Devolution and the Zombie Apocalypse

This past weekend, I started reading Robert Kirkman’s engrossing graphic novel series, “The Walking Dead”. The story is all about barebones survival in a zombie apocalypse. At the beginning, the protagonist, Rick Grimes, wakes up in a hospital bed, bewildered and confused. The streets are littered with garbage. Buildings have been looted and decimated. The “walking dead” or zombies have fully taken over. They languorously and insatiably meander in search of fresh meat and blood. There are so many of them, so very many bloodthirsty minions of decay and death.

The series is captivating because it makes the fictitious seem real. It turns the implausibility of a zombie takeover into a tale about survival in a world deprived of commerce, electricity, and all the other hallmarks of civilization. Many of the characters question the existence of morals and ethics. After all, when the church crumbles into rubble and the schools have burnt to a crisp, where do the people turn for a good moral lesson? All the institutions that promulgated such morals have disappeared into thin air. The ancient battle of good versus evil is no longer relevant. The only relevant battle is being waged between barebones survival and a grim reaper who has taken the form of a pitiless, sunken-eyed monstrosity.

In a macro-sense, the zombie apocalypse scenario symbolizes the uncanny, highly improbable reversal of evolution. The zombie apocalypse symbolizes devolution, the decay of cortical structures, genius, intelligence, compassion, love, and everything endearing in us and to us. If we were to turn into zombies, we would be enslaved by the R-complex, trapped in the most basic and crude level of awareness. That’s where we were millions of years ago. How could we possibly get there again? Taking into account the modern scientific paradigm and modern evolutionary theory, it’s unreasonable to think human awareness would devolve to such an unrefined state ever again. Taking chaos theory and the idea of a “bifurcating global system” into account, the devolution of man is but one possibility in a field of other possibilities.

If material extremism were to completely takeover and wipeout numerous ecologies and ecosystems on this planet through overconsumption and greed, a zombie apocalypse could become a reality. A blind consumerist, android, vegetable, and zombie would all stand for the same thing in a civilization bereft of poetic meaning, in a civilization reduced to “the status of things”. Life would be emptied out and devoid of spiritual aspirations. Life would become an empty shell.

I hope this never happens. Hopefully we can steer clear of the zombie apocalypse and devolution. I hope I never have to stab a zombie in the head with a rusty nail attached to a broken board.