The Blind Man Society

I started writing about the book Lord of the Flies today, and got taken in a totally kind of related but not really direction. I was thinking about balance out there in the planet with people and animals. Particularly, the predators of this world.

If there are too many predators in a system, they eat everything, out reproduce everything, and the web collapses. In our world, the predators are being hunted to extinction right now. So, unless they are saved, and I REALLY hope they are, what will happen then? I was thinking that the co-existers would be left. But, given the natural balance of nature, predators would emerge from their ranks too. So, we might have a whole new wave of predator coming because of nature’s ability to balance.

So, I’m thinking now about Lord of the Flies again. The kids were on a small island, with finite resources and started as a democracy. The character of Jack came along, with a Hitler personality, and took over as the head predator of the island. His way won, but there was nothing left for anyone else, and eventually they would have all starved to death if they weren’t rescued from a shortage of pigs on the island.

Democracy seems to work well with large numbers of people. However my own personal opinion, is that every now and again democracy needs to be reset and start over again. There really wasn’t the chance for this to happen in the book, because autocracy, which seems to work well with individuals and small groups, won. It makes me wonder, how many predators come out of these small groups – not criminals, just predators. And, it all was reset at the end – the experiment of the island was over.

This could go ALL KINDS of directions, these thoughts, but to keep it on some kind of path for this blog’s purposes…these literary experiments with people and predators seem to be all around us. Its interesting to watch young people (I’m now 51, and I can finally say this) in their social groups – most notably those going into middle or high school at a new school from their old one. To watch, the social hierarchy being established and the unknowing leadership styles that emerge naturally within these groups of young adults.

Here too, there is a natural balance. I don’t know if you have ever seen the movie Heathers but in it, the “cool” leader women are replaced with the hope that there won’t be their kind of leadership anymore. What would a school do, without it’s “cool women” in charge of the social scene. In answer to this, new ones step up almost immediately to fill the shoes of the former and it continues, much the way it did. Once again, here is the balance.

Anyway, food for thought today – kind of a deep one, but, good fodder for conversation out there…. I’m just sitting here thinking about what would happen if Blowtorch Lady quit her job, and there was nobody to light things on fire anymore at the old shop. WHO could fill these shoes, and how long would it take. Thankfully I’m going to make millions when I grow older, and pay her salary to keep her there lighting things on fire, for a good long time to come. 🙂

Have a WONDERFUL day out there, everyone wherever you may be. Thank you for reading, and take care. As always, please feel free to leave your comments in the box below!