Post #282755
2026-02-13 10:12 UTC
Replies (23)
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@delcano@mastorol.es 2026-02-13 10:44
@j_bertolotti I always thought Verne's Two years' vacation hugely superior to the Lord of the Flies
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@VoxOfGod@beige.party 2026-02-14 02:20
@j_bertolotti there's a new lotf series I'm not interested, cuz it feels like authoritarian propaganda
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@anne_twain@theblower.au 2026-02-14 02:20
@j_bertolotti Might say more about Tongan society than anything else.
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@jonathanharker@cloudisland.nz 2026-02-14 02:55
@j_bertolotti c.f. Humankind (2019) by Rutger Bregman, and The Dawn of Everything (2021) by David Graeber & David Wengrow for more of this 🙂
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@ashguy@infosec.exchange 2026-02-14 03:25
@j_bertolotti They weren't British, which, if memory serves, was one of the major actual points of lord of the flies, funnily enough :^) in all seriousness this is a great post that I needed, thanks.
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@ABScientist@forall.social 2026-02-14 04:32
@j_bertolotti So why is everyone so mad at me for wearing a mask to stop spreading disease?
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@bgrinter@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-02-14 05:03
@j_bertolotti @timrichards I like to think because they were Tongan and not snotty face English school boys
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@Pterry@fnordon.de 2026-02-14 08:47
@j_bertolotti I thought the takeaway was that Lord of the Files would only happen if it was spoiled male brats from some elite boarding school, anyway?
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@lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-02-14 09:12
@j_bertolotti stories concern themselves with outliers not statistically unremarkable events.
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@zaivala@hostux.social 2026-02-14 18:12
@j_bertolotti It could be pointed out that those boys were not white and were not subjected to the English school system.
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@Abangl@mastodon.social 2026-02-15 16:12
as described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History as well 👍
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@simonwilliamson@mastodon.world 2026-02-15 18:02
@j_bertolotti The difference is that Lord of Flies is about private (or as the English call it 'public') school boys.
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@jhertzli@mathstodon.xyz 2026-02-15 22:09
@j_bertolotti According to "Lord of the Flies," in the absence of authority, a society will go to pieces. The authorities loved it.
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@hadley@plush.city 2026-02-15 22:44
@j_bertolotti
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@swiftone@mastodon.online 2026-02-15 23:39
@j_bertolotti I'm sorry to see so many "um, actually"s. Beyond your example, disasters show people forming communities with strangers. Not only for mutual benefit, but to help the helpless. Recent times have injured my belief that "most people are basically good". Is "most" closer to 51% than 99%? Does a lazy good count as good? Hollywood tales of humans EAGER to turn on each other run deep. I keep doubting the actual history vs my expectations. But the history is real. Thx for the reminder.
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@ArrestJK@mastodon.nz 2026-02-16 03:22
@j_bertolotti Fairly sure Lord of the flies was written AFTER a book which had stranded boys forming a society that worked....and was a reaction to that book saying na this is what would really happen, can't remember that book name edit: First, William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies because he just didn’t buy the varnished version of events contained in an 1857 adventure novel, The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (RM Ballentyne)
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@ThorsdaysChild@mastodon.nz 2026-02-16 03:55
@j_bertolotti As much as I hate that book, I now almost feel sorry for the author - as I assume he based the characters’ behaviour on his own experiences at school.
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@Frantasaur@mastodon.ie 2026-02-16 09:31
@j_bertolotti lord of the flies is a parody of how Eton boys (the ones that ran the world back then, and still do to some extent) would get along in a situation where they suddenly needed to collaborate to survive. I don’t believe he intended to say anything about real human nature.
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@khoji@ieji.de 2026-02-16 10:22
@j_bertolotti William Golding was a close friend of my father’s and he often visited. Having got to know him quite well, I’m not surprised he got it so wrong. Much of it stemmed from his experiences in WWII, in particular having been on a Royal Navy warship forced to bombard a French coastal town, incurring the deaths of many civilians, for strategic reasons. It was a deep trauma for him that he never got over.
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@woo@fosstodon.org 2026-02-16 11:47
@j_bertolotti There's a hint in the book that there had been a nuclear war. They'd been conditioned to behave tribally, like now.
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@gloriousnoise@heads.social 2026-02-16 12:05
@j_bertolotti https://youtu.be/DYebOCCoTYM
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@jenspoder@masto.nu 2026-02-16 13:28
@j_bertolotti @LiseAndreasen I hate that book for this exact reason.
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@kodaian@fedi.catboy.agency 2026-02-15 14:00
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz i knew there was a reason i never liked that book! :neocat_think_woozy: