Lord of the Flies: Sir William Golding’s epic novel of the relationship between human nature and society, and the breakdown that occurs when the safeguards that society creates to protect itself start to crumble.
I first read the book in junior high school, as the waves created by 1960s American social change and protest began to crash into my consciousness. I came of age in a time when “law and order” bumped into personal freedom, and what would seem, at first glance – maybe – to be two very complementary concepts clashed as, at their extremes, one became an oversimplified icon of police-state thinking and the other became a caricature of lack of accountability and seriousness.
And the book resonated. Where was the middle ground? The sweet spot between the glue that held society together and the anarchy of doing whatever you wanted – more important, what would happen if the bonds loosened? What would I do? What would you do?
The real question – as I see it – relates to absolutes – primal imprints – do we need laws or does human nature automatically take over and self-correct, so that we stay centered and behave in a manner that separates us from our nonhuman neighbors. Do we become the very monsters we fear or do we transcend?
If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it and will leave you with this thought quoted from the manuscript – “Maybe there is a beast….maybe it’s only us.”
Maybe it’s only us – clearly there is enough proof in the past century and this one too, to suggest that way too often it is us – and sometimes us with laws to justify our actions…maybe the worst combination of law and order and anarchy – in fact, since the dawn of time such has been the case.
On a smaller scale, it’s evident in personal and business relationships when self takes precedence and “the end justifies the means” becomes the normative operating philosophy.
So again – the question is, what really stands between us and total chaos? Clearly laws alone don’t cut it – and in fact, can be perverted for evil as well.
Listen:
“Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.” Chinese Proverb
And there you have it – right conduct – an absolute – a primal imprint – a filter by which to judge what we do, what we support, what we champion.
We need laws – for sure – but as we know, laws are easy to break or ignore or worse, enact for the wrong reasons.
The book ends – “I should have thought that a pack of British boys…would have been able to put up a better show than that.”
What kind of show will we put on?
What do you think?
Regarding ethics ie. Right Conduct…
An interesting statistic from Harvard Business Review…
http://web.hbr.org/email/archive/dailystat.php?date=051412
What are the women doing right?
Hi David,
With respect, I am not sure I agree. How do we decide what right conduct is or should be? In the sixties Dr. Spock espoused a philosophy that corporeal punishment was inhumane and most of that generation began to conduct the upbringing of their children according to that philosophy. Was it the right conduct?
I am inclined to disagree.
Truth is the only absolute, and the only person I know to have ever spoken the truth, was Jesus Christ. Man needs to look outside himself, to a higher power to find the ability to conduct him or herself correctly. The nature of man is corrupt, and has been proven so over and over again.
Often what we think is right, is not. I remember the story of a tourist who attempted to save a hatchling turtle that was being attacked by seagulls. What the tourist did not realise was that if the hatchling died before it could emerge from the sand, it would be a signal to the others not to come out. By rescuing the hatchling, that ‘act of kindness’ was in fact a sentence of death to the other hatchlings.
Beelzebub ( /biːˈɛlzɨbʌb/ bee-el-zə-bub or /ˈbiːlzɨbʌb/ beel-zə-bub; (Hebrew: בעל זבוב, Baʿal Zəbûb Arabic: بعل الذباب, Ba‘al az-Zubab;, literally \Lord of the Flies\; Greek: Βεελζεβούλ, Velzevoúl; Latin: Beelzebūb), with numerous archaic variants,[1] is a Semitic deity that was worshiped in the Philistine city of Ekron. In later Christian and Biblical sources, he is referred to as another name for Satan Source, and in demonology, is one of the seven princes of Hell.
That aside – mother nature does have an incredible way of self correcting… its just needs us to have a \look from afar\ perspective… ie., over grazing depletes land, which depletes foor which kills cattle, which allows the land to recover…
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rowan — you are 100pct correct!!! what is right conduct — my POV would be that teh tourist did not exhibit it — but if it was aperson being attacked by another?
What do you think?
Hi David,
To answer your question. The greatest law of love would need to come into effect. Scripture states that “Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friend.” (John 15:13). That of course begs the question, what if the person being attacked is not my friend? Scripture goes on to say that we must do for others what we would want them to do for us, and I think it is obvious what we would all want if we were in the other guys shoes. (Matthew 5:44). That was the moral of the story of the good Samaritan that Jesus told (Luke 10:33).
The point is this, in our own strength we are usually not able to obey these commands given to us by Jesus. We have to ask Him to be our Lord (Romans 10:9, 10). That done, He puts His Spirit in us, and scripture informs us that then “A good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good” (Ma. 12:35). Someone once addressed Jesus as “Good Master…” to which he responded, “Only God is good” (Matthew 19:17) …in the absolute sense. God needs to be the power in us to override our corrupt nature.
Jesus had to have been God in flesh i.e. God revealing Himself to man, to have done what he did in his short time on earth, and what He still does through those who are His disciples. He is also the only man to have effected history as He did. A very simple example is that even those who don’t believe, celebrate Sunday of each week as a day of rest …because until Christ, Sunday was a nothing day.
The damage that has been done to His name has been done by those who have called themselves Christian but who had in fact not received His Spirit into their heart e.g. the Crusades. Satan always masquerades as an angel of light.
The important thing to note is that perfection in the flesh is a process. Men and women like Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Francis of Assisi, Nick Vujicic, the Apostle Paul etc., are examples of those who have reached a level of maturity to be examples to the rest of us of what can be achieved with Christ in us. Having received Christ into our spirit, does not make us experientially perfect at once, we will continue to fail many times over. In God’s eyes however we are made immediately and positionally perfect, because we have become one with His Son (John 17:21). We come into His spiritual Kingdom with much baggage that needs to be unlearned. The good news is that we will finally have the power to start changing because it is a law of nature for a seed to grow into the plant from which it came, and so it is with the Spiritual Seed that is placed in us “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” (1 Peter 1:23).
So maybe the proverb should be adapted to say ““Laws attempt to control the natural man. Right conduct is God’s control of the spiritual man.”
Just my thoughts.
Remember in the movie, “Goodfellas”, the day the FBI zoomed down on Ray Liotta’s character, Henry Hill? That day, Hill was on top of his game. He had all of everything in his pocket; all the plates were spinning. He was making a feast for his buddies with multiple pots of sauce, pasta, meatballs; you name it, on the stove. Whirling around in the kitchen, he was parceling out the cocaine packages from his last pickup, on the phone making new deals, snorting the cocaine, etc. etc. etc., and then it was all over in an instant. The Feds had surrounded his home from the air and by land, and Hill’s goose was cooked. Crime, breaking the law, whatever you want to call it, did not pay. The Hill character, and others like him, think that they can do whatever they want to do to get what they want. They never think of how they affect society.
This is called entitlement. These low-life creatures believe they are more entitled than you or me. They can steal, bribe, kill, whatever they want to do to get what they want, because they deserve to have it all; they’re entitled. Sadly, in our society, there will always be someone who thinks they deserve a larger piece of pie without doing the work. The far out complicated schemes that people come up with to get that “easy” and larger piece of the pie get more convoluted and repeated.
It boils down to a lack of integrity, a principal that has lost importance maybe because it’s viewed as dull, not risk taking. Though lawless creatures, lacking integrity are truly the ones who are boring. Our society needs laws to protect the rest of us from these sub-humans whether they decide to obey the laws or not. And who knows, there’s always a chance that integrity will come back into fashion.
I have to call shenanigans on the notion that man must look to a higher being for guidance with regard to ‘right conduct’. One doesn’t need a deity to contemplate philosophical issues (such as morality). .
In relation to Goldings tale, the kids had been taught about ‘right conduct’ but hadnt really contemplated it, hence when there was no figure there to enforce it for them, they were not all equipped to enforce it upon themselves for a long period of time (the conch initially held such promise!)
To this end I think his tale is also a warning with regards to ignorance, power, and fear – ruling and being ruled by it.
Your question depends very much upon what we collectively decide is right conduct – and how we collectively battle the aforementioned ignorance, power, and fear in reaching said decisions.
Matt — good point — much has been written about those who follow a “higher being” and in the name of that deity kill those who dont accept it. Way too many examples — past and present — to mention.