What We Can Learn about Our Choices in This Election from The Walking Dead
Spoiler Alert: I’ll be referring to specifics from across all six seasons of the series throughout this post.
When I tell people that I have become obsessed with The Walking Dead, I get one of two responses: disbelief, because I don’t seem like someone who would watch a show so seemingly pulpy or popular, or the more common “I’m just not into zombies” so I don’t get it. Both of these responses miss the point. The show ISN’T about zombies and the zombies aren’t why it’s been such a hit. The Walking Dead (and any number of shows which paved the way to success for this kind of series, most notably LOST) is fundamentally about humans and how we adapt to unforeseen circumstances, fight for resources, crush each other, and wrestle with what we have left if we throw out every last remnant of our civilization in exchange for mere survival.
The irony isn’t lost on me that the person responsible for starting my addiction was a fellow faculty member at the THNK School of Creative Leadership, and an executive coach at that, who also relishes how much there is to learn from stories which make the most of the grist of human experience. We were in the middle of one of our modules when I got suckered into watching an episode as a way to unplug. These modules are intense, week-long pressure-cookers which entail dissecting the dreams and purpose and north stars of the lives of our participants, all highly-accomplished world-changers, who are willing to scrutinize their learning edges, pursue mastery in new innovation techniques, and muddle through the frustrations of working in teams composed of radically diverse perspectives and competencies. And, as I studied social psychology at Stanford University under Professor Phil Zimbardo, of Prison Experiment fame among other things, it’s no wonder that in the context of playing with the conditions influencing human interaction, The Walking Dead did anything but help me tune out.
Hollywood, and science fiction in particular, has always played the role of provocateur — throw in a bunch of complex characters, whip up some crazy circumstances, and watch what happens (anyone remember Gilligan’s Island?). We root for our favorites, go through the struggles with them, and can safely, from the comfort of our own living room, wonder what we might do if we found ourselves in their shoes. But we don’t have to worry about it, there’s no zombie apocalypse on the horizon, right? So, we can turn off the TV when we’re done and go about our business. This is the crux of why I resist television — I can’t put these scenarios behind me when the show is over, and the better the characters are drawn, the more the addiction takes hold. I end up in loops of “what ifs” and self-reflection as well as re-examining our social structures and the increasingly complex systems in which we’re each active nodes.
If it’s not obvious, for example, The Walking Dead offers a lot of the same threats as what we see in an Ebola outbreak — a lack of clear external signs of who is infected in the early stages, rumors about how the affliction spreads, and the increasing willingness to break new developing norms for friends and family. Stories have always played a cultural role as cautionary tale, parable, or a means to sow the seeds of more optimistic new imaginings, if we’re lucky, to rally people (think: moonshot). In my innovation work, I can’t tell you how often people mention Minority Report and the way technology was envisioned in that film, spurring the development of real software and hardware that we’re seeing on shelves today — gestural controls, hololenses, etc.
Scenario planning is quickly becoming a serious and more mainstream discipline. Stretching well beyond military contexts, this type of storytelling for strategy development is seeping into myriad organizations and institutions that shape our society today as a required practice — from the think tanks you might expect to places like the University of Southern California and their 5D World Building Institute. These seeming flights of fancy allow us to wrestle with the big questions before they come to fruition. But many people are only willing to face a surface-level immersion into these scenarios, running along the spectrum from films, television and theater, to video games (first-person shooter especially), and now the emergence of virtual reality — though the proliferation of Escape Rooms is a curious exception.
In general, the ability to keep our distance is a defense mechanism, but this becomes a double-edged sword. The more realistically we are able to experience the true horror of scenarios like life in a refugee camp or the aftermath of an extreme weather disaster, the more likely we are to develop empathy for those slated to become “beneficiaries” of our participation in creating the conditions in the first place: authorizing war budgets and agendas, voting against climate protections, and fomenting for deportations.
Leave it to Misfit Economy co-author, Alexa Clay, to turn a serious eye to the potential of fantasy to shape our ability to make better decisions — asking if live action role playing, or LARPing, could bring about social change. Adults dressing up and playing pretend seems at first like a fringe dalliance but has come to gain respect as a tool for a higher level of immersion in these imagined or destined-for-reality scenarios. Imagine the impact of social pressures and extreme duress on decision making for a group scaling Everest, something one might consider doing before shelling out heaps of cash to risk one’s life, and you have the Climb, which encourages people to adopt different agendas as a member of the team. Even NASA has adopted similar practices, subjecting teams to actually LIVING the hardships people will encounter as part of life on Mars, while they explore ways to mitigate quality of life.
Keeping this in mind, conjure the image of Rick, blood dripping from his beard, alternately wild-eyed and untethered, and unsure of what he’s become and what he might do. Do you trust him? Would you want to follow him, if you had a choice? How did he get here? Did he have a choice? Or did a series of small inactions lead here?
The Walking Dead is a seesaw between the idealism of what our gang of intrepid survivors wants to create and fight for and the pragmatism and realism necessary to get to the next day — in order to even have a chance to forge the new (old) world they seek. Another way to think about this is the balancing act between short-term and long-term thinking.
How often do you make a short-term decision in the context of the longer-term outcome you really want, the direction you’re going? Morgan is the conscience of this question in the show, the embodiment of our on-going debates about capital punishment. And the children will always represent our collective future — do we want to leave them a world in which anything goes to get from sunrise to sunset? Is that a life worth living? Rick has gambled on both sides of these questions. He’s lost his way and risked becoming almost unrecognizable. And he can sense this best when he looks at his son and sees someone staring back with fear, unsure that he can still love or even follow this man unless he starts to become him.
Ultimately, we need to look at the rule of law — the idea that every citizen is subject to the laws in place and no one is above them. This is central to the gentleman’s agreement we implicitly make as part of a civil society. We have plenty of examples of what happens when people are scared or feel that the government or social institutions have broken their side of the bargain — take Hurricane Katrina or any city embroiled in looting or riots or unrest. Often what follows is an escalation of lawlessness because trust has eroded: every man for himself (and/or his family), which generally springs from the stance of fear and scarcity. Religious scholar, James P. Carse, touches on an aspect of this difference in his book, Finite and Infinite Games. In a finite game, you’re essentially fighting to win. In an infinite game, you do everything you can to not only to keep the game going but also keep it interesting and even filled with possibilities. The finite game is a goal. The infinite game is a direction.
Life is not a finite game and surely, given the interconnected complexities of our global systems, it’s no longer as black and white as winners and losers. And this brings me to our current looming election and Presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Here is a man who has promised to, and to some degree has already, ignore the rule of law. In his eyes, not every man is created equally, and he sprinkles his favors according to his own need-based hierarchy. Women serve a specific purpose and nothing more. And he will clean up and put on a tie and smile and lie until you believe he’s not a threat, but by then it will be too late. I could go on, but more and more journalists are thankfully starting to detail the many lies and outline the implications of his consistent positions.
So, I ask you to stop and think about trials and tribulations that we’ve experienced in The Walking Dead. When Aaron makes the decision to reveal himself and ask the group to join him in building Alexandria, why does he do it? After watching them, he sees that even in the face of depleted resources, they don’t turn on each other, Rick doesn’t cast people out on unfounded suspicions, and there is a willingness to keep going in favor of better days. Of course, Rick is cautious, which is the result of learning from experience, what any good leader does, but he remains fair and does his due diligence, relying on their shared principles and asking their three questions. Some part of him continues to wrestle with the risks of believing in people, but it’s clear that he knows the risk is worth it as his decisions determine the cultural and social fabric in which they must live should they survive another day.
Now reflect on what you are hearing from Trump — his nonsensical promises to those who are in need of economic support, his behavior towards his ex-wives and the many women strewn in his past, his promise of protecting us from “terrorists” in the face of global upheaval. How do his actions line up with his words? How does the picture of America that he paints align with what’s actually possible according to the rule of law and our Constitution? And what might we assume he does in the face of further unexpected stressors on the nation? Does the Governor come to mind, willing to say anything, lie point blank, to anyone in order to be left to his devices and expensive tastes?
This election offers one of the biggest opportunities of our time to examine various narratives and weigh their potential or pitfalls before we head to the polls and turn the storylines into reality. We have been reminded of the trajectory of Germany in the early 1930s, which is an apt tale of the rise to power of someone slick, charismatic, and utterly catastrophic for the world. And we have seen more than enough evidence of the persistent character traits that have made Trump who he is, from the stories offered by those who have worked with him, been left hanging in the wind, harassed, or simply fired for being losers. But what we have NOT seen may just be as important — no tax records, no medical records, no real policy proposals.
We are at Terminus. It looks like it might offer a cozy respite, something better or different than what we’ve experienced, but at what cost? Do we take our chance or is the road safer? On the surface, it looks manageable. But we should know better by now. Albert Einstein famously said, “the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” The hard part is finding the way to fight for and continue building a friendly universe without doing so at all costs, thus forfeiting the spirit of the goal in the first place.
The Walking Dead has ultimately afforded viewers a series of examinations of the ways in which we gain and lose trust, navigate personal codes and express leadership, manage the delicate balance of evaluating friend and foe, and prepare for the fallout that ensues after dealing with threats. In many ways, society is as much defined by how we treat our enemies as by how we treat our citizens. And now, we have a choice.
We are characters in the story being written about our country and our future. Today is the history of tomorrow. What would Rick do?
What will WE do?
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