The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Thursday, July 26, 2012

Why zombies..?

It is arguable that consciousness has little survival value.   Amoebas do just fine.   Zombies lurch through the world doing many of the things we do: eating, hunting, even shopping...without thinking or feeling.   The Walking Dead are no less than the Sleeping Living.    It is possible that they are so popular because on some level we know that we all are in danger of falling into automatic living.   I find politics disgusting (but necessary...kind of like diarrhea.  From time to time the system needs an adjustment...) in the way that ordinarily lovely people fall into name-calling, lying, imbicilic simplification, demonization and general irrational "we rule you drool" schoolyard antics, using the exact same tools they decry when the "other guy" uses them.  Christ, it's nauseating.    If you wake up, there is no external success or reward waiting for you.  If you try to encourage others to wake up, you risk being nailed to a cross. People don't want to wake up: they want to have a nice dream.  If you commit to being an awakened being, you must do it because you feel anything less is inauthentic, and be willing to die in the process.  Trust me: you will.   But since you have to die anyway, you might as well die being who and what you really are, rather than what you were programmed to be.   To die having lived your own life is simply nature.  To die having lived someone else's, never knowing who you are... is a tragedy.

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