'Zombies' are these dead humans resurrected from death, they are mindless, ugly, ravenous beasts, whose infectious nature rapidly and rabily spreads taking over the entire world. For mindlessness read meaninglessness, and you can see why 'zombies' have become this quite potent metaphor for the current malaise of our civilisation. Where all our institutions, political, cultural and religious have been hollowed out, emptied of significance, and hence have been deserted by popular support. Everyone running around cluelessly looking for solutions, but not finding them. We are currently living in a 'zombie' civilisation that apparently cannot save itself, and appears intent on a lemming like mindless self-destruction.
I originally listened to a short public talk on this subject by John Vervaeke, one of the authors of this pamphlet, which was really fascinating. But this book really does very little to put further significant meaningful flesh on the bones of that. The book unfortunately does that stereotypical thing of extending the metaphor until it can no longer carry the weight of the significance that is being placed upon it. Its one interestingly simple way of encapsulating and interpreting our current zeitgeist, but not a lot more than that.
'If this crisis has in part been induced by the decline of Christianity, then attempting to revive Christianity is an ill-fated attempt at a solution. The very hard problem is we suffer a lack of viable alternatives. As we have discussed, twentieth century solutions to the problem of religious decline have resulted in the trauma of disastrous political ideologies. We are rightly wary of duplicating this result with another secular attempt at worldview attunement.'*
I did find the description of us as increasingly forswearing the practice of belonging to any religion, but still in our heart of hearts knowing that the thing we are forswearing is actually the type of solution we require, is a succinct description of our modern predicament. Once dropped, we cannot bring ourselves to return back to an uncynical belief in the veracity of the Christian message. But still trying to find a similar unifying solution, but please not that one.
'It is as though we have tools that are no longer serving us, so we are wrenching at them, turning them over, trying desperately to find a way to keep them in use, as they blunt before our eyes, and we beat them ever more harshly.'*
Like much discourse at this rarified philosophical/psychological level, it is better at description, and rather hopeless at solution focusing. Its a bit like someone who is always practicing and learning new knitting stitches, but never getting down to knitting an actual garment to wear. All of which I guess means it has caught by the very same 'zombie' inflection its reflecting on, and that it too is a brainless entity, empty to it's core. The form in which this discourse is frequently conducted, I find a little disheartening, it could be considerably more grounded and plain speaking than it is. I'll hence finish by quoting its two sentence conclusion -
'the zombie is a multi-vocal analogue for the contemporaneous domicides occurring in the personal, social, political and spiritual systems of the present. We may speculate without great imagination that this gradual onslaught of meaninglessness will - in the absence of a new sacred canopy - continue to threaten and infect us for the foreseeable future.'*
Well... I'm glad they took eight six pages to make that so crystal clear.
CARROT REVIEW - 3/8
* Extracts from Zombies in Western Culture,
by Vervaeke, Mastropietro & Miscevic,
Published 2017 Open Book Publishers.
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