hello and thank you for your generous comments.
a poet from my parts (talking of love) once said : what is ‘inner’ , what is ‘outer’?
to say that the beast is *only* in one’s heart is to miss this. I don’t know, I get the feeling rothko might have sid the same …I’m trying to write on this on my main blog :
http://www.bagginsandco.blogspot.com
If you have any thoughts on that I would love to hear them.
anyway, thanks again.
Keep well,
K.
You’re welcome. (That wouldn’t be Rumi, would it?)
Evil certainly exists external to ourselves, but we can’t really control any evil EXCEPT that within us. We can try to fight tyranny and evil outside of ourselves, but unless we’ve conquered our own demons first we’ll simply end up becoming the sort of evil we’re trying to fight.
I’ll gladly look at your other blog, though right now I’m off to the elementary school to serve up mincemeat pie to my son’s class as part of his presentation on the Christmas traditions of England.
peace,
HP
Mince pies..hmm..lovely. don’t you get them in the States? I hope you made custard to go with them!
Yes, I tend to agree with you. But sometimes ‘he who plays the angel ends up playing the beast’.
no, it was Bulleh Shah, a Punjabi poet.
Take care HP,
K.
My grandma made mincemeat pie at Christmas, but I hadn’t had it since I was little. No, no custard…not only is that not how I ate it as a girl, but pie is messy enough in a classroom.
I know what you mean by “he who plays the angel…” That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s when someone plays the angel without confronting, for lack of a better term, their shadow, their own personal beast, that they end up doing harm when they mean to do good.
Someone who’s danced with their devil, chained it up and keeps a good watch on it, isn’t going to do any real harm when they go out into the world to confront the evil out there. At the forum where I blogged before coming to wordpress, there were a lot of people too afraid of doing harm (or too concerned about appearing judgmental) to take any kind of stand. I think it’s important to get past that. If all those who mean well cower at home, scared of their own shadows, the human situation won’t ever improve.
I agree with you (not about the custard!) on the need to take astand. All I would say, though, is that there are a lot of people who are “judgemental”, who are trying to convert others away from what they perceiove to be poor practices/ideas to their way of doing things (from religion to tthe belief in the universal validity of the markets or democracy). Colonialism too had its missionaries.
Perhaps thetre are too many do-gooders around. Too many people who want to point out the faults/superstions of others, to make over the world in their own image. What does that lead to : Hubris ..as in Iraq….
What America has done in Iraq is disastrous and unjust, you won’t get any argument from me on that on, Khalid. Not that I think S.H. should have stayed in power, what with putting dissidents in paper-shredders and turning them into fish food. But there has to have been a better way of doing what needed doing that didn’t involve killing innocent people or destabilizing the place and fomenting civil war. And the profiteering that’s gone on is unforgivable.
But the harmful kind of do-gooding your pointing too actually has very little to do with religion. It’s got much more to do with money.
Secular humanists aren’t trying to make the world in their image…they’re just trying to promote a free exchange of ideas, and create a world in which everyone is allowed to think and believe and speak their beliefs freely. Atheists, for example, get such a hard time that they’re determined, if they ever come to the majority, NOT to persecute people of faith.
It’s about freedom and human rights, something theocracies have a real problem with.
HP, of course you’re right..theocracies generally do have a problem with human rights. I think that’s pretty obvious. My point , though, is this: we have to face up to the fact that the last century was the bloodiest on record (hobsbawm)…that Auschwitz, the gulgas, the trenches, the bomb and the many, many national wars happened ina time AFTER the Enlightenment.
I’m certainly not anti-american but how would you explain country that is fundamentally secular being involved in so many wars..supporting so many dictators (including S.H.) and autocrats, monarchs around the world? Human rights “problem” ..no? And what about the genocide of the American indians, slavery and segregation of the blacks ? (one could add to this terrible list the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the genocide of the armenians)…eventually we have to admit, surely, that although religion has produced backwardness and terrible violence so have secular rideologists.
you say secular humanists aren’t trying but what would you say about those people who are not necessarily religious but who are trying to spread the gospel of free markets (ideologically and in practice)? What about-again, not necessarily religious people-the spread of so-called “civilised values” via colonialism? and the idea that the middle east has to be democratised?
Of course, these may not be secular humanists in the narrow sense of the term, but if one looks at the broad picture it is hard to argue that those who follow a secular viewpoint have not,indeed, been like the missionaries of old.
As for Iraq: I think money may be important but I don’t think one can underestimate the pervasive idea of America as the “universal nation” (see Jeddediah Purdy) ..as the “city on the hill”.
What you don’t seem to understand about America is that most of the folks doing the most harm actually call themselves Christians, and call America a Christian nation.
Do you realize that in a recent survey, the vast majority of Americans actually said that they’d rather have a convicted felon watch their kids than an atheist? We’re not trusted. G.W.H. Bush actually said that he thinks we’re not even citizens.
And all of the colonizing countries were Christian, and used Christianity to justify what they did. They were “saving” the savages, don’t you know. (BTW, some of my ancestors were “savages” of the North American kind.)
Rationalists in this country have been working hard to preserve the separation of church and state that’s supposed to be guaranteed by the constitution but that’s been consistently eroded by the religious right. When you hear our rhetoric against religion, you need to realize that it’s our own battle on our own ground we’re fighting. We’re not really all that interested in what anyone else believes, but in preserving our own freedoms.
And as far as the Nazis go, did you forget that they were Christians killing Jews? How is that not religiously based? As with most wars, there were underlying economic motivations, but Hitler used the pervasive antisemitism of the Christian Germans to make it happen.
The only secular humanist governments that I’ve seen have been those Social Democrats in Europe, like in Holland, who are truly interested in freedom and the well being of their citizens, and don’t seem to be doing anyone harm.
Now, there are certainly secular governments, like those in Turkey, who don’t quite get what freedom means, but that’s because they’re suppressing religion without replacing it with humanism. Humanism elevates humanity without denigrating the rest of creation. We really are, or can be, amazing creatures. But it takes inner work, love, and an acknowledgment of the interrelatedness of things to fulfill our potential.
HP, I think you’re underestimating the strong secular political culture of America. Yes, some may be fundamentalist-and increasingly so over the last 25 years , but politically speaking it has been motivated by strategic and material interests-not religious ones.
Yes, the colonizing countries tried to justify their civilizing mission in terms of religion but again, there were also justifications made on the grounds that it was bringing them to the ideals of the Enlightenment: rationally self-interested individuals rather than irrational collectivists (part of the debates on land reform, for example..same with education)
As for the “savages” I’ve posted some beautiful paintings of your ancestors on my blog somewhere…hope you like them! (under ‘poetry’)
Yes, Hitler did in fact use some elements of the anti-semitic tradition ..as N.cohn makes explicit.
But I think we have to look at it as essentially a modern phenomenon and not one tied to Christianity.
Here, I’d suggest Bettelheim’s informed heart where he talks about it being related to modern bureaucracy and labour; Trevarso talks about the continuity with colonial practices (‘Nazi violence’) and R. Burleigh says that it would hardly have been possible without the sacralization of blood and land in the 19th century: nationalism; Agamben in Homo Sacer talks about how the camps are related to modern bio-politics and Foucault rightly in my opinion, to “state racism” (see his ‘76 lectures, society must be defended). I think Z. Bauman makes much the same point though I haven’t read him.
So, it is actually related to modern forms of power..they also used science as well in horrific ways..does that make science the main motivating factor?
From a recent poem of mine:
14.
In the pot of dirt planted with a mango pit see the skeleton of a lizard
the ants have laid bare, its ribs as fine as hair. Its baby’s skull could teeter
on the head of a pin. I don’t know if hunger killed it (my garden’s no estuary)
or if it was attacked by the fierce fire ants that don’t belong here. An oracle
might tell how it died, but most would sooner trust an autopsy. We juggle
our need for truth and our desire to sing in an angelic choir. Monorail
medicine, Internet: gifts of technology science spawned, but so is strafe
and the planet’s poisoning. Yet religion and its entrancement of our synapses
have fueled more than a few wars. The same need for the numinous galvanizes
art and culture. Once, down in the Caribbean, I nearly broke my ankle
staring up at the stars. We need to look where we’re going. The serpentine
paths of science and art entwined would not make a bitter pill. O
the staff between, the straight path to love: medicine sweet as lollipops
for a world where pain and beauty must remain forever involuted.
(Sorry about the line breaks…urgh.) You can see I’m not blind to the perils of science anymore than I am the perils of religion.
I am interested in only one lesson from the story of Lord of the Flies, which is a story repeated in history countless times, whether in a small family or neighbourhood way, or on the scale of a large empire. That lesson is that as soon as a good guy learns that another guy is a bad guy, the good guy needs to kill the bad guy without hesitation, given a situation where this is possible.
It was possible for Ralph at a particular moment, as soon as he saw the situation, in the night, on the quiet. It was possible for the secret services of UK or France between 1928 and 1933, in taking Hitler out of the mix. Any guy who is good in all respects other than that he fails to kill bad guys, is not good at all. And his guilt, his cowardice, his pretence of righteousness, is as vile an evil as any ever perpetrated.
This applies to a nation-state even more than to the individual. In passing, in an associated matter, to suck up to a bad guy, sell him arms, trade with him, and then, years after it has long become too late, take him out when to do so will create an even worse Hell on Earth, that is the extreme of failure for the would-be good guy. I believe Robert Anson Heinlein would have agreed.
Cy Quick at mydigest.wordpress.com
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Pantheistical!!