Lord of the Flies is bullshit. When a group of boys actually got stranded together, they peacefully cooperated with each other to solve their problems.
Not every group is going to adapt and react the same way though. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities for the lord of the flies situation to happen, but what’s the rate. 10%? 1%? 50%?
Partly the issue with N=1 statistics.
True. It is plausible. At the same time I have to think that if the human race hasn’t evolved to factor cooperation in tribes in most cases, we wouldn’t be here discussing this.
I kinda want the next one to a prison barge, just get the normal situation and and the massive outlier as the first two, just to mess with it for the next dozen until the pattern forms.
Studies on the phenomenon called Elite Panic suggest that people in general are more cooperative in disastrous events than normally assumed by the elite, and often a lot of the rest of us too.
Like, the elites would panic in a survival situation. But I have real survival skills that would allow me to survive until rescue. Someone like Bezos or Musk would starve quickly, or eat something poisonous without knowing whether it was safe or not.
No, Elite Panic is people in power or with money assuming that the rest of us plebs are going to go wild stealing their stuff and eating each other. They therefore believe they need to get a strong police or military force in place to control the situation, because we can’t be trusted. Many times in the past this happened it caused more issues and deaths as they don’t prioritize human life.
Quoting from the wiki: Philip L. Fradkin detailed cases of “elite panic” during the Great Chicago Fire, the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[10] After the San Francisco earthquake, Mayor Eugene Schmitz authorized the use of deadly force against “anyone engaged in looting”[11] – chiefly poor and working class victims of the earthquake. While residents of Chinese descent evacuated the disaster areas, and were segregated from white victims of the earthquake, Chinatown was itself looted by soldiers and members of the city’s upper classes.[12]
Another: During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, evidence of “elite panic” included the extensive media coverage of and political focus on reported looting and violence, the authorization of deadly force in response to reported property crime and the circulation of rumors about the behavior of New Orleans’ lower class and residents of color.[6] Mayor Ray Nagin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and claimed “hooligans [were] killing people, raping people” in the Louisiana Superdome.[7] President George W. Bush subsequently dispatched the United States Army to the city, where they prevented residents from leaving disaster areas.[16] On September 1, 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco called off search and rescue efforts and diverted the attention of emergency services towards looting, warning that residents of New Orleans caught looting would be shot by veterans of the Iraq War.[12] Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was later held responsible for the crisis, despite official guidelines stating that leadership during times of crisis fell to the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, who at the time was Michael Chertoff.[12]
The Superdome thing is especially egregious, because a ton of people had worked to convert it into a refugee camp, including several armed patrols to make sure people didn’t steal shit they didn’t need.
I don’t think it’s complete bullshit. Not a universal truth as some make it out to be, but not completely false. Cultural background plays a role, as well as social setting.
The Tonga boys were all from the same group for one.
In Lord of the flies, they were separate groups.
Tonga boys had a shared culture.
Lord of the flies groups had 2 separate cultures: 1 religiously militant, the other not.
That second factor might be the most important one. If you’re taught growing up to villainize and hate an “other”, that’s what’s more likely to happen.
Or to put it in a more US centric way: if 7 kids from deeply racist families were stuck on an island with 4 black kids in the 1960s, would they still have gotten along as well as the Tonga boys?
only 1 child gets killed
Teacher: “congrats! You did better than they did in the book!”
At least she was nice enough to leave them a sea shell.
Man I hated that book so much. This comic is hilarious though.
I love this book. It deserves all the praise it gets
I just happened to stumble upon the Lord of the Flies film on IFC one night at the perfect age of a kid. Was like, “oh wow cool bunch of kids trying to survive on an island this looks like a cool movie!” … an hour later and I grew up real fast.
Same here. I was the age of the kids in the movie or a little younger. Learned some things that day.
Funny thing is I’ve heard of a study where they did something similar (safer and more controlled I’m sure), and the boys all cooperated with each other and got along very nicely.
