So much ado about zombies
lately. It seems they're everywhere; not walking our streets, but
sprinkled throughout literature, films, television, video games, you name
it. Each author provides their own take on the zombie apocalypse, but
what are all these stories really getting at?
What do they tell us about life and what it means to be alive? I see all of these zombie stories as a wake-up
call to the world. Whether a conscious
or subconscious one, there’s no doubt that zombie fiction asks us to question
what it means to be alive, and what it means to be human.
Apocalyptic
zombie settings usually consist of a world that is run by zombies. They may not be making choices, or
consciously trying to run the world, as humans do, but they have the numbers,
and they are in control. People in these
stories are the ones who are on the run, even the ones who put up a fight still
have to account for the potential dangers that the zombies represent. Humans are forced to scrounge for food and
find a way to scrape out a living in the safest place they can find. Shelters are seldom ideal; take the school
from This is Not a Test, or the
prison that Rick and his crew call home in The
Walking Dead. No one would ever
choose to live in either of these places unless they absolutely had to. However, they put up with it and try to make
the best out of it because it’s all they can do. The zombies have driven them out of their
comfortable homes and out of their places of work and productivity to scavenge
and hide.
A
zombie era marks the end (or at least the temporary end) of the human’s
world. Although humans may still inhabit
a zombie world, they are no longer the ones in charge. If you look at the world around us today, it
is unquestionably one that is dominated by people, and the image of the kind of
world we’ve chosen to live in. Before
humans there were no skyscrapers, or amusement parks, no factories or
neighborhoods. Every tangible building
is the result of a person’s idea coming to life. This is quite literally, our world. Somewhere along
the lines, it seems as though we’ve lost sight of the incredible fact that we’re
in control and we can make this world whatever we want it to be. We have collectively chosen to make it a
world of war, divided by castes and class, where some live big while others
suffer. Additionally, we have the
technology to make every car electric, we have the capabilities to mass produce
alternative energy sources, but we choose not to. They are being integrated into the system it
seems, but slowly, and perhaps too late.
At least in a world of zombies, the Earth can take a breath of fresh
air, a welcome break from the constant force of pollution. Given what we’re capable of achieving, and
the kind of world we could potentially live in, the state of our current world
leaves a lot to be desired.
There are countless problems, and
although the people in charge are capable of thinking and problem solving, one wouldn’t
know it by the world in which we live.
One might even say that we’ve become mindless creatures, repeating the
same routine every day, as if stuck on autopilot. When you take a step back and look at people,
we all follow such a similar formula. We
go to school as long as we can stand it (or afford it), then it’s time to get a
job so that we can spend the rest of our lives paying off the debt we’ve
accrued while attending school to find a job in the first place. Once your debt’s paid off, it’s time to save
until you have enough to retire and wait for your body to give out and send you
out of here. Seldom does anyone break
this monotonous loop and find something they truly love. Those who do are able to find fulfillment,
which is true happiness. Most people
settle for plan B or plan C and are content to get by, going through the
motions like the majority of the world.
That’s not what life should be about.
Life should be about living,
not just existing. The beauty of the
zombie world is that it weeds out all those who are unwilling to actually fight
for their life, for their happiness. It
forces people to face death and if they want to live, they have to earn
it. They have to choose to survive, to
fight for their right to live. Paying
off mortgages, working a desk job that requires 8 hours of filing useless
reports, and all the other meaningless shit that we’ve built up to be important
flies right out the window when zombies arrive and shake things up. Zombies show us what it means to be truly
alive and in control of the world. No
one likes a world run by the mindless undead.
So if we can take anything away from all the zombie literature that’s
come out recently, let it be that this is our world and our life. Don’t waste it floating by on autopilot. Take control and don’t just exist; live.