I awoke this morning to discover I had been sent the same link to an article by two different people. Interestingly enough they both share the same birthday just to add an extra layer of intrigue. This then is an article in the Guardian about ‘the real Lord Of The Flies‘; as they describe the story of six boys in the 1970s who found themselves stranded on a small island off Tonga for eighteen months. Incidentally I mentioned William Golding, the author of the dystopian novel that inspired the article, just the other day when I discussed one of his plays. The Lord Of The Flies is a great story, and like others I found his ability to get inside the psyche of these boys and explore the depths of human behaviour remarkable. It helped he was a Headmaster at a school, and according to this article a depressed alcoholic who sometimes beat his own kids. It suddenly becomes clearer why he had such little faith in the fictional children he created working together towards any kind of positive outcome. They really were the naughty little archetypal child of his time, this being the 1950s.
The article is quite interesting though because it raises the prospect that in fact the inevitable outcome of such a scenario is not death and destruction as these kids from the real version proved. Over the course of their eighteen stranded months they managed to exist in their own structured, disciplined and harmonious little world. They worked together and despite some serious incidents managed to all survive intact and healthy. The article is adapted from a new book by Rutger Bregman called Humankind, he previously wrote the relatively well known Utopia For Realists which I haven’t read but I hear is very good. He is attempting to change the narrative to one that shows “how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other” than the tired old one which convinces us we’re a destructive animal destined to ultimately destroy ourselves. There are and continue to be many stories out there of us working together when required, and the fact we have survived this far shows we must have been and still are capable of this cooperation.
It is important to mention though that clearly society is full of psychopaths and all it would take is for one person in the group to adopt that position for events to take another turn, as Lord Of The Flies demonstrates. In many cases then it turns out luck plays a defining role, the luck of who else you would find yourself stranded with. Perhaps if we knew a little more about how to handle such situations, to resolve a destructive element, we may be a little better prepared but how to do that is beyond my limited knowledge. Still narratives clearly can and need to be redrawn if we are ever to come together and survive as a species to benefit of all life on earth. Perhaps it’s time to see whether we can feasibly translate one of these micro examples onto the world at large.
Observations and Misunderstandings 