The Lord of the Flies offers a grim and pessimistic portrayal of human nature. The “darkness [of the human] heart,” to use the author’s phrase, is revealed when a group of boys from a British boarding school, shipwrecked without adults on a deserted island, descend into violence. Their “civilized” veneers are quickly peeled away and their violent human natures emerge. Three of them die before they are rescued.

The book was published in 1951 and helped shape a generation (or more) that was struggling to sustain a positive, liberal view of progress and human nature despite the reality of Auschwitz, segregation and lynching.

As a child of the 1960’s, the assumptions in William Golding’s book were part of the culture of racism and militarism that my generation rebelled against. We were the love children back then, just as Unitarian Universalists are called the love people today. Our t-shirts were tie-dyed then, rather than bright yellow. But we rejected the inevitability of violence prevailing in our individual natures and in our world.

I remember thinking that it was the repressive English public education system that had warped those boys. That violence wouldn’t’ surface if we raised children in freedom and encouraged independence. Summerhill, or home schooling, was the solution. Back then, most liberals also just accepted the gender stereotyping involved…all male, of course.

These questions of human nature are truly important for liberal religious folks who struggle to believe, with Dr. King, that only love can cast out hate. Given all the evidence that argues against that theological point of view, are we just being hopelessly naïve?

The Lord of the Flies was fiction and William Golding, its author, was a troubled soul: alcoholic, depressed, abusive with his own children. But his book and that image of violence just below our civilized surface still lives in our culture. It is often racialized and our animal cousins get demonized in the bargain…bestiality is the language. “Nature red in tooth and claw…” is one of the more colorful and famous expressions.

Among our closest animal cousins we have to accept that the violence of the chimpanzee is real. So, however, is the collaboration and apparent compassion of the Bonobo, another of our ape cousins.

The Guardian reported this week on what they describe as “The Real Lord of the Flies.” A group of six Tongan schoolboys were actually marooned on a deserted island in 1965. Pupils at a strict Catholic boarding school, bored, they stole a boat and tried to escape to Fiji but were shipwrecked on Ata, a small uninhabited island.

These boys “agreed to work in teams, drew up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty.” They solved quarrels by imposing a time-out. When one broke a leg, they set it (successfully) and shared out his responsibilities. As a group, they began and ended each day with song and prayer.

The boys survived on taro, bananas and wild chickens (the island had been inhabited years earlier until a slaver emptied the island). They were rescued, after 15 months by a ship that passed close enough to see the burnt areas around their fires. Some of the “boys” are still alive.

The finctional Lord of the Flies is credited with being a primary inspiration for Reality TV, one of the staples of commercial television. “Survivor” is the archetype. Our current President made his name as a more “civilized” reality TV star.

The Guardian concludes: “It’s time we told a different kind of story. The real Lord of the flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on one another.”

We human animals have natures that are not one dimensional. The original Lord of Flies is such a common outcome that we deny it at our peril. Violence, xenophobia, greed, fear of “the other…these are potentials within all of us. The examples are too common to name.

We cannot afford to be Pollyannas. There is no God, no deus ex machina to guarantee some final victory for compassion.

But we also cannot afford to disregard the truth that love, cooperation and loyalty also live within us. The question for us is how we can sustain them…at scale. The outcome is always in question. How can we help love win?

Blessings,

Bill

P.S. The Guardian article is adapted from the book Humankind, by Rutger Bregman