It is ironic how
everyone fears [or most of the time secretly wishes] a zombie apocalypse. Isn’t
this the apocalypse already? Isn’t this the moment where lifeless human beings
roam and dominate the earth— infecting every last living soul until there is
nothing left? Is this not it?
Every
time I look through the faces of the crowd every rush hour I can see them: the
walking dead. They are everywhere, from the trains to the buses, the
streets, schools, hospitals. Even when I look in the mirror…
I
have become one of them.
Although
in pop culture and literature there have been many interpretations of the
walking dead— from firstly being popularized by George Romero’s ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ as simply
dead people coming back to life as mindless cannibals, then later on evolving
into different categories such as viral and supernatural, beings with extreme
rage and agility, or sometimes retaining the capacity to do what they used to
as humans— the essence of a zombie remains the same: human beings who have lost
the ability to reason and the capacity to be aware; human beings with a fully
functional body yet a dead consciousness, staying alive for just one purpose—
which is staying alive itself.
In
an oversimplification, to become a zombie is to be a mindless beast. And
interestingly enough if we look at the logical concept of a human being, which
is to be substantial, bodily, living, sentient and rational, to become a zombie
is to lose rationality, sentience and the ability to live— to become a mere
organism. This implies that a mindless beast is an understatement, for even a
beast qualifies as a sentient living organism with its capacity of
rationalization the only thing lacking. Being a zombie, essentially, is like
being a bacteria—even less— a dead bacteria or, one might say, a mere thing,
for the reason that even a bacteria is substantial, bodily and still living.
Now
if we look at the 21st century human being and assess this
creature’s essence according to the logical definition of a human being, one
might ask,
“Does man still pass for being man?”
If
we are to observe the common pattern of life in the modern society, a man is
born, raised by his parents or guardians, brought to school to be educated, then
afterwards brought to a higher school to be equipped and prepared, graduates,
leaves home to live on his own, gets a job, earns, saves, finds a partner,
settles down, marries, have offspring, raises them, affords their education, be
left after his children grow up, retires and soon after dies—
Sounds like some basic life cycle to me, nothing significant from other biological organisms.
Sounds like some basic life cycle to me, nothing significant from other biological organisms.
All
my years in the academe, I have noticed the circular routine nature of being a
student. You wake up with the view of the same old ceiling, wear the same old
uniform, listen to the same old lecture, do the same old homework, worry for
the same old exam. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The
thing about all these things is that the quarter of our lives, we are forced to
understand that everything we do is a preparation for the ‘real world’ or so they call it. A QUARTER OF OUR LIVES for
petty preparation. They act as though the world would still continue to revolve
tomorrow just so they can waste a quarter of a lifetime in exchange for a role
in the society.
And
so when you go to Starbucks or any café for that matter, you’d see students
[and hipsters] drowning themselves in coffee. Check the consumption of every
energy drink, and it will always be those sleepless students in their all-nighters.
Students have learned to rely on caffeine or any other form of synthetic
motivation just to get through every day of their predestined lives, waiting
for the day when they get to earn their place in the society and escape towards
the ‘real world.’
One thing troubles
me however; the summit of a student’s life is not actually the epitome of their
existence as human beings as they expect it to be. The undead I have seen
amongst the crowd are not actually exclusively students. They are workers, adults,
breadwinners, independents, aspirants, parents. The student’s pasture was a
lie. There was no sanctuary. There was no escape. There were only more cups of
coffee.
Yet
we are here, drinking our share of caffeine, hoping for it to keep us awake, to
keep us going through this painfully repetitive existence, desperately waiting
for sanctuary… the coffee drinker’s limbo.
Tell
me, what difference does this have from being a zombie? What part of this
circular routine needs reason? What part in this predestined life needs
sentience? We just live on. Kept alive by this caffeine—
staying
alive to stay alive.
No
apparent reason why.
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