One of my favorite books growing up was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Possibly, some of you are not familiar with this work. Lord of the Flies was Golding’s first novel, and he would go on to eventually win a Nobel Prize for literature (in 1983.) I’d like to use Golding’s work and this post to illustrate how post-modern societies devolve into tribalism when sufficiently stressed, using the U.S. as a case study. In the instance of the U.S., today’s “tribes” may be characterized in terms of race, religion, income, and, of course, politics in particular. And there are also other factions (cf. James Madison in Federalist X) such as anti-vaxxers, conspiratorial groups like Q, gender and environmental activist groups (such as Just Stop Oil), militia such as the Three Percenters or Oath Keepers, and so on.

The plot

In Golding’s book if I recall correctly, between 40-60 young boys roughly between the ages of three to eleven are flying over the Pacific Ocean circa 1940, when their plane crashes on a tropical desert isle. No adults on the plane survive. The two oldest boys are aged twelve. One is Ralph, who possesses a hint of maturity, civility and leadership. He advocates for the small children who are often ignored and need constant attention. Ralph is elected the leader of the children, and has them doing unpleasant chores, such as digging latrine pits or keeping a signal fire burning, while the children would rather sleep or play. The other twelve-year-old is Jack, who challenges Ralph’s authority at every opportunity. He is a sore loser because he was not elected to lead the youth, and eventually he retires into the jungle with a third of the stranded children in tow. Ralph’s group tries to maintain a semblance of civilization, hygiene, and cooperation but Jack’s group devolves into savages, arming themselves to hunt game and ultimately, the helpless members of Ralph’s tribe. Jack represents lawlessness, impulsiveness, cruelty and irrational thinking. He is a “Do what thou wilt” sort of boy and rules and norms don’t apply to him in his way of thinking. Jack doesn’t want elections because he can’t win. But he does hope to seize power some other way. He demands loyalty and obedience from his followers, something Ralph does not. There are other symbolic figures in the story as well. Piggy, a short, chubby boy with asthma represents science, and he comes up with logical solutions to problems, but is not respected by the other children in either group. Simon is a Christ-like figure, a member of Ralph’s group and the first child to be murdered on the island. Roger, with a strong streak of sadism, is Jack’s Master-at-Arms. If Jack were Joseph Stalin, then Roger would be Lavrentiy Beria. Jack’s tribe is perfectly happy to run naked with paint adorning their bodies as they chant and dance around the fire. Ralph’s clan eschews such primitive behavior, looking for peaceful ways to settle disputes.

I was taught that Golding wrote this book as a parody, a warning against totalitarianism in Nazis Germany, much as his contemporary George Orwell intended Animal Farm to be a commentary on Hitler and Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution. As the U.S. now flirts with a totalitarianism of its own, I believe the comparison between Golding’s novel and the U.S. today to be particularly timely and appropriate.

One of the hallmarks of a good literary work is timelessness. William Shakespeare tapped into common themes then and now, such as jealously, greed, hatred, envy, treachery, lust, and so on. I can see today that Golding’s work as more relevant than ever as far as this country is concerned.

In what way is it so?

I see the population of the U.S. in 2023 becoming polarized or splintered between the various genders, races, socioeconomic factors, cultural components and liberals and conservatives (democrats and republicans.) I find it difficult to support either of the two parties for different reasons, but at the moment, I believe the greater threat comes from the right. Like Jack’s faction, the republican members in Congress and other conservative media personalities sound more and more belligerent in their word choices. For example, Kari Lake, the Arizona broadcast personality who lost her 2022 race for governor and frequently speaks at Trump rallies remarked as follows after Donald J. Trump was indicted once again:

If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans like me, and most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement. We will not let you lay a finger on President Trump. Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion.”

Lake is now running to be a U.S. Senator. Donald J. Trump, himself, is referring to the coming showdown (what Q supporters refer to as the “storm”) as “the final battle . . .” Democrats are also much less likely to use terms such as “treason,” “traitor,” “enemy of the people,” “evil” and so on than republicans.

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Many democrats today (including Vice-President Kamala Harris) own personal firearms, of course. However, weapons to them are not as common or as esteemed as they are to the current republican base. I can name half a dozen right wing militia off the top of my head who train with weapons, but I cannot think of a single left-wing group that is armed with firearms and organized to fight. Many republicans and people who vote with them see Trump as heaven sent, a messianic figure, though few democrats would ever anoint their candidate with such superlatives.

Why are we becoming tribal?

Luke Kemp, a researchers at the University of Cambridge speaks of something called cultural (societal) collapse. In his words:

Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence.”

I’m sure each of us can see just how much America today resembles Professor Kemp’s description of societal collapse. Conservative commentators as an example speak of something called replacement theory where “U.S. border policy is designed to ‘change the racial mix of the country (ibid).” The white population of America fell by 8.6% since 2010 while the total population of the country continued to rise, fueled largely by people crossing the borders legally or otherwise. Our identity as Americans has lost its sharpness as well. What is an American? What generalizations can be made about them?

Certainly, public services are declining, whether it is the infrastructure of the country such as roads, bridges, the electrical grid or publicly-funded transportation. Try going to an emergency room of an inner-city public hospital. The chairs in the waiting room are all taken, but in many cases, the occupants are not patients, but rather otherwise healthy, predominantly “street” people trying to keep warm in the winter or cool in the summer. It is not unusual to find people on drugs wandering or stumbling around the waiting room, and even after triage, you may be biding your time for hours to be seen, and then still spend the night in the Emergency Department waiting for a bed on the unit. Not only that, the queues for elective surgery are longer than ever, putting some patients at risk.

Then there is the disorder and violence that Kemp speaks of. New highrise buildings are being shuttered in the larger cities because of the post-pandemic work culture (i.e., work at home.) Shopping malls are closing down because of looting and shootings, and the streets of West Coast cities are punctuated by urban campers (the homeless.)

Back to the island

Golding originally titled his book Strangers From Within but eventually changed it to Lord of the Flies, which is a definition (one of several) of the demon Beelzebub. Old Testament references to Beelzebub (בַּעַל-זְבוּב‎), a Canaanite deity are variously associated with Baal, and also Satan. Beelzebub is also often associated with the dung (manure) pits outside of the cities in Israel and thus the flies that are commonly found there. From there we can infer without absolute certainty the title Lord of the Flies.

The younger children on the island from both tribes are afraid of a “boogeyman.” Eventually, Jack, who with Roger and his warriors have been slaughtering the wild boar on the island and using the roast meat to tempt youngsters in Ralph’s corner to switch sides, mounts a boar’s head on a pike and that becomes an object of worship to Jack’s followers.

Golding wanted to reveal the darkness that lies within the hearts of man, even within innocent children. In the book, the children are eventually saved by the arrival of adults, but who saves the violent actors in a scenario where they, themselves, are adults?

Another word on societal collapse

Societies and cultures collapse regardless of technology, sophistication, military prowess or longevity. And collapse which comes from within can occur rapidly. The fact that for many decades we’ve promoted globalism and interdependence makes and sort of collapse equally liable to spread across the globe, whether it economical, macrosociological, or some other issue.

Historian Joseph Tainter believes that complexity in a society can eventually lead to collapse. As more and more parts are added and solutions reached to emerging problems, the society can cave in on itself because of the sheer complexity. Like a structure made of dominos or other blocks that keeps getting higher, it becomes more difficult to sustain and stabilize.

External shocks can also lead to collapse. Just think of the changes in our society after several years of a pandemic, and we still can’t predict what else we don’t know. Look at how many small businesses have failed while others such as restaurants have had to scale back their hours because of labor shortages. Churches have gone under for financial reasons as well. Certainly abbreviated hours in which to dine out will not cause our society to collapse, but given the added weight of other variable, it’s not helpful.

To this list, Luke Kemp would also add randomness and plain old bad luck. Here Kemp says:

Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. Evolutionary biologist and data scientist Indre Zliobaite and her colleagues have observed a similar pattern in the evolutionary record of species. A common explanation of this apparent randomness is the “Red Queen Effect”: if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, extinction is a consistent possibility.”

Returning to politics, today, families are divided over politics. Not local politics, but over Donald J. Trump. Relatives are “de-friending” other relatives on Facebook. Increasingly, and perhaps unconsciously, people are choosing as friends others with the same political ideology, which means their opinions are reinforced and one never hears the other side of an argument. This is particularly true among conservatives rather than liberals.

According to an important Pew Research study conducted in 2014, 63% of people who identify as “consistently conservative” say most of their close friends share the same political values and intensity (as opposed to 25% for respondents who identify as mostly liberal and whose friends are mostly liberal.) The same trend to a slightly lesser degree is true for respondents who call themselves “mostly conservatives,” and the reverse is true for liberals who are nearly as particular about their close friend’s ideology. Also obvious to even the causal citizen watching election night news, conservatives prefer rural areas while liberals are more at home in urban locations. That is a trend in almost all of the countries in the world throughout the ages. The theme is a child from rural family goes to a city to look for work and they become corrupted by the libertine influences and lifestyle, including drugs, prostitution and so on.

In the years since this study was conducted, the cleavage between liberals and conservatives has only broadened.

The U.S. election is less than a month away. Regardless of who is elected President, we will all need to come together to close the ever widening gap that separates us. Whether it can be done is the big question.