Jake Freeman
Dr. Dreyer
Politics in Film, Fiction, and Music
September 7, 2015
Short Paper- Golding In our American society, we operate under a democracy, and there are rules, regulations, laws and authority to cover almost every aspect of human conduct. I believe that everyone is used to having some sort of rule placed on them every day, and most people in our society abide by the rules most of the time. However, if our society lost the ability to enforce the rules and laws, and we went long enough without any structure, life would become chaotic and we would no longer operate under a democracy. We would move into an anarchic society, authoritarianism would emerge and conflict would be inevitable. If we had no rules, eventually we would see the type of power struggle, issues with work division, and barbaric group-driven behavior that is expressed in literature like the book Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. One of the biggest conflicts that would arise from a vacuum of rules and laws would be a power struggle between people. There will always be more than one person wanting to have control, and those people are not likely to respect the other as life under anarchy progresses. For example, in the book Jack and Ralph both wanted to be the leader and the group voted on it, and when Ralph was named the leader Jack was aggravated and did not truly respect Ralph as a leader but went along with it. That did not last long, and Jack gained followers and eventually rebelled against Ralph. This would occur in any situation under anarchy. A vacuum of leadership and order would lead to power struggles. Not everyone would be like Jack, but there would definitely be people who rebel because they believe that they should be in control and no one else can control them. Another area we would see a decline if anarchy was present is in work division. Responsibility and contributions to society, or as seen in the book the contributions to the group of boys, would be another main conflict. Under anarchy, the members of the group will ultimately do what they think serves them best and some people would stop cooperating without structure. Humans who are worried about their own survival or are surrounded by chaos would become more selfish. An example from the book would be Ralph’s main focus on getting off the island, while Jack has an obsession with hunting. Ralph wanted a signal fire to be lit at all times and ordered Jack to keep the fire going. Jack did not keep the fire going, because he was too busy hunting. Another example would be Ralph trying to build huts, and no one but Simon would help him. No one else would help because of the same reason why Jack did not keep the fire lit. Everyone had something that they thought was more important to do. In our current culture, we have seen recent riots in Ferguson and Baltimore decline into selfish looting for some people, as chaos and lawlessness overtook these cities. Life would become more like this if anarchy took over. Some people would still be able to think about people other than themselves and still cooperate and contribute, but many people would get far too focused on their own objectives. Some people would just be too lazy and would not want to contribute anything to the group. Without structure and rules, society would simply not be as productive. Another area of trouble relates to the fact that humans have a barbaric side to them. This side of human beings would be a major conflict in a society where there are no rules and no real punishment. The barbaric trait may not show as often in our current society, because of all of the order and all of the laws that we have today. If we were in a situation where there was no order and no consequences for barbaric behavior, many people would eventually show their barbaric side. In the book, for example, the boys started off with a sense of order and democracy. In the beginning Jack and the hunters could not bring themselves to slaughter the pig, but towards the end of the story it got to the point where they were not even killing the pigs for food. Instead, they were killing them for fun, and brutally slaughtering these animals. The brutality built upon itself over time. Perhaps the most important evidence of the human’s barbaric side was the incident with Ralph and Piggy. They were never the aggressors, but when Simon approached the group on the beach with the parachute, Ralph and Piggy joined in on the brutal murder without even realizing what they were doing. This would be a problem in life under anarchy because the people immersed in disorder would start to lose sight of themselves. People would act irrationally and at times brutally, as they become more insecure and the pressures of group mentality took over. Life under anarchy would be chaotic. There might be a happy sense of freedom and order at first, but that order will diminish fast as basic human needs began to become a problem. The efficiency of providing for basic needs would be impacted by losing the rules and structure than enable our society to have safe roads, people who go to work, and rules about dealing with conflict with other people. If surrounded by chaos, humans would eventually lose sight of the needs of others, and they would forget what life was like outside of the chaos.