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Jack Is Winning
When I was in elementary school, I was in a program called “TAG” for kids that were “Talented And Gifted.” We had class together one day a week at the high school, and our sainted teacher did her best to guide and challenge 12 very, very active minds. Not so easy. My 6th grade year we read Lord of the Flies, a great book that I didn’t like at all. The point of the story, of course, is the conflict between Ralph and Jack, who represent peaceful law-based democracy (Ralph) and violent mob-based tyranny (Jack). An interesting plot device, naturally. But the part that bothered me was how the boys, who were about my age at the time (around 12) became so merciless and violent when left to their own devices. It bothered me because I knew it was real.
Our teacher asked the class if we were surprised that the boys descended from civilization to a vicious mob in only 15 months on an island. I answered that I was surprised by that, because if that had been me and my friends, it would have taken a few days. The class laughed. The teacher looked at me incredulously. I paused, then said, “Maybe a week, tops.” The teacher was probably hoping that I was joking. But I wasn’t. I was a little boy, as were most of my friends. I knew. Which is why I didn’t like the book. I started wondering what, exactly, was separating us little boys from ruthless violence, and I wasn’t sure. Which bothered me.
I’m still not sure what that thing is. Mothers and fathers, together? Church? Teachers who understand the differences between boys and girls? Sports, with good coaches? Hunting and fishing? Learning responsibility from chores, etc.? What exactly is it that molds naturally violent young boys into mature, responsible men?
Again, I’m not sure what that is, but whatever it is, it would appear to be missing in our cities today. I’m reminded of the characters from The Lord of the Flies – Jack would be an enthusiastic member of Antifa, and Ralph would be hiding, just like he was in the book, waiting for all this to be over.
And even more interestingly, Jack would vote Democrat, and Ralph would vote Republican. Obviously.
I don’t see how anyone could possibly argue that point. You don’t even have to speculate. It’s not hypothetical. How many Antifa members vote Republican?
Which tells you everything you need to know about America’s two largest political parties.
The ongoing race riots bother me a great deal. We are not all that far from open war in some of our cities. What happens then? The boys in Lord of the Flies were rescued by a passing ship, just before Ralph was killed. I wouldn’t count on that, in our case.
Peaceful democracy is not that natural state of humans. We are never all that far from open war. We are never all that far from allowing our natural violent tendencies to gain the upper hand.
I watch the news, and I think, “Jack is winning.” And that bothers me.
Published in General
@drbastiat Great post.
“Lord of the Flies” is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read because it’s so accurate!
Adults have to defend civilization every day – that’s their job in raising children so that children understand and accept that responsibility as they mature so they can defend civilization when they are the adults. That’s what seems missing from parts of society, not just in the US. (Europe has invited the destroyers of its civilization and provided all the means to destroy.) For 200 odd years the USA has been the ship Doing the rescuing. Civilization has been lost before – that’s why it’s such a rare luxury: it has to be created by living in a civilized way every single day.
The thing is – the people actively encouraging destruction seem not to realize what will be left to exert power over – not much for a long time. Humanity has to choose on its own behalf. Every single day. It frightens me.
Well, there’s this: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11597967/real-lord-flies-shipwreck-rutger-bregman-humankind/
Now somebody cite for me a real-world case that matches what Golding wrote.
There is another book, written about the same time as Lord of the Flies…Robert Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. In this book, a group of high school students (mixed gender and mixed race, unlike LOTF) is sent to a planet in another galaxy for a survival test which is supposed to take about two weeks. Something goes wrong, and they appear to be stuck there indefinitely.
Unlike LOTF, the kids establish a functioning society–not without difficulties and conflict, but civilization wins. (The book was apparently *not* written in response to LOTF, which Heinlein had apparently not seen at the time)
What is fascinating is that a *real* group of boys was stranded on an island for 15 months…and it worked out much more like the Heinlein book than like Golding’s book. Story here.
There have been studies, and the results don’t necessarily back up the central premise of the book.
Firstly, there’s the real-life story of six Tongan boys who were marooned on a desert isle for fifteen months in 1965. Their little society did not descend into the totalitarian hellscape of Lord Of The Flies. Certainly, none of the boys were murdered. Some might say, “well maybe Tongan culture prepares boys better for such an experience,” but they were students of a strict Catholic boarding school, much like the boys of the novel, not kids raised in a traditional hunter-gatherer society.
That’s not the only case study, but I don’t have immediate citations at hand for others. The takeaway from them, however, is that folk don’t tend to devolve into devils when left to their own devices and isolated from the rest of the world. Instead, folk can devolve into devils when they feel like they are isolated from the rest of the world, but in reality they are living smack dab in the middle of the world.
Consider the behaviours of gang members. They aren’t isolated on a desert island and forced to fend for themselves. Instead, they are groups who feel alienated from the surrounding society so they compete in order to improve their relative circumstances. Something similar same can be said of school violence and prison violence. It’s all about relative gain rather than survival.
Another example is how little looting there was in Manhattan immediately after 9/11. If the “Lord Of The Flies” hypothesis was correct then New York should have devolved into anarchy, but it didn’t. One hypothesis to explain why is that because Manhattan was SO cut off from the rest of the country and nobody knew for how long the island would be cut off that the benefits of looting were greatly outweighed by the costs, so folk banded together instead.
Emergency situations are more likely to devolve into chaos when the participants are fairly certain that the emergency is merely temporary, so they see it as in their benefit to grab as much as they can before things return to normal. By contrast, in an emergency situation that is seen as possibly open-ended, like being marooned on a desert island or 9/11 where people thought it might have been the opening shot in World War 3, letting the situation devolve into chaos is seen as counter-productive because there’s no certainty that things will ever get back to normal.
It’s one of the critiques of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Since the participants knew they they’d be going home soon it gave them license to behave worse than they would have under real-world conditions.
I hated Lord of the Flies because I felt it to be a lie, despite that I could see Jack and his followers around me every day. I think the truth is that while a tiny few of us are born broken and bad, and most of us are malleable, the fraction of decent people outweighs the sociopaths by 20 to 1.
And here’s Golding’s lie: Sociopaths and savages like Jack can only flourish in an artificially constrained space. If you put a large handful of random boys on an island and leave them alone, you do not in reality get dystopia.
continuing with Tunnel in the Sky…Rod, the protagonist, has become leader of the group by acclimation. As it becomes clear that they will probably never be rescued, a somewhat-irritating student-government type named Grant argues that they need to hold a formal election. Somewhat reluctantly, Rod agrees.
In his electioneering speech, Grant asks: “What is the prime knowledge acquired by our race? That without the rest is useless? What flame must we guard like vestal virgins?” Members of the group give various answers: fire, writing, the decimal system, the wheel. “
No,” says Grant, “none of those. They are all important, but they are not the keystone. The greatest invention of mankind is government. It is also the hardest of all. More individualistic than cats, nevertheless we have learned to cooperate more efficiently than ants or bees or termites. Wilder, bloodier, and more deadly than sharks, we have learned to live together as peacefully as lambs. But these things are not easy..” Heinlein leaves little doubt that Grant’s opinion is also his own.
Well, it seems we’re done with Mr. Golding’s wishful and ugly propaganda here, eh?
They made me read A Separate Peace too.
I had to read that one as well. It’s almost as if public school teachers had some sort of incentive to poison their students’ understanding of private education. Naaaah, that couldn’t possibly be it.
Lord of the Flies isn’t inevitable.
Neither was the United States of America.
Extraordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.
Very true.
Or have today’s young men (and to a surprising extent women) reacting to having grown up in an environment that they consider too ordered, peaceful, and wealthy by seeking excitement and challenge by generating tribal conflict and creating conflict and disorder where none previously existed?
I’m reminded of this passage from Heart of Darkness…
You should have heard him say, ‘My ivory.’ Oh yes, I heard him. ‘My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my—’ everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible—it was not good for one either—trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land—I mean literally. You can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference.”
“Race riot” is an interesting term. These riots are mostly white people rioting on behalf of black people, that mostly didn’t ask for riots. It is all very strange and it doesn’t seem organic or sustainable.
This is the key observation of our current political moment.When people claim to be doing something on behalf of someone else, its never for someone else.
True. I think we evolved to live in tribes. Modernism puts us in a meaningless universe. Capitalism urges us to live for ourselves and grab all the gusto, etc. But we need a tribe. Maybe a church? Maybe a political movement? What we see is largely the result of our bowling alone culture. In short, these kids are warding off despair.
It is the height of fraudulence.
We don’t need a “tribe”, we need a purpose. I think that the major malfunction of the protesters and possibly even the rioters is not having a purpose in life.
It was a Lord of the Flies existence for everyone before western civilization adopted law as the governing force. The law is what stands between us and “might makes right.”
” The boys in Lord of the Flies were rescued by a passing ship, just before Ralph was killed. I wouldn’t count on that, in our case.”
The boys were rescued by the grown up version of Ralph who were fighting the grown up version of Jack.
Papa Toad, a public school student, was made to read The Lord of the Flies three times in three different years by three different teachers, but all in the same school district (Scarsdale Public Schools in NY State).
It made it clear to him what his teachers thought of him and his fellow students.
testosterone
Back in the day, Lord of the Flies was widely viewed as The Catcher in the Rye for conservatives.
Tribes are needed to provide structure and order. This early in the day I’m usually not terribly Manichean, but from my Barca lounger the dividing line in civilized cultures is grateful vs. ungrateful. Grateful people keep perspective and seek purpose, while the ungrateful — the rioters — keep score and seek to get even.
Hard times make strong men.
Stong men make good times.
Good times make soft men.
Soft men make hard times….
Ours is a world of scarcity and there will always be competition over scarce resources that have alternative uses. Capitalism channels that competition into productive actions and processes. In a free market economy operating within a rule-of-law framework, I can best help myself by finding ways to help others – by offering products and services that others want at a price they’re willing to pay.
By contrast, in a socialistic or communistic society in which goods are distributed according to the rule: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” the incentives are to demonstrate minimum ability and maximum need.
I’m surprised at the antipathy towards this truly great novel. It’s not real. It’s fiction. Why would anyone expect it to be real? It’s an allegory, made clear by the ending, that civilization only exists because we create it constantly and continuously. As we are seeing in the riots across our country, what was unthinkable to most Americans is coming to pass: Our society is crumbling in small pockets, people are resorting to violence and relying on irrationality. This is the lesson of Lord of the Flies, and it is brilliantly portrayed there.
But “tribe”?
I should explain that that’s my go-to word for any of the small platoons we are born into or join, where we learn about liberty and how to defend it.
Third grade, District #3 school, Knox County, Nebraska, 1956-57.