JohnEngelman
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I was assigned to read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, while attending a boys’ military boarding school. Lord of the Flies: a Source Book is edited by William Nelson. The source book consists of thirty one essays on William Golding, and eleven essays of related reading.
Lord of the Flies was first published in 1954. William Golding was an English school master, who had learned about boys from observation. The novel is about a group of English school boys who are aged from six to twelve, and who are marooned on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean without adult supervision.
Originally the boys elect a leader, whose name is Ralph, and agree upon rules. Ralph befriends a boy named “Piggy.” Piggy becomes Jack’s more intelligent advisor. As Piggy’s name implies, he is fat. He is also nearsighted. Unlike Ralph, he needs the survival of civilized norms, because he cannot defend himself in a fight.
Jack soon becomes a rival to Ralph. Ralph tries to conciliate Jack by appointing him and several of Jack’s friends as hunters of the wild pigs on the island. In addition to pork from the pigs the island is rich in wild fruits and other plant foods.
When most of the boys revert to savagery, power shifts to Jack. Piggy and another boy are killed. The boys turn on Ralph, and nearly kill him, but Ralph is saved by the fortuitous appearance of a British Naval cruiser and a British Naval officer.
William Golding claims that Lord of the Flies is a literary polemic against Rousseau’s belief that humans are basically good, but they are corrupted by society. Golding claimed that his purpose “is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.”
Lord of the Flies became popular with high school students and undergraduates in college. Golding was often asked by undergraduates, “Is there any hope for humanity?”
I think a better question, which none of the essays in this book ask is: Is Lord of the Flies realistic? Would a group of boys abandoned without adults have behaved this way?
I think the answer depends on the boys. If Jack had not been part of the group, the group’s descent into savagery would have happened later and more slowly. If more of the boys resembled Ralph and Piggy, there may have been no descent.
If the boys at the military school I attended were left without adult supervision, I think the killing would have begun almost immediately. I might have been one of the victims.
That school had a sadistic, malevolent environment. There was a well defined status hierarchy. Those at the bottom were beaten up. Those near the bottom, like me, were not beaten up – I indicated that I would fight back, and possibly win – but we were verbally harassed. Those at the top were viewed with fear, rather than affection. Because military rank correlated with one’s position in the social hierarchy, the highest ranking cadets were often the most accomplished bullies at the school.
The bullies lacked the usual excuses. They were not products of broken or nonexistent marriages. Their family incomes ranged from upper middle class to lower upper class. They were cruel because it was their nature to be cruel.
After two years at that incubator of brutality I left in disgust, and graduated from the senior high school in my neighborhood. The students there were very different. There was no status hierarchy. No one was picked on. At least ninety five percent of the members of both student bodies were white.
Unlike William Golding I do not see civilization as a thin and fragile covering over innate human savagery. I see civilization as a recent acquisition of human evolution. Some people are innately more civilized than others. Some races have a higher percentage of civilized people than other races.
In his essay “The Roman State and Genetic Pacification,” Peter Frost, and in their essay, “Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification,” Peter Frost and Henry C. Harpending, argue that the draconian criminal justice systems that have usually prevailed in civilizations gradually eliminated the gene alleles that cause people to resemble Jack, the bullies I knew at the military school, and criminals.
https://www.researchgate.net/.../230796751_The_Roman...
https://journals.sagepub.com/.../10.1177/147470491501300114
During most of history in civilized countries and empires, criminals were usually killed at the scene of their crimes, they died in custody, or they were executed. There was no effort at rehabilitation. It is rarely effective. The few children some criminals had rarely lived to adulthood.
Liberals will dislike these essays. Nevertheless, Liberals are alive because during historical times the people who would have killed their ancestors were killed instead by criminal justice systems. This explains why racial groups that have practiced civilization the longest have the lowest crime rates, even when members are poor. Everywhere in the world Chinese are characterized by high IQ averages, and low rates of crime and illegitimacy. So are Ashkenazi Jews. I am reasonably confident that if fifty to sixty Chinese boys or Ashkenazi boys were left for a long time without adult supervision that they would behave well.
I define a civilization as a city based culture, where the government has the monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
Lord of the Flies was first published in 1954. William Golding was an English school master, who had learned about boys from observation. The novel is about a group of English school boys who are aged from six to twelve, and who are marooned on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean without adult supervision.
Originally the boys elect a leader, whose name is Ralph, and agree upon rules. Ralph befriends a boy named “Piggy.” Piggy becomes Jack’s more intelligent advisor. As Piggy’s name implies, he is fat. He is also nearsighted. Unlike Ralph, he needs the survival of civilized norms, because he cannot defend himself in a fight.
Jack soon becomes a rival to Ralph. Ralph tries to conciliate Jack by appointing him and several of Jack’s friends as hunters of the wild pigs on the island. In addition to pork from the pigs the island is rich in wild fruits and other plant foods.
When most of the boys revert to savagery, power shifts to Jack. Piggy and another boy are killed. The boys turn on Ralph, and nearly kill him, but Ralph is saved by the fortuitous appearance of a British Naval cruiser and a British Naval officer.
William Golding claims that Lord of the Flies is a literary polemic against Rousseau’s belief that humans are basically good, but they are corrupted by society. Golding claimed that his purpose “is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.”
Lord of the Flies became popular with high school students and undergraduates in college. Golding was often asked by undergraduates, “Is there any hope for humanity?”
I think a better question, which none of the essays in this book ask is: Is Lord of the Flies realistic? Would a group of boys abandoned without adults have behaved this way?
I think the answer depends on the boys. If Jack had not been part of the group, the group’s descent into savagery would have happened later and more slowly. If more of the boys resembled Ralph and Piggy, there may have been no descent.
If the boys at the military school I attended were left without adult supervision, I think the killing would have begun almost immediately. I might have been one of the victims.
That school had a sadistic, malevolent environment. There was a well defined status hierarchy. Those at the bottom were beaten up. Those near the bottom, like me, were not beaten up – I indicated that I would fight back, and possibly win – but we were verbally harassed. Those at the top were viewed with fear, rather than affection. Because military rank correlated with one’s position in the social hierarchy, the highest ranking cadets were often the most accomplished bullies at the school.
The bullies lacked the usual excuses. They were not products of broken or nonexistent marriages. Their family incomes ranged from upper middle class to lower upper class. They were cruel because it was their nature to be cruel.
After two years at that incubator of brutality I left in disgust, and graduated from the senior high school in my neighborhood. The students there were very different. There was no status hierarchy. No one was picked on. At least ninety five percent of the members of both student bodies were white.
Unlike William Golding I do not see civilization as a thin and fragile covering over innate human savagery. I see civilization as a recent acquisition of human evolution. Some people are innately more civilized than others. Some races have a higher percentage of civilized people than other races.
In his essay “The Roman State and Genetic Pacification,” Peter Frost, and in their essay, “Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification,” Peter Frost and Henry C. Harpending, argue that the draconian criminal justice systems that have usually prevailed in civilizations gradually eliminated the gene alleles that cause people to resemble Jack, the bullies I knew at the military school, and criminals.
https://www.researchgate.net/.../230796751_The_Roman...
https://journals.sagepub.com/.../10.1177/147470491501300114
During most of history in civilized countries and empires, criminals were usually killed at the scene of their crimes, they died in custody, or they were executed. There was no effort at rehabilitation. It is rarely effective. The few children some criminals had rarely lived to adulthood.
Liberals will dislike these essays. Nevertheless, Liberals are alive because during historical times the people who would have killed their ancestors were killed instead by criminal justice systems. This explains why racial groups that have practiced civilization the longest have the lowest crime rates, even when members are poor. Everywhere in the world Chinese are characterized by high IQ averages, and low rates of crime and illegitimacy. So are Ashkenazi Jews. I am reasonably confident that if fifty to sixty Chinese boys or Ashkenazi boys were left for a long time without adult supervision that they would behave well.
I define a civilization as a city based culture, where the government has the monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
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