Are Zombies Evil? Yes, We Are

It’s Philosophy Thursday (which I just made up as an excuse to write about something. I probably won’t even remember to do this again, and next week I’ll declare “It’s Zombie Tacos with Too Much Cilantro Thursday!” although, to be honest, I have no idea what that would even be. But that’s the great thing about making up stuff about stuff that’s made up: I can say just about anything I want.). So let’s talk about evil.

Are zombies evil? The word “evil” has connotations of viciousness and cruelty, of sadistic delight in another’s misery or suffering. It has connotations of apathy, as well as selfishness, a love of destruction, chaos, heartlessness and oppression. 

Central to all of those concepts is a theme of will, which is to say, a conscious desire and drive. I think we can all agree that while zombies have a desire and a drive-- specifically to consume flesh in great bloody chunks, gore dripping from their jaws even as they shamble in ripped clothes, wounds oozing, towards their next victim—this is not a conscious desire.

Indeed, as we’ve talked about before, the word zombie is used in philosophy to define an entity that does not have consciousness but is otherwise unidentifiable from an entity that does have consciousness (which is why I disparage the usage because if there are two people standing there and you don’t which is the zombie and which isn’t, you’re in big trouble—not to mention the non-zombie person, who’s about to get eaten).

And yet, it’s easy to apply such consciousness to zombies, even if we know they’re dead, albeit inappropriately mobile and deadly in that death. Look at one of the words I used above: “victim.” It’s easy to say the zombie is seeking another “victim,” and with that scenario in mind we can easily suggest such hunger is “evil.” Rationally we dismiss it, but our gut wants to attribute a foul Theory of Mind (look it up. It’s a psychology term, but whatever).

The take away from all of this is that a zombie attack is different from, say, an earthquake, even if you could style a movie based on ether, if you’re going to focus on survivors competing with survivors. In each scenario, rationally, there’s no “will” that cause society to break down. But since we can’t help but to “feel” that the zombies are evil, it changes the way we survive at all—by being evil to other survivors. 

My suggestion is that we individual living humans see reflected in the zombies our own evil, and I contend the reflection is all the sharper for the realization that zombies are not actually evil. We use zombies to justify cruelty and selfishness, and when we think on what we’ve done compared to mindless shufflers with no actual consciousness, we either kill ourselves out of guilt, or embrace the evil and take delight in the suffering of others.

Damn it, this got WAY deeper than I meant it to. I didn’t even get to discuss how I think the above definition of “evil” isn’t even correct (although I stand by the concepts posited here if man’s innate selfishness and love of cruelty). Fine, next week, I WILL talk about tacos. Or something. Man oh man, it’s going to be a long Thursday.