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wingedbeastTo start off, I'd like to make everybody aware of the short-lived British series, Survivors. It's a good example of post-apocalyptic fiction, focusing on a band of survivors of a world-wide flu epidemic that had killed off the majority of humanity. It's a well done, very human story that has no need for mutants or zombies or religio-apocalyptic Stand or any of the other window dressings of the apocalypse.
But, there's this one part of it that nags at me. One of the frequent side-characters is the former Prime Minister (or at least a political appointee thereof) trying to restart governance and civilization. That's a worthy goal and... it's entirely sidelined as a hurdle or an antagonist. This character, at different parts of the story, is trying to enforce laws and feels forced, by the situation, to personally employ the death penalty... then willingly rigging a trial and striking up bargain with someone who is openly pressing people into slavery.
On the one hand, this is a strength of Survivors. It fully acknowledges that, for people who aren't always on screen, they are the protagonists of their own stories... if not necessarily the heroes. On the other hand... that story is one I want to see more than the one I'm actually seeing, and not just for the descent into damnation.
That all is preface to today's Case. The political drama is the one part that we keep missing in Post Apocalyptic fictions.
In The Walking Dead, we have a band of survivors... then we have a colony/village living at what was once a prison, with a set of laws and practices to them. But, we don't see how those laws, those practices, that society was formed. It's just taken as a given tha this has happened and now High Holy Protagonist Rick is trying to raise pigs.
Revolution shows us a world a few years after electricity stopped working... in which new nations have set up armies. Okay, ignoring the fact that most modern nations, themselves, predate the use of electricity and can survive just fine as nations without it, how did those nations and armies come about?
The Mad Max franchise started with a movie during an apocalypse, continued with a movie in which one band of survivors dealt with a band of marauders, but then had two movies in which complex societies existed without explanation of how they came to be.
This is a missing story. Be it drama, comedy, taught and psychological, a philosophical exploration, here we have a ripe area for nigh-infinite possibilities and we're not seeing it.
What happens when the same people who claim that America's law is based upon Christianity really have the opportunity to build a nation based on their religion? What will happen when somebody makes the case for slavery as an economic necessity? And, in a truly Mad Max insanity of a world, what happens when people try to build a new nation and the Imotan Joe Worshipers claim that they're oppressed by not having their mythology taught as absolute truth in schools?
For my own thought, I'd say we have just a few years after the apocalypse, approximately .1% to 1% of the human population has survived (1% is approximately 7 million humans, so we're still good as a species). This is enough people that we can reasonably expect much of the infrastructure we know to be unsustainable and mean that old governments lack both their previous standing and, likely, their membership.
The first community would be the result of multiple bands finding the same usable land. Food, not idealism, is why the humans would first band together. But, as more people come, and it becomes obvious that more people may be needed to maintain matters such as irrigation, care of plants, care of animals, health of humans, some rules have to be started. Some official organization has to begin. Otherwise, the inevitable would be old monarchies come to for, followed by violent revolutions.
How do we organize matters so that it isn't, as The Walking Dead would have it, an inevitable Ricktatorship? What rights are essential? The debates begin. And, that, indeed, is what I want to see, the debates, the ideas being brought forth and challenged and put up to the marketplace of ideas and the people who believe in their ideas and ideals to struggle to make them as much a reality as disagreeing ideas and ideals can allow.
Will it be a better society? Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe. But, it will be a better look at the fact that those who start civilizations are not those who are greater than we, but those who happen to be there.
But, there's this one part of it that nags at me. One of the frequent side-characters is the former Prime Minister (or at least a political appointee thereof) trying to restart governance and civilization. That's a worthy goal and... it's entirely sidelined as a hurdle or an antagonist. This character, at different parts of the story, is trying to enforce laws and feels forced, by the situation, to personally employ the death penalty... then willingly rigging a trial and striking up bargain with someone who is openly pressing people into slavery.
On the one hand, this is a strength of Survivors. It fully acknowledges that, for people who aren't always on screen, they are the protagonists of their own stories... if not necessarily the heroes. On the other hand... that story is one I want to see more than the one I'm actually seeing, and not just for the descent into damnation.
That all is preface to today's Case. The political drama is the one part that we keep missing in Post Apocalyptic fictions.
In The Walking Dead, we have a band of survivors... then we have a colony/village living at what was once a prison, with a set of laws and practices to them. But, we don't see how those laws, those practices, that society was formed. It's just taken as a given tha this has happened and now High Holy Protagonist Rick is trying to raise pigs.
Revolution shows us a world a few years after electricity stopped working... in which new nations have set up armies. Okay, ignoring the fact that most modern nations, themselves, predate the use of electricity and can survive just fine as nations without it, how did those nations and armies come about?
The Mad Max franchise started with a movie during an apocalypse, continued with a movie in which one band of survivors dealt with a band of marauders, but then had two movies in which complex societies existed without explanation of how they came to be.
This is a missing story. Be it drama, comedy, taught and psychological, a philosophical exploration, here we have a ripe area for nigh-infinite possibilities and we're not seeing it.
What happens when the same people who claim that America's law is based upon Christianity really have the opportunity to build a nation based on their religion? What will happen when somebody makes the case for slavery as an economic necessity? And, in a truly Mad Max insanity of a world, what happens when people try to build a new nation and the Imotan Joe Worshipers claim that they're oppressed by not having their mythology taught as absolute truth in schools?
For my own thought, I'd say we have just a few years after the apocalypse, approximately .1% to 1% of the human population has survived (1% is approximately 7 million humans, so we're still good as a species). This is enough people that we can reasonably expect much of the infrastructure we know to be unsustainable and mean that old governments lack both their previous standing and, likely, their membership.
The first community would be the result of multiple bands finding the same usable land. Food, not idealism, is why the humans would first band together. But, as more people come, and it becomes obvious that more people may be needed to maintain matters such as irrigation, care of plants, care of animals, health of humans, some rules have to be started. Some official organization has to begin. Otherwise, the inevitable would be old monarchies come to for, followed by violent revolutions.
How do we organize matters so that it isn't, as The Walking Dead would have it, an inevitable Ricktatorship? What rights are essential? The debates begin. And, that, indeed, is what I want to see, the debates, the ideas being brought forth and challenged and put up to the marketplace of ideas and the people who believe in their ideas and ideals to struggle to make them as much a reality as disagreeing ideas and ideals can allow.
Will it be a better society? Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe. But, it will be a better look at the fact that those who start civilizations are not those who are greater than we, but those who happen to be there.
