Lately, as I’ve watched post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows and read post-apocalyptic books, it’s struck me as strange that the creators of this media fairly uniformly assume that a post-apocalyptic world would be one of hate, murder, fear, horror and struggle.
I think of The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, in which neighbors pillage, attack and fight each other after an apocalyptic event. I think of “The Purge" films, where it is point-blank assumed that if murder were legal for a night, plenty of folks would just go around slaying one another with cruel, careless glee. Or the numerous other apocalypse-esque narratives thriving on the same visions of suspicion, deceit and human-inflicted hell, from “The Walking Dead” storyline and “28 Weeks Later” to “The Quiet Place” films, “World War Z,” “Contagion," and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.
I’m guessing you’ve never had a hard time suspending your disbelief for these premises, but why is that? I read The Dog Stars years ago and found it to be a wonderful novel of strength, love and faith. And I never had a flutter of skepticism about the given premise that a post-apocalyptic world would be full of danger and misery unimaginable to me.
It’s obviously a narrative that’s been sold to us, or at least to those living in my culture, throughout our lives, to the point where it becomes something we can take for granted as true: At root, we are cruel, mistrustful, angry monsters who need the benevolent guidance of our rulers and religions and the rigid structures of our societies to keep us at bay.
Hmm. I’m not so sure.
I can picture a world after the fall of what we term “civilization” that is more civilized than what we wade through now. We are communal creatures, after all, like many other social animals, which instinctually recognize, care for, build with and find comfort and security in each other.
After the industries and institutions that create and constantly reinforce division, categorization, hierarchy, fear, strife and competition fall, why wouldn’t the love and peace of our animal hearts experience renewed strength and power? Without a constant barrage of images and symbols pounding our class, our worth, our impotence, our failures and the rules of our social system into our heads, wouldn’t it make more sense that we would slowly begin to see one another as the equals we all know in our hearts that we are? That we would forget to despise our bodies and our minds as weak or illegitimate, and begin to build a human world that serves one another rather than an imaginary king?
I am writing this today because I just read Tolstoy’s letter to Mahatma Gandhi, written in 1909. This letter encourages the use of non-violence — and more explicitly, unconditional love — as the ultimate and perfect response to anyone who attacks us, enslaves us or wishes to harm us.
Tolstoy explains at great length his viewpoint that love is the natural, impulsive expression of every human being, and it is self-serving, insidious leadership, whether by government or religion — though, obviously, it’s most often both — that is maintaining its control by convincing us such leadership is needed to “keep the peace.” In other words, it serves those in power for us to maintain a narrative that without them, we would be ruthless monsters living in squalor and horror.
Though it is of course they who act as ruthless monsters. And they who threaten us with visions of squalor and horror.
I don’t have much more to say. I just want to tempt you to imagine that you and everyone else really is good and well-meaning at heart, and that love is the human’s most instinctive act, and that perhaps if we weren’t being convinced otherwise and stuck in a system in which the many serve the few rather than serve each other — well, perhaps we would be happier and more peaceful and more satisfied.
That’s pretty much it.
Also, consider reading Tolstoy’s letter.