ESCAPING FROM ZOMBIELAND: how to overcome the temptation of despair and thrive?
Oct 22, 2022
Threats of epidemics, climate changes, energy crisis, economic recession, war: when we look at TV news shows each day, headlines are far from reassuring....
And, as we highlighted in previous posts, the prospects are not more reassuring. As if we were collectively heading to catastrophes. On the swinging deck of a world Titanic. Continuing to see musicians playing as if nothing had happened. But well conscious that the iceberg has already been hit. That the icy waters rush roaring into the holds. And that we are destined to sink into the dark depths of the abyss.
As we face troubled times ahead and the inevitability of chaos, may we be inclined to fall into the temptation of despair?
May we have to prepare for the worst and wait with anguish for an inevitable collapse? Should we dive into frantic distractions to forget the imminent fall, such as passengers still dancing on the roof of the sinking Titanic? Or should we fight to prepare for the crisis and get ready for the inevitable rebound that will ultimately follow?
Interestingly, the popular cultural zeitgeist of the last decades seems to have followed a path toward darkness. Evolving from the triumphant age of space conquest, just briefly clouded by fear of the atomic bomb, up to a culture populated by stories of collapses, whether climatic, nuclear, or pandemic, in post-apocalyptic worlds.
From ‘Resident Evil’ to “The Walking Dead”, today’s unwavering success of zombie stories tells a lot about our times.
Not sure that those who would be watching our movies from mars, or historians from a far future, may see us as a healthy society, notably in the west. More probably would they see us as a strangely dissonant civilization, obsessed with dystopian nightmares about the future, rehashing the sins of its past, diving into frantic shows and distractions meant to drown into drunkenness and forget the dark realities of the day.
A society feeling confusingly that it is at a turning point in its history, leading to a dark future. A society that may unconsciously see the zombie as a metaphor for its own destiny: living in the wake of events, tossed about according to circumstances in useless activities and constant hungriness, not really alive but not really dead as well. As a strange allegory of the dark side of our civilization.
How has our world evolved in a few decades from the energy of the glorious thirties to this confusedly depressing state? How has it evolved from the hope for the future of the 1950s to the spiritual search for happiness of the 1970s, then the frantic search for success and power of the 1990s, to today’s depressed society? With half of the population prone to fear the future, and a large part of western young people in denial of progress? Preaching degrowth? Obsessed with supposed sins and calling for radical repentance toward humanity, the planet, or various gods?
The Strauss-Howe generational cycle brings part of the explication (1). The final ‘crisis’ period of their cycle is usually times of rambling chaos. Times when societies are sinking into decadence. When bureaucracy and oligarchic predation ramble. When favoritism and corruption prevail. When ideologies and strange declinist cults flourish.
When lost populations search for simple solutions to complex problems and are prone to fall into the hands of psychopaths, as brilliantly described by Polish psychiatrist Andrew Lobaczewski in his enlightening essay: “Political Ponerology” (2).
Times prone to the outbreak of strange mass movements, such as at the end of the Roman Empire, with the flowering of gnostic sects, or at the turning of the middle age, with millenarian fears. Times prone to civil wars, revolutions, and dramatic global conflicts.
But there is probably more than that. A deep civilizational fatigue as it happens in the disintegrative times of all secular historic cycles (3).
When people confusedly understand that many branches of their future may lead to equally dark roads.
And when the population disintegrates itself into multiple factions to seek oblivion, separating between:
- Dreamers trying to forget the dangers of the time by retreating into illusory back worlds, ranging from nice feel-good spiritual fantasies to extreme cults.
- Claimants freezing into depression, ready to renounce their freedom for caesarist tyrannies, asking for elites to take care of them with “tittytainment” (4) and to save them with magical solutions such as universal income.
- Survivalists retreating from society's madness to prepare for collapse, in their bunkered basements.
- While utopians persist to hope for the future, continuing to rise the corporate ladder, seeing the promises of the future, but often unconscious of the growing dangers of the times.
May these rough archetypal categories accurately describe the state of our society today? The rise of claimant populism, eco-millenarism, escapist personal growth, and transhumanist movements is not without evoking such rough trends.
But how to escape from the herd? Faced with the difficult times of the Global Transition, how to cross the crisis to safe heaven? What if we could escape the dark sides of each of these archetypes and instead extract the positive energy they all secretly hold?
As often, each of these archetypal behaviors is active within us. There is usually a utopian, a dreamer, a claimant, and a survivalist within all of us, at various levels in everyone. Rambling deep into each entrepreneur, business holder, corporate worker, and individual. Bringing some useful energies for some of them, but also prone to weaken us.
As usual, the worst enemy may not be outside us. It is within us. In the part of us that refuses change, that clings to a bygone past without accepting the challenges of a new world. That searches to escape the risks of tomorrow by getting refuge in naive hope, daydreams, wait-and-see attitudes, or flight
What if it was time for a new role?
What if it was time for accepting the challenges of a new era? For pragmatically pioneering the future, while being conscious of the dangers of the time? Living in the wake of preparedness for anything while being ready to seize the opportunities of the coming turnings? Ready for hard times but focused on the new chances they unveil. Decided to take the reins of our own destiny.
Avoiding the temptation of the resignation of the claimant. Easing within us the fears of the survivalist. Taming down the escapist temptation of the dreamer. Refocusing the blind optimism of the utopian.
And, on the contrary, making use of the creativity of the dreamer. Exploiting the strength of the survivalist. Nurturing the hope of the claimant. And cultivating the positive energy of the utopian.
Trying to find the difficult equilibrium between hope and prudence. Taming the dragon within us. Accepting to confront unknown monsters. Accepting the challenges to come as they may also bring some promises. Being able to go beyond decline. In a word: making the best of our troubled times. Sometimes a difficult challenge. But the one that may make the life worth to be lived: as a search for progress.
What if the time of pragmatic pioneers had come?
Blessing the fate for not being in the banal generations that preceded us, in the linear periods of time. But in the ones that will make history?
The next post in this initial 'Global Transition Crisis' series will be published in a few weeks. Click here to subscribe >
'ESCAPING FROM ZOMBIELAND' is the seventh post of our 'Global Transition Crisis' series. The previous posts of this series, 'ANTI-PREDICTIONS 202x+", "ESCAPE VELOCITY", "GREAT RESET", "DEJA VU", "HISTORY'S FORMULA" and 'UNCHARTED TERRITORY' can be found here >
(1) See our previous post "DEJA VU: is our past our future?"
(2) “Political Ponerology” is an essay written by polish psychiatrist Dr. Andrew M. Lobaczewski, dedicated to exploring the genesis of evil in societies. The essay draws on Lobaczewski’s experience and clinical insights during the decades he spent under the heel of the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes. Lobachevski’s analysis of the mechanisms driving the rise and fall of social pathologies and “pathocraties” strangely echoes observations from Strauss-Howe’s and Turchin’s historical cycles. According to Lobaczewski’s views, societies always incorporate a small percentage of deviant or psychopathic people. While their influence is limited in good times, this influence strongly grows in decay times, when the moral values ā€‹ā€‹of society slacken, giving way to individualism, favoritism, the tyranny of minorities, and prevarication. This favors the accession to power of increasingly mediocre elites, incompetent and corrupt. A vicious circle then sets in. Corrupt, unable to resolve the difficulties that are piling up, at the same time as resources are reduced and popular discontent is mounting, these elites are no longer able to resolve any of the problems of the society, which is sinking into crisis, and no longer manage to maintain themselves in power except by theater and tyranny. The resulting aggravation of crises – none of the fundamental challenges of society being resolved – in turn, accelerates the decline, unrest, and ultimately the rise of extremism and social hysteria. These times of crisis are an ideal breeding ground allowing the various psychopathic personalities to exercise all their harmful potential, either in the circles and factions of power, or in activists’ movements that they infiltrate to satisfy their instincts for power, domination, rapine, or terror. In the favor of insurrections, revolutions, and coups d'état, the situation often results in setting up increasingly tyrannical "pathocratic" societies. Societies in which psychopaths exert a determining influence, bending political parties, institutions, and media to their psychopathic worldview, dividing and hypnotizing entire populations, and paving a vicious path to mass repression, gulags, and genocides. Based on decades of experience by Lobaczewski, who lived through the years of crises that led to the seizure of power by the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, and then to their collapse, “Political Ponerology” offers a powerful reading grid for our times of Western decline and crisis. Times when new extremist movements flourish again from all political sides, from eco-millenarism to “intersectional” wokism, up to neo-racialism, and could give birth tomorrow to new and dangerous tyrannies.
(3) See our previous post "HISTORY'S FORMULA: is it time for psychohistory"?
(4) “Tittytainment” describes strategies appealing to control populations and inhibit political revolt by combining some form of minimal welfare and entertainment. The word has been formed based on the blend of “tit” and “entertainment”, in reference to the pacifying effect of watching TV, like that of a child sucking on its mother's breast. The word is reputed to have been coined in 1995 by Polish American diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski during the first "State of the World Forum”, which arrived at the conclusion that a 20:80 society was inevitable, implying that 20% of the world population would be sufficient to sustain the world economy, while the other 80% would be without work or opportunities, nourishing a growing frustration. Note that the concept is not new: in ancient Rome, emperors already intended to keep the populace in a complacent and inert state by continually plying them with "bread and circuses", handouts of free food, and lavish, violent shows.
