LORD OF THE FLIES

November 29, 2008

“Lord of the Flies” is an ancient descriptive name given to Satan, referred to as Beelzebub. Baal was a false god worshipped by ancient Near Eastern pagans, and zebub is the Hebrew collective noun for “fly”.

“Lord of the Flies” was also the title of a highly symbolic, disturbing novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding, released in 1954 and eventually made into a movie by the same title.

As the story unfolds, a group of English school boys, whose guardians had attempted to get them out of wartime England by plane, are stranded on an island when their plane is shot down at sea. No adults survive the crash, and so the school boys find themselves left to their own charge. The book narrates in chilling detail how these docile children undergo a dark transformation into tribal savages, forming power cliques and turning on each other. The older, bigger boys assert their dominance. First they disrespect and mock the weakest among them. Then, in time, they indulge in savage beating, and eventually in murder. In the end, as a naval officer from a rescue ship comes ashore unexpectedly, the boys revert in a spooky instant to innocent boyishness and docile obedience to authority.

The book’s impact lies in its unapologetic look at the two sides of human nature, capable of both childlike innocence and inhuman savagery, even from an early age. Ancients and medievals called these two sides man’s higher nature and lower nature.

These dual tendencies are well known to parents and school teachers, and are witnessed to some degree on school playgrounds every day. From their earliest years, children need the presence of authority figures, the supervision and guidance of mature adults who love them, and years of moral instruction, discipline, and character formation if they are ever to acquire the self-control and respect for other persons necessary for civility and social engagement.

What happens, however, when it is not children but adults who are thrown together in a wilderness setting with no preordained authority or established, mutually agreed-to set of moral norms to govern them?

That question has been answered in a unique way in recent times on television, in the popular Survivor series. Within the team structure of the challenges, the individuals make loose, self-serving alliances with one another for the sake of survival. And what is at stake is not just survival of the untamed elements of nature, but survival of one another. Like a game of musical chairs, one member is eliminated each week. The dynamics of the program are such that each participant becomes a potential threat to everyone else’s survival, including the members of his or her own team. 
Over the time it has been on the air, Survivor has borne witness to the cunning, betrayal, duplicity and manipulation of which every human being is potentially capable.

Yes, it is only a game, but it can easily become a cultural model, capable of penetrating the psyche of its viewers and inviting them to view the world through the interpretive lens of the game’s survival dynamics. It encourages us to think of ourselves as ultimately alone in life, unable to trust anyone or build our life with anyone. It invites us to view others not as brothers and sisters but as potential threats who can betray or use us anytime it serves their advantage. It invites us to be on guard at all times, to close ourselves off from others, ­to make choices based on self-interest rather than on moral principle. It invites us to a grim view of the world around us as a jungle, and to behave as though self-sacrifice for the good of another amounted to letting ourselves be used.

Are programs like Survivor the logical result of the extreme emphasis our culture places on individual rights and freedoms? Is our social model of free individuals, unencumbered by family or social ties and obligations, not only distancing us from each other but turning us against each other? Is it destroying the necessary social foundations of community, solidarity, and the commitment to the common good?

Our democracy, undertaken with the assumption that an independent people would be able to order their lives together in justice and right, remains an experiment in ordered liberty. The dramatic historical events which founded our nation were very much about casting off the yoke of authoritarian rule by ancient regimes of domination.

We must now ask ourselves, what will give order to our liberty? By what principles or vision will we guide ourselves?  Nothing we have accomplished as a people – and we have accomplished much – has altered our human nature. And our nature is forces us, each day, to choose to act according to what is higher or lower in us.

This Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, as we begin a new year in the calendar of the Church, we prepare to welcome our Savior Jesus Christ, on Christmas day, we recognize his sovereign love for us, and trust is his providential care.  We, therefore, see each other not as a threat but as brothers and sisters, children of the same loving Father.  Governed by the faith, hope, and love we find in our hearts, will greet each day as a gift and new opportunity to enjoy life.

If we forget the Lord or turn our backs on him and his law, however, there will be no law to guide us except the law of the jungle – the law of survival. We will live in the grip of fear and suspicion, alone in a land without love. We will not be a nation of free individuals who govern themselves. It will be the lord of the flies who reigns.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 11-Jan-2010 8:22 sitemap