How to make peace in a world that settles for survival

My daughter, Emma, loves zombies.

Their low-decibel brain slurping can be heard coming from the family room 7 days a week, while she innocently crochets the cutest little plushies you’ve ever seen.

If pushed, she could probably quote all eleven seasons of The Walking Dead.

And maybe you’re inclined to judge the zombie-lover near you. I was! “Unwholesome. Vile. Gross!” But the more I’ve listened, the more I’ve learned: a lot more zombie love is just what we need.

Why are we talking about zombies?

For the uninitiated (like me), zombie lit is basically group therapy for whole societies. Zombies emerge in culture during periods of rapid change to help us externalize our feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness over our lives. (The Walking Dead was a top binge of the COVID era, years after the initial zombie craze of the previous decade.)

By projecting our personal fears and cultural anxieties into something monstrous, we get a low-stakes way to explore existential questions about life, death, and how we’d want our lives to look if we had to start over.

But this is precisely where the problem comes, for me. In our heads, we’re always the survivors, never the mindless brain eaters.

A battle against ourselves

Here’s how it starts:

Early in every zombie outbreak, this one thing must happen: our main character must kill an innocent (often a loved one) who’s been infected. Then some bit player comes along and comforts them:

“It’s not your fault,” the sidekick says. “You had to do it. She was already gone. It wasn’t even her.”

And with that, all of us are let off the hook. New rules have been written. There is no cure (and we know that definitively). So, we’re free to maim and kill at will. Afterall, we’re the victims here. We’re just out here trying to survive! And besides, they’re monsters!

As time passes, our hero becomes a killing machine. Remorse, indeed hesitation, becomes passé.

Yes, the war always starts the same: That person? They’re not really a person any more. Take ‘em out. They won’t even feel it.

Your family with different beliefs? Turned.

The other political party? Infected.

The friend who grew differently? I don’t know her.

Soon, we’re hacking away at people we once aligned with, telling ourselves they’re not even alive enough to feel what we’re doing to them.

This dissociation infects every survivor community I’ve ever worked with, and it’s rarely even discussed—a reflexive swinging on anything that feels like a threat.

In Max Brooks’ World War Z, an Israeli intelligence officer says, “I’ve heard it said that the Holocaust has no survivors…”

And this is why someone must call us up to do more than make it through.

Going beyond survival

Most apocalyptic stories have a central thrust: either survival or rebuilding.

And if you’ve ever been through war, you know this is actually how it works. The “survivors” live for today, burn it down, and deal with the consequences later. While the “builders” obsess over second-order consequences, relational capital, generational cycles, reprisals, perceptions, etc.

The survivors say, “But what if we die?”

The rebuilders say, “But what if we live?”

Most settle for survival. But think how many neighbors and people we love we’d avoid bludgeoning if we set our sights on a future remedy, rather than a momentary release.

The scariest thing about zombies…

There’s a reason we say we “feel like a zombie” before coffee, in the office, etc. Whenever we’re ambling about, not fully engaged, not thinking for ourselves, life can feel like walking dead. And it’s anything but benign.

There’s a line from Brooks, our zombie laureate, that captures my interest for us as peacemakers, caretakers, and astronauts of the unknown.

Brooks says the scariest thing is the mindlessness of the zombies. The overreaching. The disregard for consequences. But, with due respect to our rotten researcher, it’s not just the monsters, is it? Mindless mobs find purchase among the living, as well, transforming everyday people into thoughtless destroyers, from our algo-boosting likes and comments, to the public stories and policies they birth.

And, so, this is what apocalyptic literature ultimately begs us to ask:

How do I walk with honor, avoiding both life and death at the hands of a mindless mob?

Is it in our heads?

Last night in the gym, “Zombie” by The Cranberries came on. The song, critiquing the reactionary violence of the Irish Troubles, is one of my favorites. But zombies were not mainstream when I first heard the song as a child. Now that I’ve lived a little, her diagnosis hits different.

Per The Cranberries, “violence causes silence”. And that is objectively true. But, inflation being what it is, today the price is higher. Today, “silence is violence.”

Silence can no longer be thoughtful reflection on long-term policy implications. Silence cannot be a tactic in strategic diplomacy. Silence cannot even be a sign of weakness and fear.

No, today, silence is murder itself.

Why? Overhunting. And so we get a memetic repetition of incantations and spells that we hope will ward off the horde before it eats us alive. It’s certainly a social change. But is this rebuilding? Or just surviving?

As The Cranberries kept singing and I slung my weights around, common ground appeared:

It’s the refrain of every war zone I’ve ever worked in; a plea against cycles of recrimination, where people are made to pay for the sins of others. The singer tries to conjure up some pre-war mercy from her English neighbors after a terror attack by the IRA. “I might look like them, even talk like them,” she prays, “but me and my family are not the real source of your pain.”

The song dares speak to all at once. To the other, she says “I am not that simple story in your head.” And to the compatriot, “You’re acting like we’re stuck where we were a generation ago. Blowing things up is not a revolution!”

In our heads. Stuck in our stories. Consumed by what’s viral.

It’s the same old theme…

My glancing view at Emma watching zombies had given me the wrong story. It’s not us against the monsters. Or even us vs. them. It’s just us vs. us. As always.

“The lack of rational thought has always scared me when it came to zombies,” Brooks says, “that there is no middle ground, no room for negotiation. That has always terrified me.”

And this is why we must always try to see those who oppose us (and those we oppose) with empathy. Because as soon as we say “they’re too far gone”, the coup de grâce is all that’s left.

Will we settle for survival? Nuke ‘em or negotiate? Middle ground? Or Middle Ages?

Make no mistake, the plague is already here. It knows no creed, ethnicity, or politics. It will never get a marketable name like Bird Flu or Monkeypox. And there will never be a shot to make it go away.

But there is a cure.

5 Ways to Build Immunity and Avoid Becoming a Mindless Zombie

I know, lists are reductionistic—except when packing your go bag or as a manual for rebuilding civilization. So here’s a list that has worked for us:

1. Get fit. More movement, more pain tolerance, more discipline, more protein, more sleep. The kinder we are to ourselves, the more anchored we can be for others.

2. Stop reacting. Anger makes us dumb and destructive. Are you just another survivor? Or are you a builder? Slow down. Stop fanning flames that won’t keep you warm.

3. Embrace each other. Diversify your life. It’s hard. But it’s worth doing, because actual relationships build immunity to disinformation and lies.

4. Reject victimhood. Let others build their brand around pity and pain. A peacemaker must rise above any notion of their own persecution. Something happened. Fine. What’s next? Call in. Call up. Point forward. Show out. Greatness beats grievance.

5. Make something. It barely matters what you make. Just decide to stop consuming so much and start creating. Write. Bake. Knit. Paint. Carve. Sing. Dance. Play. Do it to purge. Do it to dream. Do it to grow.

I’m not saying I’ve got this all figured out. Clearly. But every week I get more “can I pick your brain” messages from founders, philanthropists, and others like you trying to wage peace in the world. And I want to be the best help I can be. So I’m looking for your input, guidance, and wisdom.

It’s a lot of “what if we die” out there right now, I know.

But what if we live? In that far future, it will have paid to be a peacemaker. To bless and not curse. To look for the best and not worst. To make and not destroy.

Together, I’m hoping we can break free from some of these rotten stories we have in our heads and work to rebuild a world where everyone rises.

There is more than survival.
There’s a cure.

With you,

Jeremy Courtney
@thejcourt