In the aftermath of another failed apocalypse and the
current pop culture popularity of all things undead I have come to the
conclusion that we do not quite like each other as one would hope. The Bad
Catholic seemed to be thinking the same thing as I was around the same time because
he recently posted on the same topic but a different perspective. I suggest
reading his piece concerning Zombies and the end times. Don’t worry, I’ll wait
here.
My thoughts towards the zombie apocalypse tend to focus on
the same subject matter as what keeps me watching The Walking Dead: the people
involved.
You can’t walk onto a high school or college campus without
bumping into a male adolescent who has thought through every minute detail of
his plan to survive the zombie hordes. (Never mind he still hasn't done his
math homework.) I won’t lie I have several plans adaptable for various
scenarios and climates. It was this realization that led me to my previously
mentioned conclusion: we want to see each other as expendable when the going
gets rough.
At the core of every zombie survival plan rests the not too
often talked about truth: we would kill to survive and not just kill but kill
the walking visage of our own friends and families. Sure they are just the
reanimated corpses of our once loved ones but that is exactly what I want to
drive at. Are we so willing to view our fellow man as fodder for our baseball
bat/shotguns and chainsaw arms? I dare say it would not take long for us to
lose our humanity in such a world.
It is far easier to think of ourselves when the fecal matter
hits the rotating blades positioned to move air forward. I would say that those
zombie plans are the result of our own existential laziness. Transcend the idea
for a moment that we are not a solitary being but a part of some greater whole.
How easy is it now to imagine the shambling horde comprised of our dearest
friends? When a part of the whole is sick we are not called to turn from it and
think only of ourselves. It is not the easy path to reach out to a broken part
of the whole to fix it.
As members of the Body of Christ we are called to view
our brothers and sisters as just that, our brothers and sisters, we should not
be so eager to imagine the shambling horde of expendable meat sacks ripe for
bludgeoning, as obstacles to our survival. I seem to think that the best hope
for survival in a zombie scenario would be selflessness. Sure that may be the
death of us all but at least we would go out as humans with dignity, not just
another lifeless face in a horde of selfishness.
