Philisophical Zombie Abuse

I’ve mentioned it before but it bears repeating: brain research leads to zombie culture. Once again, while researching and writing for the Great Brain Robbery, I came across another reference to zombies.

Can’t say I agree with the assessment offered, this time. 

“In director George Romero’s 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, terrified people trapped in a Pennsylvania farmhouse try to survive zombies hungry for human flesh. 

But real zombies aren’t like that, …. The word ‘zombie’ is a surprisingly technical term, introduced by philosopher David Chalmers.

This is very misleading. First of all, there are no such thing as “real” zombies. In as much as philosophers have taken the word zombie to as a metaphor to describe beings in a thought experiment, they’re as real as anything else you can think up. For zombie lovers, every zombie move is a thought experiment; every video game is a “what would you do” scenario. Reality = zero.

Nor is “zombie” a technical term. It’s a metaphor. Its descriptive—and in every introduction to thought experiments that use “zombies,” there’s by needs a lengthy explanation of what that means. Then the “term” is as “technical” as any other co-opted word.

And of course. David Chalmers may have “introduced” the use of the word, but not the word itself. As any dedicated undead enthusiast already knows, the word comes from Haitian Creole, “zonbi,” which itself probably comes from an older word “nzumbe” which means “ghost.” Interesting, isn’t it, that the above article claims “Consciousness is definitely the modern conception of the soul” and then tries to confound a “soulless” being with a word that originates from the concept of the soul itself.

But, you know, that’s what we’ve been saying here at Zombie for Life: zombies are a thing. Zombies are here to say. People are going to use the word in metaphors, co-opt the term in new nomenclatures, and in general, abuse the concept like an erstwhile apocalypse survivor abusing trusted colleagues, while outside the brain eaters bar him in from precious resources.

Free Zombies (But Not: Free the Zombies)

If you’re reading this, you’re not playing No More Room in Hell. Well, guess what, neither am I. But man I want to. I was on my computer last night and I saw an ad pop up. Was it Reddit? Or maybe Steam itself? Yeah, it’s on Steam. I downloaded it but had to go to bed before it finished. Cause I have this job I go to everyday and I have to be up early. #$%^& morality.

Go download the game now. I am telling you this even though I haven’t played it yet. It’s free, damn it, it’s zombies, what more do you need?

Why are you still reading this? You’re like the shuffling dead, chasing me to the last line of this blog post. You can’t be reasoned with. All you want to do is feed. Well, here’s me screaming and writing away. Thank goodness for spell check. I need a weapon of some kind. I could bash in the brain of your sensibilities by saying something awful to get you to stop reading. George Romero was an idiot! That’s a shotgun blast to your guts!

Ah but it’s not true and you’re still coming after me. No More Room in Hell is, from what I can tell on their website, a first-person survival mod of the Source engine (that’s the Half-Life one. Hey, is that cool or what: Zombies are dead, but walking around like they’re alive, so they sorta have life, or Half Life. Yes it’s a stretch. When you’re being chased by reader-zombies you use anything you can to keep going). It’s not unlike Left 4 Dead in it’s co-op aspect, but up to 8 can play, which reminds me a bit of Killing Floor. But in NMRiH (name taken from that line in Dawn of the Dead: “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”) you’re defending your base, which is different enough from those others to be intriguing.

Maybe you haven’t stopped reading this and gone straight to Steam because you don’t have Steam. What is wrong with you people? How can you be the sort of person who reads zombie blogs but doesn’t play zombies games? Yes, you can get Dead Island on your X Box, but come on, man. No wonder you’re still after me.

Oh no! The inevitable tree branch/trash can/random object as tripped me up! You’re closing in! My workmates are arriving and I have to finish this blog post! You got me! Oh the horror as you feed on these last final words. But before I go: go downloadNo More Room in Hell now and tell me what it’s like!