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That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than t

by abraae 5y ago

That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another. So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general.

andrei_says_ 5y ago
> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we have about ourselves.
- strken 5y ago
  I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example. This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-humankind https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    I read both the book and this review, and while the review makes some valid points, it also holds the book to a pretty high bar. Usually I'm all for doing exactly that, but this book is not about hard scientific proof for some fancy new theory. It's about an idea, the idea that humans are good by default. To be taken seriously as an idea, it only needs as much proof as the idea it's rejecting, which is that humans are a razor thin layer of civility over evil, savage animals. It's about debunking that as much as it is about proposing an alternative. I think Bregman is perfectly happy to leave the hard science for the scientists. If readers agree that his idea is at least as plausible as the one he's up against, he's done pretty well. And to my reading, even this review agrees with that.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Cultural experience matters a lot here though. If 6 boys who dealt with hard grueling hunter gatherer labor, they'd have no issue pulling themselves up by their makeshift sandals so to speak, in the jungle. Western boys who may have had at worst, had a few days of hard labor, the rest school and sports, not so much. Your forgetting about culture shock. White boys who know nothing of hunting and gathering aren't going to fare well compared to Tongan boys who studied the school or hard knocks first hand. It's like dropping a black bear in the Arctic and guffawing that it can't adapt like the polar bear! They're not equipped for the situation appropriately. People are trusting. We know this. People want to work together. People want to survive. The simple fact that we are here today is evidence of that. Hunter gatherers, trusting an outsider showing them dropping seeds in the group produces crops. And now we have iPhones. All because baseline humans are "selfishly selfless." We learned that delaying gratification of the Id can provide greater rewards. That's why we aren't still animals fighting over berries with grizzley bears...
  - filleduchaos 5y ago
    I have no idea where you are getting the idea that six boarding school boys had "dealt with hard gruelling hunter gatherer labour" or "studied the school of hard knocks first hand". That is an amazing amount of assumption to draw out of the simple fact that they were Tongan.
- anotherman554 5y ago
  Lord of the flies was written shortly after world war 2, which also really happened... I don't take it seriously as a story of what would really happen if boys ended up on an island, but humans killing each other for dumb reasons is not the stuff of fantasy.
  - filleduchaos 5y ago
    "Distasteful" and "dumb" are far from the same thing, and the second world war happened for the former and not the latter.
    - anotherman554 5y ago
      It's a distinction without a difference- one could argue a less primitive species wouldn't have found itself caught in world wars. The man-children starting world wars are paralleled by the children-children killing each other on the island.
      - jpttsn 5y ago
        Your ”less primitive” species would have had what reason to split the atom?
        anotherman554 5y ago
        I think it's fair to say that pacifists do in fact, sometimes invent things.
      - filleduchaos 5y ago
        Reducing the historical and contemporary reasons why humans engage in war to people being "man-children" is a level of sticking-my-head-in-the-sand that I hope to never attain. I've never understood the urge to think of people and things one morally/politically disagrees with as simply stupid, braindead or immature - but there seem to be way too many people who seem incapable of contending with the idea that humans can be intelligent and highly amoral/immoral.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent." One would think that a schoolmaster would have excellent insight into the behavior of children and young adults. In any case, a quick look at the commonness of bullying (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_been_attributed_to_bullying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_bee...) should quickly persuade anyone that Lord of the Flies, despite being fiction, is not all that unrealistic.
- nesarkvechnep 5y ago
  I second that book, it's great.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
northwest65 5y ago
Lord of the Flies was somewhat a rebuttal to The Coral Island. More enjoyable to read though.
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
I think it's fair to say "don't bet against human ingenuity and spirit". I mean, we're here aren't we? We are alive, because of the will, intellect, and energy of those who came before us. Survival is essential to living things, so why expect that humans will degenerate to their worst in the absence of civilization rather than come together and make the best of it?
- jpttsn 5y ago
  Those we ate to be alive are not. I believe “human ingenuity and spirit” is not add odds with “our worst”. Our most ingenious/sophisticated technology often works for its human wielder against their fellow humans.
axaxs 5y ago
This was my thought, as well. At the risk of sounding...I don't know some 'ist' word, people are just raised differently and the world varies so much. Picture you're on a beach, and behind you is a shirtless man with a machete. How you feel is completely dependent on where you are in the world. In LA, you'd run for cover. In south east Asia, it's Tuesday. I learned a lot from my travels, to back the adage about traveling and learning. I remember being in a small fishing village and someone caught a large fish. I don't even remember what it was now, but the fisherman was so excited to catch this big valuable fish he shared it with everyone, even me the foreigner he'd never see again. Made me think about how selfish we as Americans can be. We already have a good life, and still look for ways to get ahead of everyone else. Yet a person with nothing is happy to share what little they'd found. Story aside, I agree that the experience would vary wildly by country, or at least upbringing.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Yup, much as the world is becoming more and more culturally homogenous thanks to freely sharing information, there's still significant differences that shouldn't be underestimated. I mean even though we consume the same media, I still strongly dislike many aspects of American culture.
- abraae 5y ago
  Funny you mention the machete. Last time I was in Suva in Fiji, some of the locals come into town for their evening drinks, directly I guess from cutting sugar cane in the fields, all with machetes hanging from their belts. It's a head turner all right if you're more used to people being kicked out of pubs just for wearing their jandals.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
goto11 5y ago
There is a lot of complaining in this thread about English teachers over-interpreting literature. But I think it is pretty clear that the question Lord of the Flies tries to answer is not "what would happen to a bunch of boys stranded on an island?" but more like "how could the holocaust happen?". The fact of the matter is that Nazism, WWII and the holocaust did happen and many people in 1954 was looking for some kind of explanation and understanding of how Europe could descend into barbarianism. Whether the book is insightful in its association between totalitarianism and tribalism and primitive religion is a different question. The story is a "rebuttal" in the same way that it would be a rebuttal to Animal Farm to prove that pigs are not actually able to learn to walk on two legs.
- watwut 5y ago
  The most disturbing for me is that people interpret work of fiction as if it really happened rather then one persons speculative take. Lord of flies is made up. It is not sociological study. Yet, the other thing is that boarding schools are notorious for bullying problem. And English boarding schools have ... particular history where older boys were allowed to beat younger boys. If we insist on making it real, that someone in charge of such school writes a book like this says less about general humanity. It says more about about how that institution was run and how he thinks they shaped the boys in their care.
mattmanser 5y ago
I don't think that's true. So my Dad grew up in the 50s in Southend, UK, and I wouldn't have been surprised at all to hear a story about him stealing a boat with his brothers for a joy ride. And the oldest was 16, almost an adult and easily far past the age children are often taught to sail in the UK even today. A year younger than when their rescuer originally ran away to sea at 17. And they were clearly still a bunch of idealistic, uninformed, woefully unprepared children, not even taking a map or a compass. And bringing only fruit as victuals.
dataviz1000 5y ago
Maybe the issue to consider isn't human behavior but rather leadership structure of the group of boys. With the boys in real life on the island who lead and how? There were moments of disagreement and they also had a system of administering justice and resolution. Did they follow the one boy who knew most about survival? That is a very different system of government than a voting democracy. The key is that when one broke his leg the rest provided for him. This goes all the way back to Plato observing city states in Ancient Greece attempts at creating institutions for mutual survival and defense. Thirty years ago I saw recording of a heated interview with William Golding about the character in the book the boys should have chosen to lead. I can't remember if it was Ralph vs Piggy however I think Golding argued that it was Simon, the Christ like mystic, who would have provided salvation for all the boys if he was followed. Simon represented altruism in the book picking hard to reach berries for the smaller boys who couldn't reach. So in real life when a group of boys who are stranded on island who have religious values, altruism like in the case of caring for the one boy with a broken leg it is like they would have chosen Simon as Golding suggested in his interview to lead. It might not be a rebuttal to the Lord of the Flies. It is a confirmation of what Golding said about the boys and their values.

by abraae 5y ago

andrei_says_ 5y ago

> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general. Given that this really happened, a lot. Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction. I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we have about ourselves.

strken 5y ago
I haven't read Humankind yet, but a recent review I have read[0] gives a mix of positives and negatives to it. A lot of the cited studies are controversial in their own right: S.L.A. Marshall's claim that only 15% of soldiers in WW2 fired their weapons is based on subjective evidence, omits mention of whether they had any opportunity to fire, and has many other flaws that have since been picked apart, for example. This is not to say that our negativity is justified! Only that Bregman seems to have as persistent a bias to positivity as other writers have to negativity. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-humankind https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-human...
- skrebbel 5y ago
  I read both the book and this review, and while the review makes some valid points, it also holds the book to a pretty high bar. Usually I'm all for doing exactly that, but this book is not about hard scientific proof for some fancy new theory. It's about an idea, the idea that humans are good by default. To be taken seriously as an idea, it only needs as much proof as the idea it's rejecting, which is that humans are a razor thin layer of civility over evil, savage animals. It's about debunking that as much as it is about proposing an alternative. I think Bregman is perfectly happy to leave the hard science for the scientists. If readers agree that his idea is at least as plausible as the one he's up against, he's done pretty well. And to my reading, even this review agrees with that.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Cultural experience matters a lot here though. If 6 boys who dealt with hard grueling hunter gatherer labor, they'd have no issue pulling themselves up by their makeshift sandals so to speak, in the jungle. Western boys who may have had at worst, had a few days of hard labor, the rest school and sports, not so much. Your forgetting about culture shock. White boys who know nothing of hunting and gathering aren't going to fare well compared to Tongan boys who studied the school or hard knocks first hand. It's like dropping a black bear in the Arctic and guffawing that it can't adapt like the polar bear! They're not equipped for the situation appropriately. People are trusting. We know this. People want to work together. People want to survive. The simple fact that we are here today is evidence of that. Hunter gatherers, trusting an outsider showing them dropping seeds in the group produces crops. And now we have iPhones. All because baseline humans are "selfishly selfless." We learned that delaying gratification of the Id can provide greater rewards. That's why we aren't still animals fighting over berries with grizzley bears...
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  I have no idea where you are getting the idea that six boarding school boys had "dealt with hard gruelling hunter gatherer labour" or "studied the school of hard knocks first hand". That is an amazing amount of assumption to draw out of the simple fact that they were Tongan.
anotherman554 5y ago
Lord of the flies was written shortly after world war 2, which also really happened... I don't take it seriously as a story of what would really happen if boys ended up on an island, but humans killing each other for dumb reasons is not the stuff of fantasy.
- filleduchaos 5y ago
  "Distasteful" and "dumb" are far from the same thing, and the second world war happened for the former and not the latter.
  - anotherman554 5y ago
    It's a distinction without a difference- one could argue a less primitive species wouldn't have found itself caught in world wars. The man-children starting world wars are paralleled by the children-children killing each other on the island.
    - jpttsn 5y ago
      Your ”less primitive” species would have had what reason to split the atom?
      - anotherman554 5y ago
        I think it's fair to say that pacifists do in fact, sometimes invent things.
    - filleduchaos 5y ago
      Reducing the historical and contemporary reasons why humans engage in war to people being "man-children" is a level of sticking-my-head-in-the-sand that I hope to never attain. I've never understood the urge to think of people and things one morally/politically disagrees with as simply stupid, braindead or immature - but there seem to be way too many people who seem incapable of contending with the idea that humans can be intelligent and highly amoral/immoral.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent." One would think that a schoolmaster would have excellent insight into the behavior of children and young adults. In any case, a quick look at the commonness of bullying (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_been_attributed_to_bullying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_that_have_bee...) should quickly persuade anyone that Lord of the Flies, despite being fiction, is not all that unrealistic.
nesarkvechnep 5y ago
I second that book, it's great.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

northwest65 5y ago

Lord of the Flies was somewhat a rebuttal to The Coral Island. More enjoyable to read though.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

I think it's fair to say "don't bet against human ingenuity and spirit". I mean, we're here aren't we? We are alive, because of the will, intellect, and energy of those who came before us. Survival is essential to living things, so why expect that humans will degenerate to their worst in the absence of civilization rather than come together and make the best of it?

jpttsn 5y ago
Those we ate to be alive are not. I believe “human ingenuity and spirit” is not add odds with “our worst”. Our most ingenious/sophisticated technology often works for its human wielder against their fellow humans.

axaxs 5y ago

This was my thought, as well. At the risk of sounding...I don't know some 'ist' word, people are just raised differently and the world varies so much. Picture you're on a beach, and behind you is a shirtless man with a machete. How you feel is completely dependent on where you are in the world. In LA, you'd run for cover. In south east Asia, it's Tuesday. I learned a lot from my travels, to back the adage about traveling and learning. I remember being in a small fishing village and someone caught a large fish. I don't even remember what it was now, but the fisherman was so excited to catch this big valuable fish he shared it with everyone, even me the foreigner he'd never see again. Made me think about how selfish we as Americans can be. We already have a good life, and still look for ways to get ahead of everyone else. Yet a person with nothing is happy to share what little they'd found. Story aside, I agree that the experience would vary wildly by country, or at least upbringing.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Yup, much as the world is becoming more and more culturally homogenous thanks to freely sharing information, there's still significant differences that shouldn't be underestimated. I mean even though we consume the same media, I still strongly dislike many aspects of American culture.
abraae 5y ago
Funny you mention the machete. Last time I was in Suva in Fiji, some of the locals come into town for their evening drinks, directly I guess from cutting sugar cane in the fields, all with machetes hanging from their belts. It's a head turner all right if you're more used to people being kicked out of pubs just for wearing their jandals.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

goto11 5y ago

There is a lot of complaining in this thread about English teachers over-interpreting literature. But I think it is pretty clear that the question Lord of the Flies tries to answer is not "what would happen to a bunch of boys stranded on an island?" but more like "how could the holocaust happen?". The fact of the matter is that Nazism, WWII and the holocaust did happen and many people in 1954 was looking for some kind of explanation and understanding of how Europe could descend into barbarianism. Whether the book is insightful in its association between totalitarianism and tribalism and primitive religion is a different question. The story is a "rebuttal" in the same way that it would be a rebuttal to Animal Farm to prove that pigs are not actually able to learn to walk on two legs.

watwut 5y ago
The most disturbing for me is that people interpret work of fiction as if it really happened rather then one persons speculative take. Lord of flies is made up. It is not sociological study. Yet, the other thing is that boarding schools are notorious for bullying problem. And English boarding schools have ... particular history where older boys were allowed to beat younger boys. If we insist on making it real, that someone in charge of such school writes a book like this says less about general humanity. It says more about about how that institution was run and how he thinks they shaped the boys in their care.

mattmanser 5y ago

I don't think that's true. So my Dad grew up in the 50s in Southend, UK, and I wouldn't have been surprised at all to hear a story about him stealing a boat with his brothers for a joy ride. And the oldest was 16, almost an adult and easily far past the age children are often taught to sail in the UK even today. A year younger than when their rescuer originally ran away to sea at 17. And they were clearly still a bunch of idealistic, uninformed, woefully unprepared children, not even taking a map or a compass. And bringing only fruit as victuals.

dataviz1000 5y ago

Maybe the issue to consider isn't human behavior but rather leadership structure of the group of boys. With the boys in real life on the island who lead and how? There were moments of disagreement and they also had a system of administering justice and resolution. Did they follow the one boy who knew most about survival? That is a very different system of government than a voting democracy. The key is that when one broke his leg the rest provided for him. This goes all the way back to Plato observing city states in Ancient Greece attempts at creating institutions for mutual survival and defense. Thirty years ago I saw recording of a heated interview with William Golding about the character in the book the boys should have chosen to lead. I can't remember if it was Ralph vs Piggy however I think Golding argued that it was Simon, the Christ like mystic, who would have provided salvation for all the boys if he was followed. Simon represented altruism in the book picking hard to reach berries for the smaller boys who couldn't reach. So in real life when a group of boys who are stranded on island who have religious values, altruism like in the case of caring for the one boy with a broken leg it is like they would have chosen Simon as Golding suggested in his interview to lead. It might not be a rebuttal to the Lord of the Flies. It is a confirmation of what Golding said about the boys and their values.