'Lord of the Flies,' Revisited: By Jim Hightower, Rutger Bregman

[appalachiablue]

- 'Lord of the Flies' movie, 1963.
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- 'Lord of the Flies,' Revisited. Dutch historian Rutger Bregman documents that Golding had no knowledge of behavioral science and was hardly an impartial judge of children's propensities. By Jim Hightower, Common Dreams, Dec. 30, 2020.

Many of us read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" in high school — and it's still being taught. The 1954 novel depicts the gradual descent into barbaric darkness by a group of English schoolboys shipwrecked on a small, deserted island. Its portrayal of innate human depravity was hailed at the time for its unblinking "realism." Only ... it was total bulls—-. In his superb 2019 work "Humankind: A Hopeful History," Dutch historian Rutger Bregman documents that Golding had no knowledge of behavioral science and was hardly an impartial judge of children's propensities. Rather, he was an alcoholic prone to depression who beat his kids.

"I have always understood the Nazis," Golding once said, "because I am of that sort by nature."

So, he made up the story, and it wasn't about children's dark nature, but his own.

After learning about the man behind the tale, Bregman became curious about what would really happen if kids were left alone on an island. He kept poking into everything from scientific studies to news reports, and — amazingly — finally unearthed an actual incident of shipwrecked children: In 1965, six bored schoolboys from Tonga, ages 13 to 16, took a small fishing boat out on a lark, but they were caught in a sudden storm and blown far from home. Their boat's mast and rudder broke, and they drifted for days before washing up on a desolate rocky islet, where they were stranded for more than a year.

Fifty years later, the intrepid Bregman spent months tracing multiple dead ends before at last locating a few survivors and then traveling to Tonga to meet them and get the true story. He learned that, far from devolving into barbarism, the inventive teenagers had set up a functioning democracy and communal economy. They split chores into teams of two, built sleeping huts and a kitchen, tended a garden, stored rainwater, created a gymnasium, fashioned a badminton court and got a fire going (taking turns protecting it so it never went out). One boy even constructed a rudimentary guitar to accompany their singing.

Yes, they had occasional arguments, but the rule was that the quarrelers had to go to opposite ends of the island to cool down for a few hours before they were brought back to the group to apologize. "That's how we stayed friends," one former castaway told Bregman.

When rescued by a passing fishing crew after 15 months on the island, the boys were extraordinarily healthy — physically, socially and spiritually...

More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/12/30/lord-flies-revisited

[Aristus]

1. Pop culture entertainment is built around the premise that human beings

are only an extended power outage away from murderous barbarism.

The premise ignores the fact that humans naturally cooperate during times of difficulty, and that’s how we maintain civilization.

Of course, in any crisis, there are going to be that catastrophe’s equivalent of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and ‘personal freedom’ advocates. But they haven’t prevented the development of a vaccine, or shattered the hopes of those working constructively to bring an end to the crisis.

In fact, rather than being dragged down to their level, decent people redouble their efforts to bring healing, comfort, and compassion to those who are suffering.