The Coming Zombie Apocolpse

George Romero 1940-2017

Two weeks ago, the filmmaker George Romero died peacefully in his home in Canada, with his wife and two children at his side. George Romero was the inventor of the modern concept of a zombie. He invented all the modern stereotypes (they dress in rags, walk slow, feed on the living, pass on zombyism with their bite, and must be killed by head shots) in his 1968 low budget tour de force horror classic, Night of the Living Dead.

You can see the first scary moments in this clip on Youtube.



This started an entire new genre, that remains popular today, and has seen all kinds of incarnations, from comedies to love stories, and numerous television shows.

What is interesting is that new terms are popping up in more recent times around the notion of preparing for 'the coming zombie apocalypse.' Such people are called preppers, and their survival kits are called bug-out bags. There are entire YouTube channels devoted to prepping for the coming zombie apocalypse.





There are also entire lines of knives, spears, hatchets, and swords designed and produced just for dispatching zombies.



These melee weapons fetch well over $500.00 in zombie fairs.

And, unbelievable as it may sound, the U.S. military has done preparedness exercises for the coming zombie apocalypse. This is real. I'm not joking.



Now why do I bring this up? What is philosophically significant, or even spiritual, about this zombie fascination? The answer is 'consciousness.'

Sometimes you can only recognize what something is by getting a sense of its absence. A zombie has no consciousness, by definition. As a matter of fact, a zombie is a concept in contemporary philosophy. See philosophical zombie.

In the first season of The Walking Dead, a zombie television seires that premiered in 2010, the last episode of Season One ends with a rather intelligent discussion of the matter, as a sole remaining scientist at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta discusses how the disease (fictitiously in the logic of the show) works. I found the discussion and scientific presentation fascinating. And the ending, after the CDC blows up and the main characters beat it to their cars to get back on the never-ending road, there is a haunting rendition of Bob Dylan's 1971 song 'Tomorrow is a Long Time.' Sorry, but that ending still chokes me up.



Anyway, zombies are only a crude way to introduce the public to the concept of 'consciousness,' a subject so subtle it often baffles the greatest philosophers. But zombie films were soon to be overtaken by yet another MacGuffin to drive the concept home. That is West World.



This television series, launched on HBO in 2016, develops on a 1973 low budget film by the same name. In this film, the audience is teased to guess which characters have consciousness (humans) and which don't (robots), and even to wonder if it is a significant distinction. The first season of West World did more to clarify to audiences what philosophers grapple with by the name 'consciousness' than any book ever written.

The major chapter of Meher Baba's principal book, God Speaks, is titled Evolution of Consciousness. Baba once said, "It is well to remember always that the beginning is a beginning in consciousness, the evolution is an evolution in consciousness, the end, if there be an end, is an end in consciousness."

Hence it seems to me that the hierarchy is using these strange entertaining devices to sharpen men's intuitions about what is meant by this enigmatic and elusive term. Before we can know what has evolved, it is good for us to see what it would be like to not have it.