Flies or Peace?

In mid-May, I had unexpected eye surgery that left me laid up and largely immobile for more than a week. On one hand, it was a major inconvenience. On the other, it was a rare gift, an opportunity to literally do nothing but read books and catch up on some streaming content with my good eye. 

Amid all that I consumed in my prone state, one mini-series and one book struck me as particularly relevant to our times, but in starkly opposite ways. 

Netflix’s new Lord of the Flies adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel is a dark and brooding four-part series that largely tracks with the contours of the original book, with some minor deviations along the way. Like Orwell’s novel 1984 from roughly the same era, Golding’s Lord of the Flies was way ahead of its time in terms of predicting ways that societies can unravel. 

As with the original book, the Netflix Lord of the Flies follows a band of British schoolboys stranded by a plane crash on a deserted island, and their attempt to bring some form of democratic rule to their predicament. 

Similar tofailed experiments in democracy throughout history, it doesn’t end well. Despite a peaceful start where everyone largely plays their position on the tasks needed for their survival (hunting, building huts, keeping a signal fire burning, watching out for the “little-uns” among them), things quickly devolve.   

The charismatic character Jack, unhappy with the more measured leadership of the duly-elected camp chief Ralph - and a bit insecure about his rival’s popularity- rallies a band of like-minded rowdies to create a new camp focused on their version of “having fun,” meaning bonfires, hunting, chanting, dancing, smoking, and fighting.It’s a primitive brew of adolescent alpha-maleness and chest thumping. 

Jack and his camp of followers basically giveup on the notion of working together with the others for the greater good and go their own way to get their kicks while they can, without any regard for rescue.    

Order breaks down. Chaos, violence, and death unfold in ways that are hard to read in the book and harder to see on the modern screen. 

Seen through today’s lens, the show feels less like the commentary on war that the book was largely considered at its release in the aftermath of WWII, and more a reflection on how naked, pseudo-macho power grabs can turn an otherwise functioning system into a dysfunctional mess. 

On the other hand, one of the books I read offers an alternative approach to our unsettled times. 

It’s called The Future is Peace, co-written by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon. Abu Sarah is a Palestinian who, at age ten, lost his older brother during the First Intifada in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Hisbrother was arrested by the Israeli military for allegedly throwing rocks at them, was beaten and tortured in prison and died from his injuries shortly after being released. 

Inon, an Israeli Jew, lost both of his parents in the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations. 

In short, Abu Sarah and Inon both have ample and justifiable reasons for hating each other and their people. 

Instead, they make the conscious decision to choose the opposite, meaning peace and coexistence through an intentional effort to better know and understand each other. 

The book follows their eight-day trek together through the Holy Land, visiting Western Negev, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Galilee, and Nazareth.   

Along the way, they’re faced with the familiar themes of anger, revenge, and retribution that have defined the region for centuries. They describe the physical and literal walls and fences that divide its people but focus as much on what they describe as the more difficult walls to scale: fear and ignorance. 

In a joint passage, they write: “We live in a world that is increasingly divided by politics and polemics, where we don’t cross the street to meet our neighbors, and where too often we view our neighbors as our enemies.  The most effective way to fight fear and ignorance is not with bombs and bloodshed but with dialogue.” 

The Lord of the FliesNetflix series ends the same way as the book, when a “grownup,” namely a British naval officer, arrives unexpectedly on the island to bring a swift end to Jack’s fever dream of chaos and destruction, and the boys are rescued. 

The Future is Peace ends with the authors imagining the realization of their own dream, namely a peaceful Middle East, where Palestinians and Israelis not only coexist, but thrive. “There are no fences, no watchtowers, no checkpoints,” they write. “Instead of raising memorials and monuments to the dead, we have gardens and parks and playgrounds for the living.” 

It’s easy to think the authors are choosing to see the world through rose-colored glasses while ignoring the reality of what’s around them. I guess in some ways they are. But all peacemakers throughout history - Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, Mandela-had the same basic and simple idea: the world we live in doesn’t have to be the world we accept. It takes courage, reason, vision, and empathy to reject violence and the false trappings of dominance and power. Let’s hope we can find a way to realize those traits in ourselves.