Zombie Apocalypse: Meaning Crisis & GEN-Z
Why zombies?
The Zombie is a terrifying figure. Conjured up by a witch doctor or produced by a virus a zombie belongs to an unusual category in the philosophical bestiary – a creature that is “undead,” not quite living but not fully dead either. The zombie is in fact what the Christian doctrine of resurrection has become in a culture which no longer believes.
It is estimated zombies have been the subject of more than 600 feature films since 1930, but more than half of those have appeared in the last decade. Zombies with their rotting, undead flesh may not be desirable, but they do seem to have social currency. It is worth asking why that is, especially amongst the younger generations. Whence this social cache of the zombie?
Perhaps a clue emerges from research showing that two English terms have risen to prominence from relative obscurity over the past 100 years and are used now about as regularly as each other – zombie and apocalypse.
It is clear that the zombie trope appeals in part because it speaks of a world gone mad, a post-civilizational “Mad Max” moment when apocalypse has happened, and zombies try to destroy what remains of humanity. Young people are growing up in an unstable world which to many feels “apocalyptic.” GenZs were born after 1995 and were children when the GFC happened (2008-9), and were highschoolers or uni-aged when the Pandemic appeared (2020-1) and in many cases they lived through severe lockdowns.
Zombies appeal because the world may feel chaotic or meaningless to GenZ.
Zombies, souls, and culture
We need to say a bit more about the zombie, especially noting that Western civilization is in a very interesting place that can only be called post-Christian but equally post-secular. Westerners are now very open to spiritual things again if not to established faith like Christianity.
In 1788 the Encyclopedia Brittanica defined death as “the separation of the soul from the body.” That reflected a modernised Christian vision; I say modern because of the focus on the dualism of body and soul, and I say Christian because the soul still is seen to exist.
Today, 250 years later, Brittanica defines death as: “the irreversible cessation of all vital functions that sustain a living organism.” Hmmm. That’s quite a shift in definition and tells us that the scientific world that late-moderns like GenZs are coming to adulthood within no longer believes in souls. In that sense, the modern vision pictures the human as a zombie, all body, no soul, driven by chemical and biological need.
Lion-world and human-world
The zombie therefore, I think, speaks of embodied life without soul. Perhaps another way of putting that is to think what makes a human different to a lion. A lion cub born on the African Savannah possesses basically from birth a “lion world,” a set of instinctive possibilities that tells him or her what to do, how to be a lion, and how to make lion-sense of lion experience. There is no equivalent human-world for us as there is lion-world for them. Humans create a “world” for themselves within what we call culture. Our culture creates our symbolic (and real) “home” and culture inhabits our bodies as “soul.”
Our cultures form us. They show us how to be human. Without culture, language, habits, customs, agreed truth; knowing what to do with a knife and fork (or chopsticks), which animals to eat and which to avoid, how to deal with the raw and the cooked; understanding how to tell a story and listen to one, comprehending the symbols that organise cultural life, seeing clearly which art is beautiful and which detestable – without all this (and much more culture provides), we could not do human life as we know it.
We humans teach our infants because they don’t have what the lion has doses of – instinct. All this cultural knowledge we pass on in society, therefore, informs our humanity and shapes what “soul” is.
Culture speaks to soul and shapes it by, very importantly, teaching it two important words and the rules of how to use them – those words are: yes and no, what to pursue (as the good), what to avoid and never go near (as the bad). We can call these “the rules,” the things our mothers and fathers, grandparents, and pastors and teachers, and even our politicians(!) once agreed upon taught all of us.
But what if you are a human person born into a human life-world where all the symbol systems are failing, where there is no up and down, left or right, where it does not matter if you use your chopsticks or dirty fingers, where everything seems confusing, even dark and gloomy, and there is little security, certainty, or bright hope for the future; if your culture keeps telling stories about death, and global warming, and viral apocalypses wiping humanity out? Is it possible that “soul” could be kind of erased, and you’d end up feeling very lost?
It might be you’d turn to stories and tropes of the zombie apocalypse as a way of making meaning out of the meaningless, and as set of coping mechanisms.
Crisis of Meaning
I believe we are best to see that the zombie symbolizes this very “crisis of meaning” that young people feel very acutely in this mad, dark age we are living through. They are trying to cope with multiple crises, any one of which would erode any sense of continuity and meaning and in many cases trying to do so without the resources of faith and the help of the Holy Spirit.
If we can have compassion on young people, seeing the zombie as a cultural trope symbolising this loss of a loss of soul, of safety, purpose, meaning, direction …. If we can do that, we start afresh to ask, what do our GenZs and kids and grandkids need right now?
What do I do to help?
Here are some recommendations for you to think about:
Turn the news off, especially if it’s all bad! GenZs know life is hard, they want to discuss what would make the world much, much better.
Don’t mock their mental health struggles. To grow up through a crisis of civilization is not easy. To have to make up the meaning of life for yourself, to figure out all the big questions, when the adults in your life no longer believe in them, is stupendously terrifying! No wonder they are anxious!
Pray for them. Pray every day for the Lord to bring a message relevant to them out of his own grace, mercy, presence and power.
Talk about your own faith often. Show them how it practically helps to guide you and give you direction and points you on a good path of how to live a flourishing, joyous life.
Always spread joy to them. Joy is an emotion that sits right underneath love. When we get something we love, we experience profound joy. What joy communicates is: there’s some important stuff I aimed for in my life and by hard work and luck, and by God’s grace really, I got it; getting what I set out for makes me happy and joyful. That will communicate powerfully to kids and grandkids: don’t worry; life is better than you think and works out in the end! Be positive around them. Tell them they are capable, and not to worry but to hand over all their cares to Jesus.
Let us hope the age of the zombie apocalypse is a passing phase and that our culture, through GenZ revival, finds “soul” again, re-energizes the yes and no of human flourishing only a healthy culture can hand on to us, and finds true resurrection life out of death.
— Craig Heilmann
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