The real Lord of the Flies
May 9, 2020 7:37 AM Subscribe
What happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months
The "obscure blog" he refers to is probably this article by Jay Griffiths.
The "obscure blog" he refers to is probably this article by Jay Griffiths.
Here's a few more articles about it: 2014 Australia Daily Mercury, a 2014 snippet from the Tweed Daily News, and a 2015 article about a different adventure Mano and the 'Ata had.. There's also a nice 2018 video clip about Peter Warner and Mano Totau with some older video and photos.
What I really want to know is what happened to the movie they planned to make at the time.
posted by Nelson at 8:17 AM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
What I really want to know is what happened to the movie they planned to make at the time.
posted by Nelson at 8:17 AM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
fascinating, and I'm going to assume it's not hoax. But it doesn't so much raise my impression of the inherent decency of humanity as get me wondering what sort of values etc they were propagating at that exclusive school in Tonga. Because by the time I read Lord of the Flies in Grade Nine or thereabouts, I'd experienced enough suburban schoolyard/playground savagery and whatnot to not really find its extrapolations all that unbelievable.
posted by philip-random at 8:29 AM on May 9, 2020 [21 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 8:29 AM on May 9, 2020 [21 favorites]
What an absolutely fascinating read.
posted by essexjan at 8:39 AM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by essexjan at 8:39 AM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Interesting that the author remembers not having any doubts about Lord of the Flies' inherent message about the innate savagery of man. (The British students, and their rescuer, were all male.) Teachers and students alike often don't spend much time debating this conclusion, which is pretty clear in the book, reinforced by the appearance of the rescuer at the end of the novel, who was, after all, a man fighting a war.
If I were teaching this book again, I would introduce this news story as a counterpart and a point for posing questions about Golding's views. Incidentally, it is often taught to middle-school students, because of the relative simplicity of its prose and transparency of its theme. Some find its message rather dark for children, but, then, even in high school English classes I often had to field the question, "Mister, why is everything we read in this class so dark?"
Well...
posted by kozad at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
If I were teaching this book again, I would introduce this news story as a counterpart and a point for posing questions about Golding's views. Incidentally, it is often taught to middle-school students, because of the relative simplicity of its prose and transparency of its theme. Some find its message rather dark for children, but, then, even in high school English classes I often had to field the question, "Mister, why is everything we read in this class so dark?"
Well...
posted by kozad at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
While googling to find photos of the island, I came across the bizarre story of how many of the previous inhabitants of 'Ata had been taken by Peruvian slavers in 1863, part of the "blackbirding" Pacific islands slave trade that I had never heard of before. After the slave raid, the king had the remaining inhabitants moved to a safer island, which is why it was uninhabited when the boys were marooned there.
What a fascinating set of stories.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:06 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
What a fascinating set of stories.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:06 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
The point of Lord of the Flies isn't that human beings are inherently monsters but that upper-class British boys are raised to be monsters.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:07 AM on May 9, 2020 [120 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:07 AM on May 9, 2020 [120 favorites]
"fascinating, and I'm going to assume it's not hoax. But it doesn't so much raise my impression of the inherent decency of humanity as get me wondering what sort of values etc they were propagating at that exclusive school in Tonga."
This is actually pretty well-studied -- I have a friend who did a Ph.D. in the total collapse of local civil authority and what happens next -- and Lord of the Flies is flat wrong. Humans in an emergency situation lean on each other and help each other. If they fall into despair and think survival isn't possible, they might destroy themselves -- but they don't (usually) take others with them. But generally they pool resources, create organization, find ways to help the group, and find ways to care for the helpless and infirm. People get really frustrated when they're NOT able to assist the group, and even people who have very limited physical abilities try to find ways to help, maybe keeping an eye on the little children, or teaching kids to read.
"Because by the time I read Lord of the Flies in Grade Nine or thereabouts, I'd experienced enough suburban schoolyard/playground savagery and whatnot to not really find its extrapolations all that unbelievable."
So part of the problem with children and schoolyard savagery is that we keep them in a HUGELY artificial structure and limit their ability to participate in society and contribute to it. We MAKE them savages by refusing to allow them to contribute to the group. One of the things we know about children who find themselves without adults and with a need to organize and survive (which might be like these boys, in an actual hardcore survival situation, or they might have plenty of food and water and heat and just need to wait for the blizzard to end and grown-ups to fetch them from where they got snowed in) is that they are amazing at it. Given a chance to be competent and responsible, they usually do really really well! And children have a HUGE innate sense of fairness (it's a developmental phase), so kids under 14 or so basically IMMEDIATELY sit down as a group and hash out how they're going to make decisions and hold people accountable. Generally, they decide on a democracy -- it's not "fair" unless everyone has a say -- and that everyone will have to take turns at gross jobs, and create some kind of punishment for those who don't do their work, which is usually either an extra turn at gross jobs or having to sleep in the worst spot (where they otherwise take turns). They tend to be very conscious of what they know about safety (problems come in with what they DON'T know, like not using a grill indoors for heat b/c you can die from the smoke), and cautiously warn each other to be careful cooking and with sharp objects, and take care to learn from each other's knowledge. If one kid knows how to build a fire, the others will defer to his expertise and will have him teach them and follow his instructions carefully.
Kids do CRY a lot more than adults do, and they get their feelings hurt a lot, but kids are also very conscious of and used to the fact that you can't just avoid people or cut them out of your life (kids don't have that power), so they tend to do a really good job reconciling in-group disputes. They might not all LIKE each other, but they find a way to work together and just complain about each other.
Do you remember that reality show that was meant to be "Kid Survivor" and they hoped it would turn into Lord of the Flies, and it was a SPECTACULAR FLOP? The producers had set up better and worse "houses" in the "abandoned town" set and expected the kids to race for a free-for-all to get the best stuff, and instead they arrived, explored, and then all sat down and made a group decision about how to divide it all up. A couple kids tried to be selfish and stubborn, but got shamed into compliance by the rest of the group, and one of their first concerns was that the littlest kids be buddied up with older kids because it would be too hard for them otherwise "and they might get scared." They agreed on a decision-making procedure the first night and basically stuck to it through the show. When one kid was a jerk, they would all go sit around the campfire and talk and talk and talk until the jerk agreed to stop being a jerk. The producers would create survivor-like challenges where the "winner" would get extra food or some special thing, and every single time they kids would either a) refuse, as a group, to compete, because it wouldn't be "fair" or b) agree to compete because it would be fun or because they wanted/needed the reward, but the winner would share his winning equally with the group AND ALWAYS DID.
Margaret Mead said that in her opinion, the first sign of civilization was a 15,000-year-old human grave with a healed thigh bone. Which means that the nomadic group rescued that person, immobilized his femur, and then cared for him for MONTHS while he recovered and could not contribute to the group. Wild animals die if they break a bone. Humans became civilized, she felt, when the group cared for the individual and allowed them to heal from such grievous injuries. Turns out that's still how we roll.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:10 AM on May 9, 2020 [338 favorites]
This is actually pretty well-studied -- I have a friend who did a Ph.D. in the total collapse of local civil authority and what happens next -- and Lord of the Flies is flat wrong. Humans in an emergency situation lean on each other and help each other. If they fall into despair and think survival isn't possible, they might destroy themselves -- but they don't (usually) take others with them. But generally they pool resources, create organization, find ways to help the group, and find ways to care for the helpless and infirm. People get really frustrated when they're NOT able to assist the group, and even people who have very limited physical abilities try to find ways to help, maybe keeping an eye on the little children, or teaching kids to read.
"Because by the time I read Lord of the Flies in Grade Nine or thereabouts, I'd experienced enough suburban schoolyard/playground savagery and whatnot to not really find its extrapolations all that unbelievable."
So part of the problem with children and schoolyard savagery is that we keep them in a HUGELY artificial structure and limit their ability to participate in society and contribute to it. We MAKE them savages by refusing to allow them to contribute to the group. One of the things we know about children who find themselves without adults and with a need to organize and survive (which might be like these boys, in an actual hardcore survival situation, or they might have plenty of food and water and heat and just need to wait for the blizzard to end and grown-ups to fetch them from where they got snowed in) is that they are amazing at it. Given a chance to be competent and responsible, they usually do really really well! And children have a HUGE innate sense of fairness (it's a developmental phase), so kids under 14 or so basically IMMEDIATELY sit down as a group and hash out how they're going to make decisions and hold people accountable. Generally, they decide on a democracy -- it's not "fair" unless everyone has a say -- and that everyone will have to take turns at gross jobs, and create some kind of punishment for those who don't do their work, which is usually either an extra turn at gross jobs or having to sleep in the worst spot (where they otherwise take turns). They tend to be very conscious of what they know about safety (problems come in with what they DON'T know, like not using a grill indoors for heat b/c you can die from the smoke), and cautiously warn each other to be careful cooking and with sharp objects, and take care to learn from each other's knowledge. If one kid knows how to build a fire, the others will defer to his expertise and will have him teach them and follow his instructions carefully.
Kids do CRY a lot more than adults do, and they get their feelings hurt a lot, but kids are also very conscious of and used to the fact that you can't just avoid people or cut them out of your life (kids don't have that power), so they tend to do a really good job reconciling in-group disputes. They might not all LIKE each other, but they find a way to work together and just complain about each other.
Do you remember that reality show that was meant to be "Kid Survivor" and they hoped it would turn into Lord of the Flies, and it was a SPECTACULAR FLOP? The producers had set up better and worse "houses" in the "abandoned town" set and expected the kids to race for a free-for-all to get the best stuff, and instead they arrived, explored, and then all sat down and made a group decision about how to divide it all up. A couple kids tried to be selfish and stubborn, but got shamed into compliance by the rest of the group, and one of their first concerns was that the littlest kids be buddied up with older kids because it would be too hard for them otherwise "and they might get scared." They agreed on a decision-making procedure the first night and basically stuck to it through the show. When one kid was a jerk, they would all go sit around the campfire and talk and talk and talk until the jerk agreed to stop being a jerk. The producers would create survivor-like challenges where the "winner" would get extra food or some special thing, and every single time they kids would either a) refuse, as a group, to compete, because it wouldn't be "fair" or b) agree to compete because it would be fun or because they wanted/needed the reward, but the winner would share his winning equally with the group AND ALWAYS DID.
Margaret Mead said that in her opinion, the first sign of civilization was a 15,000-year-old human grave with a healed thigh bone. Which means that the nomadic group rescued that person, immobilized his femur, and then cared for him for MONTHS while he recovered and could not contribute to the group. Wild animals die if they break a bone. Humans became civilized, she felt, when the group cared for the individual and allowed them to heal from such grievous injuries. Turns out that's still how we roll.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:10 AM on May 9, 2020 [338 favorites]
Humans in an emergency situation lean on each other and help each other.
Or they throw down over toilet paper in a Fairway parking lot. Humans, a land of contrasts.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:20 AM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
Or they throw down over toilet paper in a Fairway parking lot. Humans, a land of contrasts.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:20 AM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
> Eyebrows McGee: this is actually pretty well-studied. I'd love to learn more. I'm seeing some of my friends and colleagues devolve a little. One group was all for calling police on anyone not wearing a mask. Some who are fairly privileged cannot recognize it. We aren't just isolated, we are in real danger; many people are experiencing genuine hardship. I just read an article in my local Maine newspaper about how our neighbors in New Brunswick, CA are doing, and there's a pretty stark difference.
posted by theora55 at 9:30 AM on May 9, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 9:30 AM on May 9, 2020 [5 favorites]
I'd experienced enough suburban schoolyard/playground savagery and whatnot to not really find its extrapolations all that unbelievable.
The difference here is that this group self-selected each other, and consented to this misadventure. Piggy doesn't get invited onto the boat.
posted by pwnguin at 9:45 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
The difference here is that this group self-selected each other, and consented to this misadventure. Piggy doesn't get invited onto the boat.
posted by pwnguin at 9:45 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
An interesting contrast in how the story mentions that in the 1800s the original inhabitants of the island were carried away as slaves to wealthy colonizers, which maybe gets at what sort of conditions actually turn humans into monsters.
posted by rodlymight at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by rodlymight at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
Republicans are made, not born.
posted by aramaic at 9:50 AM on May 9, 2020 [31 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 9:50 AM on May 9, 2020 [31 favorites]
The point of Lord of the Flies isn't that human beings are inherently monsters but that upper-class British boys are raised to be monsters.
Imagine being stuck on an island with Jacob Rees-Mogg. Tragically, this is the situation for some 65 million Brits today.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:08 AM on May 9, 2020 [122 favorites]
Imagine being stuck on an island with Jacob Rees-Mogg. Tragically, this is the situation for some 65 million Brits today.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:08 AM on May 9, 2020 [122 favorites]
I'd like to see a class where Lord of the Flies, this article, Heinlein's _Tunnel in the Sky_, and maybe _A Paradise Built in Hell_ are taught together.
Spoiler for the Heinlein:
N ohapu bs uvtu fpubby fghqragf ner gryrcbegrq gb cynarg sbe n fheiviny grfg. Vg'f fhccbfrq gb or sbe nobhg n jrrx, ohg fbzrguvat tbrf jebat naq gurl'er znebbarq gurer sbe n srj lrnef. (Sebz zrzbel) Gurl pbbcrengr-- gur byqre fghqragf unir orra genvarq va pbbcrengvba)-- naq qb jryy.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:45 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Spoiler for the Heinlein:
N ohapu bs uvtu fpubby fghqragf ner gryrcbegrq gb cynarg sbe n fheiviny grfg. Vg'f fhccbfrq gb or sbe nobhg n jrrx, ohg fbzrguvat tbrf jebat naq gurl'er znebbarq gurer sbe n srj lrnef. (Sebz zrzbel) Gurl pbbcrengr-- gur byqre fghqragf unir orra genvarq va pbbcrengvba)-- naq qb jryy.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:45 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
What I really want to know is what happened to the movie they planned to make at the time.
It ended up being a TV show, and they changed some of the details around; for example, instead of a fishing boat "borrowed" by a group of bored teenagers, it was a sightseeing vessel crewed by a retired navy man and his bumbling first mate with an oddball group of passengers including a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor, and a Midwestern farm girl. The movie star was the most attractive of the women.
posted by TedW at 11:02 AM on May 9, 2020 [46 favorites]
It ended up being a TV show, and they changed some of the details around; for example, instead of a fishing boat "borrowed" by a group of bored teenagers, it was a sightseeing vessel crewed by a retired navy man and his bumbling first mate with an oddball group of passengers including a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor, and a Midwestern farm girl. The movie star was the most attractive of the women.
posted by TedW at 11:02 AM on May 9, 2020 [46 favorites]
Mod note: Friendly reminder, we ask folks not to use ROT-13 much because it's a problem for people using screen readers and it can end up taking over a conversation, so let's not continue in that vein. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:16 AM on May 9, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:16 AM on May 9, 2020 [14 favorites]
No problem. I suppose a wikipedia link is a better solution.
Tunnel in the Sky.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:20 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Tunnel in the Sky.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:20 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think this [Google Earth link, or Google Maps is faster] is the 'Ata island they were on. There is another 'Ata island that is part of the main Tongatapu group of islands in Tonga, but that is too close and too small and too flat to match the story.
posted by whatnotever at 11:41 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by whatnotever at 11:41 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm seeing some of my friends and colleagues devolve a little. One group was all for calling police on anyone not wearing a mask.
That might be wrong, but it is good behaviour, isn't it? Wanting to punish transgressors that threaten the group is good, no?
posted by alasdair at 11:43 AM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I do recall much preferring Jules Verne’s Two Years' Vacation (Deux ans de vacances) to Lord of the Flies as a young reader. There is some conflict between the boys, but by and large they cooperate quite successfully.
posted by bouvin at 12:19 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by bouvin at 12:19 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Or they throw down over toilet paper in a Fairway parking lot.
Community may be the difference. People who see each other as part of the same community cooperate. A few people in isolation naturally tend to do well. A million people in a city? For that to go well, a shared narrative of being "in this together" is required.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:35 PM on May 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
Community may be the difference. People who see each other as part of the same community cooperate. A few people in isolation naturally tend to do well. A million people in a city? For that to go well, a shared narrative of being "in this together" is required.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:35 PM on May 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
The longer I live, the more convinced I am that the mental health issues that constellate around classifications like sociopathy and narcissism are the driving forces behind the vast majority of the horrors of human history. That group was lucky that it didn't have any of them in their midst -- or, if they did, that those particular boys had a good enough sense that their own survivals depended on the survival of the others.
I feel like the vast majority of people are empathetic and decent and caring on an immediate, in-person level, even when they're ideologically opposed. And the idea that we're all selfish and power-hungry has served the most rapacious capitalist ideologies very well, and we've been witnessing that disaster playing out for at least as long as I've been alive.
But we are very, very vulnerable to manipulation by people who don't have a real sense of empathy and are also power-hungry and, as far as I can tell, that's going to be the end of us. But I do take some comfort in feeling like that underlying disorder isn't a part of all of us, as many religions and economic theorists would have us believe.
posted by treepour at 12:37 PM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
I feel like the vast majority of people are empathetic and decent and caring on an immediate, in-person level, even when they're ideologically opposed. And the idea that we're all selfish and power-hungry has served the most rapacious capitalist ideologies very well, and we've been witnessing that disaster playing out for at least as long as I've been alive.
But we are very, very vulnerable to manipulation by people who don't have a real sense of empathy and are also power-hungry and, as far as I can tell, that's going to be the end of us. But I do take some comfort in feeling like that underlying disorder isn't a part of all of us, as many religions and economic theorists would have us believe.
posted by treepour at 12:37 PM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
I feel like the vast majority of people are empathetic and decent and caring on an immediate, in-person level, even when they're ideologically opposed. And the idea that we're all selfish and power-hungry has served the most rapacious capitalist ideologies very well, and we've been witnessing that disaster playing out for at least as long as I've been alive.
Mignon McGlaughlin wrote, "We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
Mignon McGlaughlin wrote, "We are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
The longer I live, the more convinced I am that the mental health issues that constellate around classifications like sociopathy and narcissism are the driving forces behind the vast majority of the horrors of human history.
The utter folly of blaming the monster and the other for the problems of one's society is one lesson The Lord of the Flies teaches very well.
I take strong objection to this comment on pretty much every level.
posted by howfar at 12:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
The utter folly of blaming the monster and the other for the problems of one's society is one lesson The Lord of the Flies teaches very well.
I take strong objection to this comment on pretty much every level.
posted by howfar at 12:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
The utter folly of blaming the monster and the other for the problems of one's society is one lesson The Lord of the Flies teaches very well.
Thanks, howfar. I had totally forgotten that message! (It's been a few decades...)
posted by kozad at 1:22 PM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Thanks, howfar. I had totally forgotten that message! (It's been a few decades...)
posted by kozad at 1:22 PM on May 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
All of the people I've known personally who display(ed) sociopathic behavior have learned it. Sometimes deliberately, some posh schools and parents encourage it, and sometimes from tragic circumstances. It seems to me that the same applies for someone like Trump.
posted by mumimor at 1:47 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 1:47 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
an oddball group of passengers including a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor, and a Midwestern farm girl. The movie star was the most attractive of the women.
Dude, I will cut you.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:00 PM on May 9, 2020 [25 favorites]
Dude, I will cut you.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:00 PM on May 9, 2020 [25 favorites]
I think it is quite a stretch to contrast "Lord of the Flies" with the real story of 6 pals stuck on an island and come to any meaningful conclusion about the immutable nature of human beings. Clearly from history peoples have acted like total rat bastards and like angels. As far as I can tell people are capable of anything and if there is a predetermined instinctive mode of social organization I cannot see how you can strain that out from the culture that bubbles along bobbing and weaving in the same way every organism subject to evolutionary forces does. I am pretty sure that the concept and desire for "fairness" is essential however what that means in practice seems pretty up for grabs.
Like a couple of others commenting up thread reading the article lead me to Blackbirding which seems pretty much to balance out the optimism that the piece might inspire.
posted by Pembquist at 2:23 PM on May 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
Like a couple of others commenting up thread reading the article lead me to Blackbirding which seems pretty much to balance out the optimism that the piece might inspire.
posted by Pembquist at 2:23 PM on May 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
Dude, I will cut you.
Haha; I knew someone would take the bait!
posted by TedW at 2:29 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Haha; I knew someone would take the bait!
posted by TedW at 2:29 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
the movie star was the most attractive of the women.
Dude, I will cut you.
Those fans of Lovey Howell sure are hardcore.
posted by 445supermag at 2:54 PM on May 9, 2020 [28 favorites]
Dude, I will cut you.
Those fans of Lovey Howell sure are hardcore.
posted by 445supermag at 2:54 PM on May 9, 2020 [28 favorites]
Just seconding that the notion that "those sociopaths and narcissists without empathy" are the whole problem. They're us. We're them. Yes there are some organic factors in some cases but there are real ways in which nurture and experience suppress empathy as a coping mechanism, build extravagant defenses against injury to the ego, and generally create a persona many would instinctively find intolerable.
The fact is sometimes those characteristics enhance survival and success of an individual, and so as a culture we've learned to weaponize them, adopt and emulate them when urgent, raising the question of "if you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"
Your (okay my) terrible narcissistic aunt who makes everything about her, holds a mixture of unfalsifiable but also kinda racist and judgmental opinions about everything from your family to strangers she accosts outside the grocery store... She's not a predator and she's not un-human. Even with severe narcissism. She was mostly made that way by circumstances and maybe helped along by biology and genetics. Almost certainly the patriarchy helped, too, by ensuring she could only be heard when she screamed and became impossible to ignore.
I'm sure you think you meant the terrible CEOs and the narcissistic politicians and I'm also suffering from their heartless decisions. But they're still humans, formed from experience and luck, and characterizing the diagnosis that happens to be a way those bastards cope and a way people far less lucky have no choice but to be is really the opposite of empathy.
posted by abulafa at 3:28 PM on May 9, 2020 [10 favorites]
The fact is sometimes those characteristics enhance survival and success of an individual, and so as a culture we've learned to weaponize them, adopt and emulate them when urgent, raising the question of "if you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"
Your (okay my) terrible narcissistic aunt who makes everything about her, holds a mixture of unfalsifiable but also kinda racist and judgmental opinions about everything from your family to strangers she accosts outside the grocery store... She's not a predator and she's not un-human. Even with severe narcissism. She was mostly made that way by circumstances and maybe helped along by biology and genetics. Almost certainly the patriarchy helped, too, by ensuring she could only be heard when she screamed and became impossible to ignore.
I'm sure you think you meant the terrible CEOs and the narcissistic politicians and I'm also suffering from their heartless decisions. But they're still humans, formed from experience and luck, and characterizing the diagnosis that happens to be a way those bastards cope and a way people far less lucky have no choice but to be is really the opposite of empathy.
posted by abulafa at 3:28 PM on May 9, 2020 [10 favorites]
I was going to say that maybe a story about this event would be a good companion read to Lord Of The Flies to underscore that "human nature is capable of both" - then it hit me that maybe Golding subconsciously intended Lord Of The Flies to be a companion piece to things like Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Carusoe, in which the castaways all magically get along and everything goes smoothly.
Cooperation and conflict are both possibilities. Lord Of The Flies presents a vivid view of one, but there are earlier examples of the other, and I think we need to know about both.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:31 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Cooperation and conflict are both possibilities. Lord Of The Flies presents a vivid view of one, but there are earlier examples of the other, and I think we need to know about both.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:31 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Lord of the Flies is actually a ... parody? Critique? ... of a book called Coral Island. Down to the character names.
I read most of Golding's stuff at one point and am probably a bit of a fan. Despite being his best-known book, I'm not sure that Lord of the Flies (his first novel), is anywhere near his best (which, for me, would be The Spire) or even his best book about castaways (which would probably be Pincher Martin, even if its big twist would be a bit eye-rolley these days, after Lost stole it and blew it up).
I should have linked to the interview with the author of the piece, although it's also linked in the article.
For me it's not so much that people in such conditions wouldn't "revert to barbarism", but rather that the state of barbarism is one of pragmatic co-operation. Because the alternative is self-evidently very uncomfortable.
posted by Grangousier at 4:06 PM on May 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
I read most of Golding's stuff at one point and am probably a bit of a fan. Despite being his best-known book, I'm not sure that Lord of the Flies (his first novel), is anywhere near his best (which, for me, would be The Spire) or even his best book about castaways (which would probably be Pincher Martin, even if its big twist would be a bit eye-rolley these days, after Lost stole it and blew it up).
I should have linked to the interview with the author of the piece, although it's also linked in the article.
For me it's not so much that people in such conditions wouldn't "revert to barbarism", but rather that the state of barbarism is one of pragmatic co-operation. Because the alternative is self-evidently very uncomfortable.
posted by Grangousier at 4:06 PM on May 9, 2020 [11 favorites]
Disclaimer- I am a Christian- one that weeps over the excesses and idiocy of some of my brethren- but recognise I hold a different perspective to many mefites.
Lord of the Flies was a year 12 text for me and I had nightmares the whole time I was reading it.
I wonder how faith has an impact on both stories- the Tongan boys made a guitar and sang each evening- singing hymns? Golding has a pig's head on a stake, buzz Bub buzzing. I went to a Christian school and it was pointed out when we read it that Beelzebub is perhaps the Lord of the Flies.
posted by freethefeet at 4:20 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Lord of the Flies was a year 12 text for me and I had nightmares the whole time I was reading it.
I wonder how faith has an impact on both stories- the Tongan boys made a guitar and sang each evening- singing hymns? Golding has a pig's head on a stake, buzz Bub buzzing. I went to a Christian school and it was pointed out when we read it that Beelzebub is perhaps the Lord of the Flies.
posted by freethefeet at 4:20 PM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
I went to a Christian school and it was pointed out when we read it that Beelzebub is perhaps the Lord of the Flies.
I got the same framing in my secular school. It was a long time ago but I distinctly remember the teacher making the point that for many of Golding's intended audience, the connection between the title Lord of the Flies and the Christian notion of the devil would have been an expected jump.
posted by philip-random at 4:38 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
I got the same framing in my secular school. It was a long time ago but I distinctly remember the teacher making the point that for many of Golding's intended audience, the connection between the title Lord of the Flies and the Christian notion of the devil would have been an expected jump.
posted by philip-random at 4:38 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
Yes, Coral Island is a critical text for understanding lord of the flies. The book is part of the post war deconstruction of British imperialism. Not, as noted above, the best book to do so. A High Wind In Jamaica does a similar thing with more subtlety and the outcome is more disturbing I think.
posted by smoke at 5:41 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by smoke at 5:41 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
Beelzebub is perhaps the Lord of the Flies.
Beelzebeb – Ba'al Zebub – is literally the Lord of the Flies; it's an insulting nickname for one of the Philistine deities.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
Beelzebeb – Ba'al Zebub – is literally the Lord of the Flies; it's an insulting nickname for one of the Philistine deities.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:56 PM on May 9, 2020 [13 favorites]
Thanks Joe, for the history- I wasn't aware!
posted by freethefeet at 9:14 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by freethefeet at 9:14 PM on May 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
Just seconding that the notion that "those sociopaths and narcissists without empathy" are the whole problem. They're us. We're them.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Solzhenitsyn
That said: there are outliers. Not just people who've lost the battle inside, who it's worth mustering empathy for because none of us win all the time. But people who just don't care, who've never fought any battle or ever seen morality except in terms of their own privilege. One of them is currently the President of the United States. It is one thing to allow for the fact that all of us have the capacity to be monstrous and wrestle with that; it is another to assume we are all alike and that there are not in this world those who are essentially monsters disguised as people. There are.
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:24 PM on May 9, 2020 [15 favorites]
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Solzhenitsyn
That said: there are outliers. Not just people who've lost the battle inside, who it's worth mustering empathy for because none of us win all the time. But people who just don't care, who've never fought any battle or ever seen morality except in terms of their own privilege. One of them is currently the President of the United States. It is one thing to allow for the fact that all of us have the capacity to be monstrous and wrestle with that; it is another to assume we are all alike and that there are not in this world those who are essentially monsters disguised as people. There are.
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:24 PM on May 9, 2020 [15 favorites]
At the time I was reading Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, Anne McCaffery, and it was Golding that I found to be the most implausible and the least stylistically pleasing. I have never understood the enduring appeal of this book. With the exception of Piers Anthony I still rate Golding below the others.
I read Golding's book the summer I turned 14. I loathed it. The characters never seemed real, and the whole idea was like reading a parody of cliques and the assholery of children. My peers and I did not get along, as a general rule. I was in a lot of fights. As a bigger kid who just wanted to be left alone I must have smelled like an easy victory and my issues at the time meant I did not much care. I saw children as a bunch of selfish, petty, vicious little thugs and I found Lord of the Flies missed the nature of the viciousness. The viciousness came from comfort. To be a true asshole one must have the confidence that you will never depend on your victim for anything. It also does not hurt to have a system that will prevent anyone from being able to retaliate without also getting punished. Once the checks of authority are gone so to is its sanctuary.
Once removed from the protective embrace of a system that bred bullies and thugs for the sake of the Empire, or the memory of Empire, survival would have become the most important element in the lives of the characters. That never really seemed to happen. The characters behave as if they are already the products of a British public school, instead of still being just grist. And even then what percentage of a British public schools graduates actually turned into the stereotypes that Lord of the Flies presents. Jack would never have been able to hold power because children rebel against one of their own lording power over them. The whole book was an edifice in search of a supporting structure.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 10:24 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
I read Golding's book the summer I turned 14. I loathed it. The characters never seemed real, and the whole idea was like reading a parody of cliques and the assholery of children. My peers and I did not get along, as a general rule. I was in a lot of fights. As a bigger kid who just wanted to be left alone I must have smelled like an easy victory and my issues at the time meant I did not much care. I saw children as a bunch of selfish, petty, vicious little thugs and I found Lord of the Flies missed the nature of the viciousness. The viciousness came from comfort. To be a true asshole one must have the confidence that you will never depend on your victim for anything. It also does not hurt to have a system that will prevent anyone from being able to retaliate without also getting punished. Once the checks of authority are gone so to is its sanctuary.
Once removed from the protective embrace of a system that bred bullies and thugs for the sake of the Empire, or the memory of Empire, survival would have become the most important element in the lives of the characters. That never really seemed to happen. The characters behave as if they are already the products of a British public school, instead of still being just grist. And even then what percentage of a British public schools graduates actually turned into the stereotypes that Lord of the Flies presents. Jack would never have been able to hold power because children rebel against one of their own lording power over them. The whole book was an edifice in search of a supporting structure.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 10:24 PM on May 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
The indispensable Scott Hamilton (New Zealand historian and poet with a specialty in Tonga) has things to say about this.
"Bregman's argument about the human potential for cooperation is eloquent & important. But I think there may be a danger of too quickly abstracting the stories of the castaways on 'Ata & Minerva from their cultural context.
On both 'Ata & Minerva, a very Tongan religiosity & respect for hierarchy helped cohere groups of castaways. Prayer sessions & deference to a leader were crucial. Bregman is mistaken if he feels that the castaways established a democracy."
...
"It seems to me that the most valuable aspect of Pacific history is not the groups of castaways who have lived without conflict for a few months or years, but the ways in which diverse societies have tried to manage conflict in fragile environments. Instead of looking for the emergence of some chthonic goodness in tiny utopian communities of castaways, we should examine the social institutions that Pacific peoples have built up over centuries to deal with the problems - scarcity, aggression, conflict, competition, boredom - that seem to afflict every human society."
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:34 AM on May 10, 2020 [25 favorites]
"Bregman's argument about the human potential for cooperation is eloquent & important. But I think there may be a danger of too quickly abstracting the stories of the castaways on 'Ata & Minerva from their cultural context.
On both 'Ata & Minerva, a very Tongan religiosity & respect for hierarchy helped cohere groups of castaways. Prayer sessions & deference to a leader were crucial. Bregman is mistaken if he feels that the castaways established a democracy."
...
"It seems to me that the most valuable aspect of Pacific history is not the groups of castaways who have lived without conflict for a few months or years, but the ways in which diverse societies have tried to manage conflict in fragile environments. Instead of looking for the emergence of some chthonic goodness in tiny utopian communities of castaways, we should examine the social institutions that Pacific peoples have built up over centuries to deal with the problems - scarcity, aggression, conflict, competition, boredom - that seem to afflict every human society."
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:34 AM on May 10, 2020 [25 favorites]
justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow: Community may be the difference. People who see each other as part of the same community cooperate. A few people in isolation naturally tend to do well. A million people in a city? For that to go well, a shared narrative of being "in this together" is required.
Some of the most interesting work on cross-cultural differences in cooperation has been done by Joseph Henrich and colleagues, who coined the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) acronym to express why most psychology and behavioural economics research, which is mostly done on college students, doesn't tell us about the full range of human behaviour.
One of the things they talked about was the cultural importance of (what we think of as) "fairness" in building our version of a large-scale society, and how different many small-scale societies are. It's fascinating reading:
We Aren't the World
The weirdest people in the world? (PDF)
posted by clawsoon at 6:06 AM on May 10, 2020 [5 favorites]
Some of the most interesting work on cross-cultural differences in cooperation has been done by Joseph Henrich and colleagues, who coined the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) acronym to express why most psychology and behavioural economics research, which is mostly done on college students, doesn't tell us about the full range of human behaviour.
One of the things they talked about was the cultural importance of (what we think of as) "fairness" in building our version of a large-scale society, and how different many small-scale societies are. It's fascinating reading:
We Aren't the World
The weirdest people in the world? (PDF)
posted by clawsoon at 6:06 AM on May 10, 2020 [5 favorites]
and how different many small-scale societies are.
I should have said "and what a big range there is in small-scale societies" so as not to give the wrong impression. Societies ranged from gift-giving societies where it was common to offer most of the payoff to someone else (and just as common to refuse the most generous gifts), to more selfish societies where it was common to offer hardly anything (and just as common to gladly accept it).
I have come to the general conclusion that there's no point looking for the "most human", "most natural" response to a given situation. Instead, "human nature" is the huge range of possibilities there are for humans, many of which (as with the languages we learn) are narrowed down by our culture and personal history and the stochastic nature of our internal development.
posted by clawsoon at 6:48 AM on May 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
I should have said "and what a big range there is in small-scale societies" so as not to give the wrong impression. Societies ranged from gift-giving societies where it was common to offer most of the payoff to someone else (and just as common to refuse the most generous gifts), to more selfish societies where it was common to offer hardly anything (and just as common to gladly accept it).
I have come to the general conclusion that there's no point looking for the "most human", "most natural" response to a given situation. Instead, "human nature" is the huge range of possibilities there are for humans, many of which (as with the languages we learn) are narrowed down by our culture and personal history and the stochastic nature of our internal development.
posted by clawsoon at 6:48 AM on May 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
That said: there are outliers. Not just people who've lost the battle inside, who it's worth mustering empathy for because none of us win all the time. But people who just don't care, who've never fought any battle or ever seen morality except in terms of their own privilege. One of them is currently the President of the United States. It is one thing to allow for the fact that all of us have the capacity to be monstrous and wrestle with that; it is another to assume we are all alike and that there are not in this world those who are essentially monsters disguised as people. There are.This is a no-true-Scotsman for othering. It's most likely that people who now behave with no remorse are actually the product of battles and failures and abuse mixed with privilege they both never earned but also didn't choose and the lack of consequences that implies. But suggesting that there are monsters wearing human faces, I still contend, is no less reductive than the subject of TFA. Am I saying forgive all? Punish nothing? Excuse genocidal level cruelty because someone's dad wasn't kind? Of course not, those are still crimes. I'm saying the sociopath in charge is responsible for their actions but isn't a monster - they haven't rejected their humanity and deserve due process and empathy (for being in way over their head with no hope of recovering but to keep doubling down so as to never admit failure, as a random for-instance).
It's tragically human behavior and treating it as monstrous lets us pretend we could never behave similarly - because of some intrinsic moral superiority we imagine exists. It doesn't, it's always work.
We quite literally are all alike in some of these ways - given the same circumstances (many terrible, including the insulating privilege) nobody can claim to know they'd turn out or behave differently because of something intrinsic. That's why everybody deserves empathy, especially monsters, because you can't know you'd do better in similar circumstances.
posted by abulafa at 7:40 AM on May 10, 2020 [7 favorites]
Oh yeah this article is weirdly missing an actual Tongan perspective. (twitter thread).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2020 [16 favorites]
That added a lot of interesting information, thanks i_am_joe's_speen.
posted by clawsoon at 2:02 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 2:02 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Because of mistakes/complicated school things I was assigned to read Lord of the Flies THREE TIMES between 7th and 8th grade, two of which were for the abominable summer reading. Essays and many sub-projects each time, too. I can remember the cover of that book with burning clarity. Me and two of my other friends who endured this took to saying "sucks to your asthmar" at each other as a safe for middle school "fuck you". By the third time I was forced to cogitate on that awful book I wrote an essay on the inherent tyranny of assigned reading as a concept, its equivalencies to colonialist thought and that the message the assignment was reinforcing for me was the many ways in which school as a whole punished outliers specifically and humanity as a whole. It was a pass/fail assignment and I'm not sure anybody actually read it.
I desperately hope that any future kids who have to read it are linked to the blog and Coral Island and the other good info in this thread. I was never given anything for comparison or contrast, just presented repeatedly with a hateful text about stupid boys and told to value it.
posted by Mizu at 2:47 PM on May 10, 2020 [5 favorites]
I desperately hope that any future kids who have to read it are linked to the blog and Coral Island and the other good info in this thread. I was never given anything for comparison or contrast, just presented repeatedly with a hateful text about stupid boys and told to value it.
posted by Mizu at 2:47 PM on May 10, 2020 [5 favorites]
howfar I'm rattled by your response to my comment and I'm also not understanding at all what you're trying to get across.
posted by treepour at 7:29 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by treepour at 7:29 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was mildly weirded out by offering them crew jobs being worded as some kind of big favor, along with no mentions of looking for the castaways for their own commentary. I mean, the Australian captain is still good friends and business partners with one of them 50 years later, so I assume they felt properly treated and compensated, but a job isn't a gift, at least not a hard-work job like a fishing boat.
It's a very cool story, though. Also, apparently a documentary maker recreated a stay on the island with some young Tongans back in 2015, I wonder if there's any film from that floating around.
posted by tavella at 11:19 PM on May 10, 2020
It's a very cool story, though. Also, apparently a documentary maker recreated a stay on the island with some young Tongans back in 2015, I wonder if there's any film from that floating around.
posted by tavella at 11:19 PM on May 10, 2020
My first reaction to the article was relief, because LOTF is one of those books that hangs like a black cloud in my head, even though I haven't picked it up in decades. Not that I'm obsessed with it, but when I'm thinking about the human condition and good and evil it's one of those things that pops up - "Oh yeah - LOTF - we're horrible."
My second reaction is that it's not quite a true parallel. There's a difference between a somewhat random group of schoolkids and a group of friends who liked each other well enough that they decided to all run away together, who'd probably collaborated and resolved disputes multiple times prior to actually running away.
And also, I went to (rural, U.S. public) school with some rather awful people - if I were stuck on an island with them my best chance of survival would probably be to fake my death and hide in a cafe. They might have improved with adulthood; I'm not interested in finding out. My takeaway has been that teenagers are pretty much terrible. Even now when I'm around teenagers - a grown-ass adult - I don't quite feel safe.
posted by bunderful at 4:28 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
My second reaction is that it's not quite a true parallel. There's a difference between a somewhat random group of schoolkids and a group of friends who liked each other well enough that they decided to all run away together, who'd probably collaborated and resolved disputes multiple times prior to actually running away.
And also, I went to (rural, U.S. public) school with some rather awful people - if I were stuck on an island with them my best chance of survival would probably be to fake my death and hide in a cafe. They might have improved with adulthood; I'm not interested in finding out. My takeaway has been that teenagers are pretty much terrible. Even now when I'm around teenagers - a grown-ass adult - I don't quite feel safe.
posted by bunderful at 4:28 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
*cave, not cafe. Although my chances of survival would probably be better in a cafe than in a cave.
posted by bunderful at 4:34 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by bunderful at 4:34 AM on May 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
I was mildly weirded out by offering them crew jobs being worded as some kind of big favor, along with no mentions of looking for the castaways for their own commentary.
It was so weird how the big victory was the white guy getting a movie deal! And the boys were lucky to get out of prison!
Anyway I too hated Lord of the Flies and it made absolutely no sense to me. I've read multiple pieces later talking about it being specifically about the evil British boarding schools. Well the vast majority of us don't go to British boarding school! Can we please move on from that horrible book as a society. ugh.
I also came here to link the same thing i_am_joe's_spleen linked above. There are cultural issues at work here, not just essential truth of human nature.
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:02 AM on May 11, 2020
It was so weird how the big victory was the white guy getting a movie deal! And the boys were lucky to get out of prison!
Anyway I too hated Lord of the Flies and it made absolutely no sense to me. I've read multiple pieces later talking about it being specifically about the evil British boarding schools. Well the vast majority of us don't go to British boarding school! Can we please move on from that horrible book as a society. ugh.
I also came here to link the same thing i_am_joe's_spleen linked above. There are cultural issues at work here, not just essential truth of human nature.
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:02 AM on May 11, 2020
howfar I'm rattled by your response to my comment and I'm also not understanding at all what you're trying to get across.
Thank you for seeking clarification.
I think it is exceptionally dangerous to fall into the trap of blaming a particular type of person for all the world's problems, for a number of practical and ethical reason. I think that humans are highly prone to this, to the extent that it might plausibly be considered a very common cognitive bias. I believe that the modern trend for blaming sociopaths and narcissists for all of the world's woes is a product of this bias.
We are members of a eusocial species that biologically evolved and socially developed in settings where protecting members of the "in" group at the expense of the "other" was necessary for survival, and accordingly it is reasonable to believe that it has been adaptive to have a cognitively efficient means of doing so. The simplest and most comfortable way for us to deal with the challenge of believing in the basic and/or potential decency of humanity in the face of human evil is to say that the people we believe are responsible for that evil are not properly human. In most cases this manifests as the dehumanisation of a group based upon the perceived and/or real actions and motivations of certain of its members.
Capacity for empathy and for self-regard exist on a spectrum from person to person, and both the capacity for and the expression of these traits vary within individuals at different times and in different contexts. This, again, can be plausibly viewed as adaptive in our biological and societal evolution. It is extremely useful, in many contexts where group survival is at risk, to have people who exhibit low levels of empathy and/or high levels of narcissism. You don't want a currently and contextually highly empathetic person manning the gate during a plague, for example, instead you want someone who can look into the eyes of a desperate person and force them to leave. Groups frequently need people with high self-regard, because confidence that one is acting correctly, and concomitant decisiveness and singularity of purposes are often as important to group survival as actually making the best decision. The expression of these traits, I want to reiterate, is dependent on context.
Adaptiveness does not mean without cost. Every adaptation has associated costs, at the very least in the form of opportunity cost. Almost everyone exhibits, at certain times and in some contexts, expressions of these traits that are harmful to themselves and/or the group. Some people are so prone to such negative expression of these traits, either in their impact on themselves or others, that we regard them as experiencing a pathology. Those pathologies, however, are the disordered expression of adaptive and widespread traits, not the result of some fundamentally different brain structure or personality type.
Firstly, then, I take objection to the notion that there is significant group of people who, without context and question, are sociopathic and/or narcissistic. I don't think that this has a basis in reality.
Secondly, your belief that this putative group is fundamentally responsible for the evils in the world doesn't, in my view, relate to how the traits we are discussing actually manifest, either within the majority of the population or among those we regard as pathologically disordered. As your comment itself indicates, it is perfectly possible for people who experience little empathy/excessive self-regard to act otherwise when this is in their interests, in particular when their personal interests align closely with that of the group. Hence the social harms do not arise out of the traits themselves, but rather in social contexts which bring interests of the individual into conflict with the interests of the group.
Thirdly, while it is undeniable that many people in positions of power exhibit much more self-regard and lack of empathy than typical, there is no reason to think that this is because they are, in general, pathologically narcissistic or sociopathic. Rather, these people are typically adapting to the context of their lives. The lack of empathy often exhibited by politicians and other leaders is not, in fact, generally universal, but reserved for particular people and particular contexts. We all exhibit startling lack of empathy in some contexts. In 2018, about 400,000 people died of malaria, with over 200,000,000 infections. That is a number reflecting an astonishing amount of human terror, suffering and loss, but it does not typically elicit the sort of emotional response among people in the developed world that we are currently feeling for the victims of COVID-19. We also all make decisions based upon valuing our marginal comfort over the significant suffering of others: while I suppose there may be a few people who never make a purchasing choice because it was convenient and without considering its impact upon others, I don't think I've ever encountered any evidence of such people. I accordingly object to the notion that most people are in some way "basically good" just as much as I object to the idea that selfishness is "human nature". How we experience and exhibit empathy and appropriate esteem emerges in context, not out of any basic inclination or nature.
Fourthly, the vast majority of people with narcissistic and/or antisocial personality disorders are not successful monsters, laughing at the world; they are largely sad, angry and desperate people who spend a lot of time in dangerous and hostile situations, and also in hospitals and prisons. I have had direct first-hand experience of a number of highly vulnerable people diagnosed with NPD. It is a profoundly distressing condition both for the person with the disorder and for many in close contact with them, and causes people to make choices that are typically much more destructive of their own well-being than that of others. I have similar direct experience of vulnerable people diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. I worked for one person who, as a result of this diagnosis, was habitually discriminated against, disbelieved and mistreated by a number of government services when asking for basic and necessary adaptations to their physical disabilities. So I object to construing pathological narcissism and lack of empathy as monstrous and other because I see the harm doing so does to very vulnerable people.
Fifthly, your perspective is profoundly disempowering, because it says that the problem is not the structures of our society, which can be changed, but rather a few bad apples who spoil the whole barrel. It is accordingly exceptionally dangerous, as it enables us to disavow responsibility not only for the evils of the world, but also for attempting change.
This is not an exhaustive list of my objections, but I hope and trust it will be sufficient for you to get some understanding of what I'm trying to get across.
posted by howfar at 6:09 AM on May 11, 2020 [9 favorites]
Thank you for seeking clarification.
I think it is exceptionally dangerous to fall into the trap of blaming a particular type of person for all the world's problems, for a number of practical and ethical reason. I think that humans are highly prone to this, to the extent that it might plausibly be considered a very common cognitive bias. I believe that the modern trend for blaming sociopaths and narcissists for all of the world's woes is a product of this bias.
We are members of a eusocial species that biologically evolved and socially developed in settings where protecting members of the "in" group at the expense of the "other" was necessary for survival, and accordingly it is reasonable to believe that it has been adaptive to have a cognitively efficient means of doing so. The simplest and most comfortable way for us to deal with the challenge of believing in the basic and/or potential decency of humanity in the face of human evil is to say that the people we believe are responsible for that evil are not properly human. In most cases this manifests as the dehumanisation of a group based upon the perceived and/or real actions and motivations of certain of its members.
Capacity for empathy and for self-regard exist on a spectrum from person to person, and both the capacity for and the expression of these traits vary within individuals at different times and in different contexts. This, again, can be plausibly viewed as adaptive in our biological and societal evolution. It is extremely useful, in many contexts where group survival is at risk, to have people who exhibit low levels of empathy and/or high levels of narcissism. You don't want a currently and contextually highly empathetic person manning the gate during a plague, for example, instead you want someone who can look into the eyes of a desperate person and force them to leave. Groups frequently need people with high self-regard, because confidence that one is acting correctly, and concomitant decisiveness and singularity of purposes are often as important to group survival as actually making the best decision. The expression of these traits, I want to reiterate, is dependent on context.
Adaptiveness does not mean without cost. Every adaptation has associated costs, at the very least in the form of opportunity cost. Almost everyone exhibits, at certain times and in some contexts, expressions of these traits that are harmful to themselves and/or the group. Some people are so prone to such negative expression of these traits, either in their impact on themselves or others, that we regard them as experiencing a pathology. Those pathologies, however, are the disordered expression of adaptive and widespread traits, not the result of some fundamentally different brain structure or personality type.
Firstly, then, I take objection to the notion that there is significant group of people who, without context and question, are sociopathic and/or narcissistic. I don't think that this has a basis in reality.
Secondly, your belief that this putative group is fundamentally responsible for the evils in the world doesn't, in my view, relate to how the traits we are discussing actually manifest, either within the majority of the population or among those we regard as pathologically disordered. As your comment itself indicates, it is perfectly possible for people who experience little empathy/excessive self-regard to act otherwise when this is in their interests, in particular when their personal interests align closely with that of the group. Hence the social harms do not arise out of the traits themselves, but rather in social contexts which bring interests of the individual into conflict with the interests of the group.
Thirdly, while it is undeniable that many people in positions of power exhibit much more self-regard and lack of empathy than typical, there is no reason to think that this is because they are, in general, pathologically narcissistic or sociopathic. Rather, these people are typically adapting to the context of their lives. The lack of empathy often exhibited by politicians and other leaders is not, in fact, generally universal, but reserved for particular people and particular contexts. We all exhibit startling lack of empathy in some contexts. In 2018, about 400,000 people died of malaria, with over 200,000,000 infections. That is a number reflecting an astonishing amount of human terror, suffering and loss, but it does not typically elicit the sort of emotional response among people in the developed world that we are currently feeling for the victims of COVID-19. We also all make decisions based upon valuing our marginal comfort over the significant suffering of others: while I suppose there may be a few people who never make a purchasing choice because it was convenient and without considering its impact upon others, I don't think I've ever encountered any evidence of such people. I accordingly object to the notion that most people are in some way "basically good" just as much as I object to the idea that selfishness is "human nature". How we experience and exhibit empathy and appropriate esteem emerges in context, not out of any basic inclination or nature.
Fourthly, the vast majority of people with narcissistic and/or antisocial personality disorders are not successful monsters, laughing at the world; they are largely sad, angry and desperate people who spend a lot of time in dangerous and hostile situations, and also in hospitals and prisons. I have had direct first-hand experience of a number of highly vulnerable people diagnosed with NPD. It is a profoundly distressing condition both for the person with the disorder and for many in close contact with them, and causes people to make choices that are typically much more destructive of their own well-being than that of others. I have similar direct experience of vulnerable people diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. I worked for one person who, as a result of this diagnosis, was habitually discriminated against, disbelieved and mistreated by a number of government services when asking for basic and necessary adaptations to their physical disabilities. So I object to construing pathological narcissism and lack of empathy as monstrous and other because I see the harm doing so does to very vulnerable people.
Fifthly, your perspective is profoundly disempowering, because it says that the problem is not the structures of our society, which can be changed, but rather a few bad apples who spoil the whole barrel. It is accordingly exceptionally dangerous, as it enables us to disavow responsibility not only for the evils of the world, but also for attempting change.
This is not an exhaustive list of my objections, but I hope and trust it will be sufficient for you to get some understanding of what I'm trying to get across.
posted by howfar at 6:09 AM on May 11, 2020 [9 favorites]
I find it interesting that so many people were told that Lord of the Flies was about the terribleness of people in general. I was told Jack = Hitler, choir = Germany, Roger = Himmler, Ralph = Britain and civilization in general, Simon = Jesus, the fire that Jack sets = Hiroshima, naval officer = Golding, etc. I disagree with such a simplistic reading, and I’m not a fan of biographical criticism, but I think it does help to consider the context of a WW II veteran writing during the Cold War.
My fave memory from studying Lord of the Flies in middle school is my ex-best friend saying that I would be the first one eaten if our plane crashed on a deserted island. I pointed out that they didn’t actually eat people in the book and that we were not going to encounter any islands flying between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Another classmate helpfully reminded us about Island of the Blue Dolphins, so after much discussion it was decided that when our class inevitably ended up stranded on an island, I would be eaten fifth.
I’d completely forgot about that until I saw that clip of Alex Jones talking about how he is going to eat his neighbors. I would be willing to bet he has them ranked.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:53 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
My fave memory from studying Lord of the Flies in middle school is my ex-best friend saying that I would be the first one eaten if our plane crashed on a deserted island. I pointed out that they didn’t actually eat people in the book and that we were not going to encounter any islands flying between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Another classmate helpfully reminded us about Island of the Blue Dolphins, so after much discussion it was decided that when our class inevitably ended up stranded on an island, I would be eaten fifth.
I’d completely forgot about that until I saw that clip of Alex Jones talking about how he is going to eat his neighbors. I would be willing to bet he has them ranked.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:53 AM on May 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
howfar I can't thank you enough for going into such detail. I don't think we're fully on the same page (and that's probably my fault for commenting more out of emotion than anything else) but I now have a sense of where you're coming from and am thinking through your points. I don't think I can address them at the moment, but I just wanted to say thank you.
posted by treepour at 9:39 AM on May 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by treepour at 9:39 AM on May 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
It was so weird how the big victory was the white guy getting a movie deal! And the boys were lucky to get out of prison!
Well, the "movie deal" seems to have been some kind of local thing not some big Hollywood offer, so it seems to have been a reasonably clever way to get the cash to recompense the fishing boat owner (who did deserve to be compensated after all, it was likely a huge loss to him.) I don't see any evidence that Warner himself acted improperly or greedily, it's just that the framing of the article is so weird. The interesting and exciting part of the story is the boys themselves and their life on the island, but we only hear about that as paragraphs of third person recounting.
Like, what I'd want is interviews with the men about their time as castaways, the first person view, why is it all about this fairly minor (if key) player in their story?
posted by tavella at 10:36 AM on May 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
Well, the "movie deal" seems to have been some kind of local thing not some big Hollywood offer, so it seems to have been a reasonably clever way to get the cash to recompense the fishing boat owner (who did deserve to be compensated after all, it was likely a huge loss to him.) I don't see any evidence that Warner himself acted improperly or greedily, it's just that the framing of the article is so weird. The interesting and exciting part of the story is the boys themselves and their life on the island, but we only hear about that as paragraphs of third person recounting.
Like, what I'd want is interviews with the men about their time as castaways, the first person view, why is it all about this fairly minor (if key) player in their story?
posted by tavella at 10:36 AM on May 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
Lord of the Flies seemed a bit extreme in it's judgement of human nature as too does this article - I think the truth, if indeed there is one is quite nebulous and our natures are impossible to pin down so I resist any attempts to categorise human nature in such binary ways now. I didn't know this as a teenager and I wonder if reading such material fed into my malaise and depression.
posted by Sunflower88 at 3:15 AM on May 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Sunflower88 at 3:15 AM on May 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
I think that the idea of "human nature" derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are. For a whole host of reasons, not least Christian metaphysics and eschatology, we have a strong tendency, in European/American/Anglo cultures, to see the world and ourselves teleologically. We tend to think of ourselves (both our species and, even more detrimentally, culture), as either a stage in, or the final destination of, a journey, rather than one iteration in a process without direction. We imagine that our bodies and minds must make some sort of sense, and that we are either fulfilling some predetermined potential or failing to do so.
In reality, we're what happens to have been just well enough adapted to survive, as part of an undirected and (in itself) meaningless process. We have a mass of different elements that don't necessarily fit together very well (big heads for thinking and narrow hips and pelvis for bipedalism, for example, do not work well at all in combination with each other, as our high rates of maternal and infant mortality show. These features developed at different times and in response to different selection pressures) but have been sufficient for us to avoid extinction so far.
Reductively speaking, all that natural selection means is that whatever happens happens. The idea that such a process would give rise to any being with a fundamental nature is, I think, an unjustified projection of our cultural perspective onto a biological reality which simply does not support it.
I think there's quite a lot of psychological relief to be found in recognising, really and truly, that we do not bear the fingerprints of God, and that we are made with no sense and no purpose. We are not failing to be "all that we can be", we're just here, without any particular "being" at all, as a response to various different pressures that have arisen in the past. I don't find that precisely comforting or reassuring, but it's one less thing to worry about.
posted by howfar at 3:59 AM on May 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
In reality, we're what happens to have been just well enough adapted to survive, as part of an undirected and (in itself) meaningless process. We have a mass of different elements that don't necessarily fit together very well (big heads for thinking and narrow hips and pelvis for bipedalism, for example, do not work well at all in combination with each other, as our high rates of maternal and infant mortality show. These features developed at different times and in response to different selection pressures) but have been sufficient for us to avoid extinction so far.
Reductively speaking, all that natural selection means is that whatever happens happens. The idea that such a process would give rise to any being with a fundamental nature is, I think, an unjustified projection of our cultural perspective onto a biological reality which simply does not support it.
I think there's quite a lot of psychological relief to be found in recognising, really and truly, that we do not bear the fingerprints of God, and that we are made with no sense and no purpose. We are not failing to be "all that we can be", we're just here, without any particular "being" at all, as a response to various different pressures that have arisen in the past. I don't find that precisely comforting or reassuring, but it's one less thing to worry about.
posted by howfar at 3:59 AM on May 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: a parody of cliques and the assholery of children
posted by kirkaracha at 3:09 PM on May 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 3:09 PM on May 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
Update.
Totau was interviewed for Bregman’s account, which focuses on the positives of their story – the ability of the boys to cooperate and establish a functioning community that allowed them to survive for more than a year – in contrast with the characters in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. Totau says that in general the boys managed to “settle it down and keep it in peace”, though they did clash occasionally. They were after all six teenagers stuck together in a frightening situation.
“You should be fairly understanding of what could happen in a group of people like that, and also in a situation they are facing,” he says. But he cautions against thinking their experience was a fun one.
“We [were] not happy where we [were],” says Totau. “If you were on a place, you don’t know where it is, and also you did not see any part of your family, I don’t think you’d be happy to be there ... you won’t be happy until you see your family.”
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:22 PM on May 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Totau was interviewed for Bregman’s account, which focuses on the positives of their story – the ability of the boys to cooperate and establish a functioning community that allowed them to survive for more than a year – in contrast with the characters in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. Totau says that in general the boys managed to “settle it down and keep it in peace”, though they did clash occasionally. They were after all six teenagers stuck together in a frightening situation.
“You should be fairly understanding of what could happen in a group of people like that, and also in a situation they are facing,” he says. But he cautions against thinking their experience was a fun one.
“We [were] not happy where we [were],” says Totau. “If you were on a place, you don’t know where it is, and also you did not see any part of your family, I don’t think you’d be happy to be there ... you won’t be happy until you see your family.”
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:22 PM on May 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Like, what I'd want is interviews with the men about their time as castaways, the first person view, why is it all about this fairly minor (if key) player in their story?
This is an excerpt from a book which does have those interviews, so blame the Guardian?
It is worth reading Bregman's comments on the Guardian followup article too.
posted by vacapinta at 12:50 AM on May 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
This is an excerpt from a book which does have those interviews, so blame the Guardian?
It is worth reading Bregman's comments on the Guardian followup article too.
posted by vacapinta at 12:50 AM on May 13, 2020 [5 favorites]
More from Matangi Tonga (the main newspaper in Tonga).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:28 PM on May 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:28 PM on May 14, 2020 [3 favorites]
Wow that article is great! Buried in there is a link to the 1966 TV documentary that came out of the film rights sale Warner arranged.
posted by Nelson at 6:14 PM on May 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 6:14 PM on May 14, 2020 [2 favorites]
RNZ: Concerns over a tale of shipwrecked Tongans. Discusses issues of cultural appropriaton.
The New Zealand Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi has weighed in on the conversation, writing on Twitter that in his opinion, "you should prioritise Polynesian (Tongan if possible!) filmmakers as to avoid cultural appropriation, misrepresentation, and to keep the Pasifika voice authentic".posted by Nelson at 6:01 PM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]
I watched the 1966 documentary ("The Castaways"). It's pretty silly; mostly consists of the six young men (I think it's them) re-enacting their time on the island with a voiceover story. Half the story is in the first person, like a diary, the other half a narrative in third person. The sweetest part is some clips of the party when everyone was reunited. It looks like a legit party, not sure if they filmed the actual reuniting or if they had another party after. With lots of fat pigs donated by the Australian film council, I sure hope.
The narration does mention the history of 'Ata including slavery and that the island had been named taboo by the King of Tonga. They end speculating it might be nice to live on 'Ata again if the taboo were lifted.
posted by Nelson at 3:53 PM on May 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
The narration does mention the history of 'Ata including slavery and that the island had been named taboo by the King of Tonga. They end speculating it might be nice to live on 'Ata again if the taboo were lifted.
posted by Nelson at 3:53 PM on May 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
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posted by TedW at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2020 [2 favorites]