More Brains.
“That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.”
As liberal arts dean at small urban university, I helped develop a course called “Metaphor in the Public Sphere.” The idea came from the image of the zombie in society and a discussion of how the zombie reflects generational and personal anxieties--nuclear fallout, recreational drugs, space invasion, environmental destruction, biological experimentation, smart phones--all lead to the creation of zombies in one perspective or another.
The course focused on examining the sources and public impact of these monster manifestations and, as a final project, creating and presenting a real-life plan to survive the zombie apocalypse. Students mapped out escape routes from the campus, created communication systems, and determined rally points. They formed zombie apocalypse survival teams--which badass, golf club wielding Zombie Apocalypse teammates do you want around you when the brain-eating thugs finally break through? They figured out how to get weapons, supplies, and information--without cell service or wifi and without getting eaten. Or being taken out by the real threat of the zombie apocalypse: other survivors.
I recently realized that this course is predicated on one major assumption: surviving the zombie apocalypse is desirable. But what if subsisting in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by destruction, fear, and anger is not on your bucket list?
Since education is all about options, I am offering an alternative assignment for “Metaphor in the Public Sphere”: choosing not to survive the Zombie Apocalypse by preventing the Zombie Apocalypse from happening to you.
I am not advocating giving up when confronted with a massive, life-changing challenge. I am suggesting that when you see conditions ripe for zombification, you do something to create a place where zombies can’t apocalyze. No, that doesn’t mean holing up on a private island in the middle of nowhere. It’s a metaphor, silly. It means understanding what the zombie world looks like and doing just the opposite.
Apocalyptic condition 1: Where there are zombies there is loss. Most of your friends were eaten by zombies or have turned zombie themselves.
Preventative condition 1: Find and hold what you care about. This isn’t sage or novel advice but it’s easy to abandon when the hordes are at the gate. When all else fails, what do you need to keep close in order for you to remain you?
Apocalyptic condition 2: Where there are zombies, there are no rules. The rules you trusted before the apocalypse are no longer in play.
Preventative condition 2: Make your rules the rules. You’d rather make the rules than follow them, anyway. What are your “red velvet ropes” through which nothing passes?
Apocalyptic condition 3: Where there are zombies, there is constant fear. When you are not worrying about the zombies breaking through, you are worrying about which of your badass, golf club-wielding teammates is going to wield her golf club on you.
Preventative condition 3: Put down the golf club. If we’d stuck together to begin with, the zombies would not be out there.
While most students enjoyed and appreciated the activities and objectives of “Metaphor in the Public Sphere,” there were always a few students who decided the course was stupid and disposable--that it was, like math and English, not relevant to their lives or careers.
But I think most of us appreciate just how relevant to the world of work defending ourselves against zombies and their influence can be. We have seen organizations that once reveled in the service to others consumed by the greed for more buildings, customers, revenue, and accolades created by their own success. And as the people who nurtured that success go down the same self-serving path of money and distrust or disappear into the horde, the survivors became increasingly isolated and fearful, reducing further the strength needed to thrive.
There may be a million flapping butterfly wing causes for the zombie apocalypse, but there is just one effect when it happens to you. Don’t let it.
