3161

I am Canadian and I would kill the mofo in a heartbeat. In the fictional world of a ZA it is survival of the strongest.

3162

I had no idea until recently that Max Brooks, the WWZ author is Mel Brooks’ kid. I think we found another genre that Mel has to satire if he dusts off his film maker duds one more time.

3163

Not really, the strongest dumbass will not be living very long. That was the approach Merle took in the beginning (exhibiting brute strength), and he only lived through the power of the writers wanting to bring back a celebrity. That was a message that went over the average viewer, I suppose. Rick is a person who struggles with morality, if not always choosing the most moral option. That’s why he has lived as long as he has.

3164

Um, I think you completely relied on the outcome of the fictional plot to rationalize the outcome of a potentional, fantastic ZA. Not saying your conclusion is flawed, but saying, “see, that’s how it went down in the show” ain’t really the best way to support it.

3165

One really strong guy who alienates everyone around him (either by trying to kill them constantly or just being constantly self centered) will always lose against large group of weaker people who rely on each other and have each other’s backs. Don’t really need to see that played out on a television show to know it’s true.

I’ve seen gravity work on TJ Hooker and I’m pretty sure I can safely say that when your drop something, it falls in real life too. :)

3166

Perhaps. The key to successful strongmen is, of course, that a small number of them band together (you’ve got to have some lieutenants) and then start alienating everyone else. “Survival of the strongest” (the statement the borbes was responding to) doesn’t necessarily mean the single strongest individual.

On the support, the question is, would you cite to TJ Hooker to support your statement on gravity? As I said, the conclusion may not be flawed, but the argument surely is.

3167

I tend to use TJ Hooker in most of my dealings with academia. Hence my doctorate thesis entitled “Friction and its Effects on TJ Hooker’s Ass During Hood Slides in Season 3”.

3168

Um, no. If, in the post apocalypse and only then, someone tried to kill me and I caught him instead, I can freely do anything I want with him. He forfeited any claim to humane treatment by trying to kill me. His reason is irrelevant to me, since if he had succeeded I’d be dead and not very impressed with his good reason for killing me.

As to why we constructed this morality concept, I can’t prove it not having been there but here’s my theory:

At first humans lived in small family groups, possibly extended family(cousins, etc). That was fine without morality, might makes right is the only rule you need.

Then at some point larger groups started forming, groups that had no family ties between subgroups. Therefore these people had no personal bonds to regulate the violence, personal bonds that restrained family groups from killing each other. Dear old Dad isn’t going to kill off Junior under most circumstances, so they’re mostly cool with each other. You’ll note that this does not involve moral considerations but only what allows the family to procreate and live on. If dear old Dad has many sons he might well feel free to kill some of them as he sees fit.

However, what happens when dear old Dad is challenged for authority by some guy who is the head of his own, separate, family? Dad may feel he needs to kill this guy and his entire family. This could splinter the larger group, endangering the survival of all. Something has to be done to prevent this. Rules, morality, are needed to allow these larger groups to flourish. So there you go.

Post apocalypse though, we are back to small ‘family’ groups. In the Walking Dead world it’ll be years before those larger multifamily groups have to be formed. In the meantime, morality as we know it now will be not only be unnecessary but interfere with survival. For example, when Rick et al run into that guy in town, the one on the roof shooting at them, they were faced with a choice of what to do about him. Rick tried to do what was ‘right’ which was dumb. Rick’s ‘good’ actions haven’t helped at all, they’ve merely complicated all decisions he’s made and in some cases led to preventable deaths.

3169

We must be watching two different shows as Rick’s “good” actions have led to:

  1. His son’s life being saved by Herschel and the subsequent (albeit brief) respite from the Zombie Apoc on their farm. If they’d attacked (they were the stronger group), they probably would’ve killed a decent medic in the process…and their group wouldn’t have grown.

  2. The group’s continued survival (keeping those who are injured with the group when he could’ve treated them as dead weight has led to a fairly loyal group that even though not immediate family members, have bonded…including the killing machine Daryl. Something that might not have happened had he not done the good thing and offered to go back for Merle…even though Merle was decidedly bad for the group.).

  3. Not going into a gun battle in season 1 with the apparent hoodlums that just turned out to be a group of nursing home survivors protecting their wards.

There’s a lot more, but I think you get the gist. Rick’s good decisions backfire at times, yes. But it’s ridiculous to say they’ve all led to negative results.

3170

Let’s start by pointing out that this is a very dark and violent thought. Why is it only in the post apocalypse? I’m not sure why or where you’re drawing a line. If this line of thought is OK in a zombie apocalypse, why not OK now?

Stop here - why do you think there was no morality in a small family group? Your supporting argument is using the conclusion you’re trying to defend.

Now here’s an interesting, however incredibly wrong, point. Morality “as we now know it” certainly will cease in the ZA. However, that is not the same as saying that Morality will cease. Morality has evolved over time, changed constantly. Morality would certainly change in the ZA, but it will never justify doing whatever you want to someone just because they tried to kill you. It may justify killing them, but whatever you want? Get a grip.

Also, I wasn’t pointing to the show to prove my point, just making an observation about the show that mirrors my point. The show is constantly showing us immoral leaders (Shane, The Governer, The Hunters, Whatever the guy in the current storyarc is) that are mirrors to Rick. Rick is not perfectly moral, but does struggle with his morality.

As for TJ Hooker, well I’m too young to get that reference! Sorry!

3171

The farm thing was accidental, don’t give Rick credit for it. He knew they had a doctor before he had a chance to stage an attack on the farm, if he was so inclined. Compare instead the prison choice, let the prisoners live or kill them, which would turn out better? We know which way Rick went and how that turned out. Like I wrote before, dumb.

The morality thing, well all I can do is say this: I do not believe we are born with a sense of right and wrong, a ‘moral’ instinct. That is taught, or not taught, to us as we grow up. If you raised a baby on a deserted island and no outside contact, that kid would only have the moral code you instilled. If you lived like a wild animal, that kid would have no morality. What that kid may have formed on its own is a set of rules that make survival easier, but that isn’t morality. It’s simply doing what’s required to survive, a motivation that has nothing to do with doing what is right or wrong.

edit: The reason I say this only counts in a post apocalyptic situation is because there are no other options in that kind of world. A guy that is trying to kill me now can be dealt with by calling 911 for instance. I have resources to call on to help me in this world. In the PA world, there is no way to call much less anyone to call. So our current rules go out the window and are replaced by results based action. The result desired is survival, so whatever helps that is a legitimate move.

3172

Um, gameoverman, there’s a whole field of science that disagrees with you. Your concept of human moral nature was cast into the dustbin of history along with the Skinner Box. Recent studies have indicated that children are instinctually relational and empathetic. Cooperation is written into our DNA. It’s how our species has always survived and it’s why none of us have claws or fangs. Homo sapien, the wise ape. Just sayin’.

3173

I do think that morality is refined and shaped as we grow up, I’m not trying to say that we all know the 10 commandments or the golden rule or the categorical imperative from the moment we are born.

Obviously morality can be switched off, in the case of psychopaths, or reversed, as in the case of people who spread hatred of anyone who falls outside their own demograph (westboro baptist church, for example).

Also, in the ZA you mention you’d have no options. That’s wrong, you have lots of options. I listed some, there are infinite number more based on the specific context of a situation that we’re talking about quite broadly. But let’s get to the heart of the matter, this is a simple question.

This person tried to kill you, as you described. You catch him, disarm him, probably disable him by binding his hands or feet. You’re in a position to decide his fate. You have the means to kill him easily. here is what do you do? let’s look at two different options, which is quite reductionist because there would be a dozen options depending on the nitty gritty.

  1. one shot to the head, quick and painless death. You’ve secured your survival.
  2. You torture him, slowly removing limbs and stopping the bleeding. You show him his limbs, maybe make him eat them. You make him suffer long before finally just leaving him tied to a tree to die from a walker or starvation.

If what you say is truly what you believe, I’m expecting you to say that both of these statements are equal. Neither could be more right or wrong, because wrong and right don’t exist anymore.

I’m hoping that like most people, you’d believe that the excessive violence in the second scenario does in fact make that choice morally wrong. You’d be going over and above your necessary requirement to kill a potential threat.

3174

I would think the number of stories about people helping each other during tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters (even at the cost of their own lives) would serve as proof that humanity doesn’t abandon morality in the face of such things. Sure, there are the dregs of humanity that take advantage of people during those times, but some here are insinuating that the very concept of right and wrong would be tossed out almost immediately by everyone. That’s simply not true.

He didn’t kill them ALL and as we saw recently, one of the prisoners that he spared actually ended up giving his life to help them.

3175

What a bizarre scenario. People are arguing that in a ZA, morality would become very utilitarian, not that everyone would become sadistic psychopaths. Why in the world would you do all the stuff in example two? It doesn’t gain you anything.

3176

No, gameoverman is not arguing that people would become very utilitarian, he’s saying that morality would cease entirely. It is a bizarre scenario but it illustrates the fact that even when you have a prisoner who has tried to kill you that there is indeed moral considerations. By making it bizarre, I’m hoping to drive the point home. Clearly the second option is wrong, or at least I’d think most people would say so. There is no moral reason to do all the stuff in example two, but we know all too well that people do terrible, immoral things without a justifiable reason.

I would say that arguing that morality would become very consequentialist is a short argument - it’s already very utilitarian in western culture. So, maybe it would change very little? My thought is that the difference is the lack of authority to exercise moral punishment, which would necessitate that we become more aware of our moral agency. Some are saying in this thread that moral agency would cease, and that, I think, is not a well thought out position

3177

I would have to agree with game overman. Our moral judgement is taught through our culture and socialization. It is not coded in our DNA.

If we were raised to believe that female castration is an acceptable norm then there would be no controversy over the issues occurring in Africa for instance.

If a ZA occurred and wiped out most of humanity and kiddies were born without the moral guidance of parents from the preZA time period… I think that when those kids grow up with their own predefined moral compass example 1 and example 2 in the above described scenarios could potentially be equally as probable. It would have depended on the socialization of that postZA child who has grown into an adult in his postZA environment.

3178

I’d class what you are talking about as falling into survival based choices and actions, not morality.

People are social, in general, because it’s a benefit to survival. So empathy and cooperation come to be due to the need for those things in a social group that hopes to function for any length of time. The larger the group, the more you need those things. Which brings us back to the ZA. All groups are small now, some very small(Andrea/Michonne). The smaller the group, the larger importance basic survival has and the more morality is irrelevant. Rick’s group needs to do what allows them to live another day far more than they need to do what’s ‘right’.

As far as the torture scenario goes, while I personally would not do something like that(the worst I’d do is toss someone to the zombies), I also wouldn’t complain about it if someone else did unless it compromised MY survival in some way.

Glen Mazzara is off the show by the way. Two showrunners gone in two years. AMC must not be a fun place to work.

3179

A little more on that Glen Mazzara development

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/tv/blogs/tv-buzz-blog.aspx?blog=2080&feat=090e2f9c-c0f5-4d8d-8ea6-1ee31962f63a&ocid=ansent11

Now I want to hear what the difference in direction mentioned was…we may never know but wonder what he wanted to do in the fourth season that they didn’t.

3180

From what I can tell he was the creative force behind the Season of the Farm. He was on that Talking Dead show defending it.

Perhaps he was let go because of that season. Most of the Walking Dead fans I know quit the show during that season, I’ve barely gotten a few of them to give it another try.

It is a popular show, but even a popular show hates to lose any fans, and season 2 farm of nothing happening did that.

It is too bad, because season 3 was amazing. I can’t see any reason the guy would be fired, other than retribution for a less than stellar season 2, even if season 3 fixed all the problems:(