lord of flies
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves.
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The book takes place in the midst of an unspecified war. Some of the marooned characters are ordinary *students, while others arrive as a musical choir under an established leader. With the exception of Sam and Eric and the choirboys, they appear never to have encountered each other before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves on a paradisiacal island, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state.
note: boys in story had already been *schooled.. so from this story (and much of life today).. we really have no idea how we’d be in a truly free space.. on speculation from observing/judging ie: whales in sea world
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By the early 1960s, it was required reading in many schools and colleges
compulsorily perpetuating a broken feedback loop.. false stories of human nature, et al
stories like this make is easier for us to not trust us.. to unquestioningly bow to all forms of control and conditionality, et al
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real lord of flies
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adding page while frustratingly re reading hold on to kids:
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lord of flies.. left to own devices.. spontaneously divide into bullies and bullied to point of murder.. the interpretation many have put on the golding novel is that children harbor an untamed savagery underneath a thin veneer of civilization and that only the force of authority can keep their innate brutalizing impulse in check. this impression is reinforced by the proliferation of media reports of kids victimizing other kids.. although it is true that the non presence of adults in children’s lives is a major cause of bullying, the real dynamic involves not missing adult authority but the dearth of adult attachments..
we could fill holes/missing-pieces .. if we let go of control..
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in both of these cases we see that bullying among animals followed the destruction of the natural generational hierarchy.. among human children as well, the bullying phenom is a direct product o ff the subversion of natural hierarchy, following on the loss of adults relationships
so .. is it relationships or hierarchy? because i think hierarchy compromises relationships..
in lord of the flies the children are left to their own devices in the wake of a plane crash that none of their caregiving adults survive.
pretty sure the kids.. and the ‘caregiving adults’ – were already pretty entrenched in voluntary compliance (or whatever we want to call it).. ie: not themselves.. not natural.. w lord of flies.. and most of society today.. you’re really looking at whales in sea world – at best
much like run amok ness – and tragedy of the commons (tragedy of the non common) ness – i think this is a false story as far as human nature is concerned.. i think we manufactured ourselves to do things like what these boys did.. how they interacted.. and then we ongoingly perpetuate that.. by sharing stories like this to say.. see what happens when we trust people w/o any authority figure.. w/o any structure from above.. et al..
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Sisyphus (@Sisyphus38) tweeted at 6:30 AM – 16 Feb 2019 :
“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
Lord of the Flies https://t.co/cz1Zvlw1Tr (http://twitter.com/Sisyphus38/status/1096763651049050113?s=17)
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Fabiana Cecin (@fabianacecin) tweeted at 5:14 AM – 26 Nov 2019 :
You can have 100,000 empty homes in a city experiencing a chronic lack of housing and skyrocketing housing prices, or you can have Lord of the flies — capitalism (http://twitter.com/fabianacecin/status/1199300425394077696?s=17)
or we could let go and trust.. that there’s a nother way
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2018 – 1/3 – Peter Gray on self directed ed – on bio design to self ed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNBxpeyoulU]
1:27 – when we see freedom works.. we choose it.. t
this is the problem.. we’ve never tried true freedom.. so we keep having legit reasons to cry: tragedy of commons; tragedy of the non common; lord of flies; .. et al
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interview in guardian with rutger may 2020
The real Lord of the Flies
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months
When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman
https://t.co/xrTXgLe9Ac
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/Avedon_Says/status/1259156523533639680When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman..
The historian offers a hopeful view of human nature in his latest book, Humankind. It couldn’t have come at a better time
Humankind, a sweeping survey of human existence which argues that, despite all our obvious flaws, most people are basically good.
Humankind offers a roadmap for how we might organise ourselves very differently.
He had already made waves with his book Utopia for Realists, a call for a universal basic income or UBI: an idea once dismissed as absurd, but which seems positively mainstream now that the UK government is paying 80% of the wages of all those furloughed by the virus crisis.
Humankind is a logical sequel to that earlier work.
He needed to persuade doubters that human beings were not fundamentally selfish, lazy or worse. The trouble was, those doubters included him.
Bregman says, the scientific evidence suggests those assumptions are badly flawed, that as a species we’ve been getting ourselves wrong for far too long.
This is where he has most fun, methodically dismantling some of the best-known nuggets of sociological and psychological conventional wisdom.
Our true nature is to be kind, caring and cooperative, he argues. We used to be like that – and we can be again.
It’s surely not a coincidence that Bregman’s father is a Protestant minister. (His mother is a special needs teacher.) Humankind is the story of a fall from grace. Back when we were hunter-gatherers, we roamed peacefully in the Garden of Eden; then we enclosed a square of land, called it our own, invented property and settled down to defend it, wars began and our innocence was lost. Somehow, we have to find our way back to the Garden.
lost the garden enough ness before that.. but yeah.. we have to get back
Bregman may say he’s an atheist, but this is an intensely Christian work, isn’t it?
He laughs and admits: “In many ways, it is. I couldn’t help myself, writing the epilogue, thinking about what the rules for life could be if you held this [benign] view of human nature.
He has thought about it hard, noting that people are only really capable of doing dreadful things once they are physically distant from each other (and the book has fascinating stats on soldiers’ recurrent refusal to shoot at the enemy, a pattern going back centuries).
“I would emphasise that I’m not actually saying that people are good. The title of the book in Dutch is De Meeste Mensen Deugen, which is ‘Most People Are Deugen’,with deugen a word that you cannot translate. It’s sort of like ‘pretty decent deep down’ or ‘good after all’.” Later he refers to human destructiveness in these terms: “We’re not born to do this, but we’re capable of it.”
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Is a reshaping of society towards cooperation and equality, at work, at school, in prison and in politics on its way?
yeah to reshaping.. but sans work, school, prison, politics
notes from Interview: ‘Our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate’
When I started writing a book about this more hopeful view, I knew there was one story I would have to address. . plane goes down.. only survivors schoolboys
On the very first day, the boys institute a democracy of sorts. One boy, Ralph, is elected to be the *group’s leader. Athletic, charismatic and handsome, his game plan is simple: 1) Have fun. 2) Survive. 3) Make smoke signals for passing ships. Number one is a success.
yeah.. not a success.. rather a *red flag – leader ness
The others? Not so much. The boys are more interested in feasting and frolicking than in tending the fire. Before long, they have begun painting their faces. Casting off their clothes. And they develop overpowering urges – to pinch, to kick, to bite.
because they’re under a leader..
science of people in schools (whales-in-sea-world)
By the time a British naval officer comes ashore, the island is a smouldering wasteland. Three of the children are dead. “I should have thought,” the officer says, “that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that.” At this, Ralph bursts into tears. “Ralph wept for the end of innocence,” we read, and for “the darkness of man’s heart”.
This story never happened. An English schoolmaster, William Golding, made up this story in 1951 – his novel Lord of the Flies would sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than 30 languages and hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century.
I first read Lord of the Flies as a teenager. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature. That didn’t happen until years later when I began delving into the author’s life. I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression; a man who beat his kids.
I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island?
The real Lord of the Flies, Mano told us, began in June 1965. The protagonists were six boys – Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke and Mano – all pupils at a strict Catholic boarding school in Nuku‘alofa. The oldest was 16, the youngest 13, and they had one main thing in common: they were bored witless. So they came up with a plan to escape: to Fiji, some 500 miles away, or even all the way to New Zealand.
“by the time we arrived,” Captain Warner wrote in his memoirs, “the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.”
While the boys in Lord of the Fliescome to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year.
They were finally rescued on Sunday 11 September 1966. The local physician later expressed astonishment at their muscled physiques and Stephen’s perfectly healed leg. But this wasn’t the end of the boys’ little adventure, because, when they arrived back in Nuku‘alofa police boarded Peter’s boat, arrested the boys and threw them in jail. Mr Taniela Uhila, whose sailing boat the boys had “borrowed” 15 months earlier, was still furious, and he’d decided to press charges. (got out of it by giving him rights to movie)
While the boys of ‘Ata have been consigned to obscurity, Golding’s book is still widely read. Media historians even credit him as being the unwitting originator of one of the most popular entertainment genres on television today: reality TV. “I read and reread Lord of the Flies ,” divulged the creator of hit series Survivor in an interview.
It’s time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other.. t After my wife took Peter’s picture, he turned to a cabinet and rummaged around for a bit, then drew out a heavy stack of papers that he laid in my hands. His memoirs, he explained, written for his children and grandchildren. I looked down at the first page. “Life has taught me a great deal,” it began, “including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people.”
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real lord of flies
Wow. Really overwhelmed with the response to my story about the real ‘Lord of the Flies’. So so happy that this extraordinary tale is finally – after 50 years! – becoming famous. Here’s a thread (with pictures!) on how I found the ‘boys’ three years ago /1 https://t.co/qYdnXmQMMM
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1259428196501594113
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months | Books | The Guardian https://t.co/VT7swZ8CLT
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/mbauwens/status/1260479182817103874
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be you. 