Graeber mentions something I find really interesting, that mostly after large disasters, people do not revert to a “state of nature” and begin using “savage” violence on each other to get what they want, that many examples show that people remain pretty calm and help one another instead of mainly victimizing each other. I’d like to see if he details this more later, because it makes me think about zombie/apocalyptic stories, which seem to take the “state of nature” result as a given, when it seems it is not at all.
Someone recently posted on social media that they were learning for the first time about how the US government reacted to Katrina (i.e., the mayor telling the cops that it was a time of “martial law” with no legal foundation; Blackwater mercs heavily armed showing up like it was a war zone; a majority white housing development outside the city so fearful of presumably black evacuees that they set up their own little death squad). The government (especially local cops) definitely assumed a resulting “state of nature” which did not develop and kept responding to the crisis as if it was happening when it was not.
Why do we keep making zombie/apocalyptic stories that envision the opposite, that people will inevitably be cruel, unable to cooperate and will victimize each other? I have some ideas, one of which is that zombie shows/apocalyptic stories envision the kind of insecurity, violence and destruction that is created by powerful “Western” countries abroad happening in “our” society.