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Mar. 17th, 2015 02:12 amI assume the title refers to the planned community's policy of abandoning the threatened, which, since these situations are inevitable when going outside the walls - which is also inevitable - means the community needs to recruit new people as it goes. It is not in fact sustainable, in terms of human resources. It needs to promise sustainability in order to get those recruits, though, hence the inward-turned walls. The walls are the selling point in the recruitment photos, but need to keep selling a sense of long-term safety to the community's members, who need to not think about how they'll be dying at a steady rate. The fact that it's two gay guys that they send out most frequently is suggestive, as is how the newcomers are quickly rising to positions of leadership as both guwardians of the wall and hunters outside it. Vaguely like how the consequences of our own unsustainability are farmed out to non-"members," e.g. deadly water shortages near the tropics due to the climate catastrophe industrialization has caused and continues to cause. Everything is ostensibly based on choices, rights, jobs, and in a sense is, but only because these means are consistent with manufacturing the necessary consent to not just cooperate but consume, to "buy in" to the notion of sustaining this particular sort of system. Hence the otherwise hard to understand expansion, I guess?
The contrast between their policy and that of Rick's group was neatly captured in the revolving door setpiece, where Glenn and Noah see high-risk cooperation as the obvious solution (note that their ability to break the glass is not made obvious to us, though), whereas Aiden's buddy sees the option to cut and run and takes it. This would be lauded where he lives, and may be next week, but prevents group functioning of the sort that has permitted Rick's people to survive in the conditions they have. The need for not only outsiders but hardened ones to keep the machine running seems to have only recently been acknowledged by the Congresswoman, though the two recruiters seem close enough to the wavelength of Rick's group, if not quite Rick's. But the hardened mindset requires loyalty, just as much as the competence that inspires that loyalty and permits it to matter. It's not so much communism as a sort of family, hence theoretically a system at odds with that of the community - which, while not clearly a democracy, at least retains a connection to it through its retention of a pre-apocalypse elected leader.
Rick's group isn't sustainable either without recruiting from outside, is their problem, but this leads to troubles of other sorts, since the more closely the in-group bonds the harder it becomes for them to trust or consult others. While absorbing the priest, they're not kind to him, and that's probably part of why he turns on them. We're pointedly reminded elsewhere that Rick no longer even asks the questions that were once used to screen potential members.
The whole season's keynote is the decision of the Terminal leader in the flashback at the end of the first episode. The imoortsnt part of this decision wasn't going cannibal but drawing a firm line between "us" and all others, the line permitting any stealing, murder etc. Since he claims to Rick that he was a decent person until that moment, we're clearly supposed to be worried that he represent the end of a line Rick's already following. Rick kills the cannibals in cold blood, which, given the absence of alternatives, is at least ambiguously justifiable. We start to really worry about him at the halfway point, when he executes Bob 2 in pretty much the most fucked up way anyone on television has ever killed someone. Note that Bob 2's main crime is loyalty to his own people, since he dies trying to save them - and without any murderous intent toward Rick's group. Given that he is in a car, has a gun, and has no tied limbs it isn't very plausible that Rick had no choice but to do what he did, either. Again, it's left just a bit ambiguous, since Rick didn't know how close Bob 2 was to his friends, and assumed the effort to retrieve Beth required complete surprise, and any effort to subdue rather than kill the man he was chasing would have involved slightly more risk to himself. But whatever disquiet we felt during the church scene (note the similarity of the staging of that to the horrific cannibal sink one, by the way) is multiplied severalfold here.
Since we know Rick is a good person the point to all this is that his sense of what's necessary is changing. The fact that others cannot immediately be trusted combines with the fact that one might not have time to find out if they can before they have caused the deaths of one or more of those one does trust (which amounts to loving and valuing them as much as one does oneself, a la the stereotype of a Marine unit). Rick's plausible conclusion is that everyone should be treated as hostile by default, and the notion that even innocent others should be killed for the good of one's own isn't far off from that perspective. The episode with Aaron is so chilling because there is simply nothing he can do to earn even Rick's provisional trust. The accident of proving himself in battle, combined with the willingness of the rest of Rick's group to hear him out, is pretty much all that saves him.
Rick is wrong, but why? Because of the slippery slope between the two positions, the show is arguing. When you kill to live a life that will simply consist of further killings promoting longer living your life no longer matters. And yet no line can be drawn short of that since even the non-hostile need to be treated as potentially hostile. You basically end up having to either sacrifice some of your own safety in order to permit some open pathway to trust ... or you become the Governor, like the head cannibal basically had.
The hospital leader is another foil for Rick, since she didn't directly exploit others but considered it necessary to permit that exploitation to occur in order to keep order. Her own slippery slope was similar to the one Rick's going down: in order to not be killed or enslaved by the police she commands not through loyalty but through condoning their enslavements of others she at last considers, perhaps accurately, that she must herself enslave Noah. She may not enjoy her privileges, but it finally doesn't matter, since she ends up with a society where the only shared values are mere survival (not worth it, hence the sex slave's suicide) and the conferring of all resources on the vilest of the strong. She's a bully and a protector of bullies in effect, even if her intentions had all along been the opposite.
So you can't not trust anyone and you can't have a gradated understanding of rights or you get sick in a way thst will kill you - the cannibals' declaration of war against everybody meant they'd survive only until someone stronger wandered by, and Beth's rebellion, while symbolic, suggests that the suicidal slave's desperation would also be channelled cooperarive efforts by the weak, assuming that coups by the ambitious strong don't get you first, or the annoyance of other groups at finding you cannot be trusted since you are so invested in the appearance of conscienceless strength.
Kind of converges on Game of Thrones here too, no? Nice never works but neither does mean, but mixtures don't work either because these two at last fail to mix at high pressures. And since mean's final doom, however delayed, is the same as nice's but mean also destroys any throughline of meaning to living in the first olace, you go with nice. And hope that every way that you see the nice fail can serve as a lesson, another piece of knowledge about the labyrinth nice is stuck in that, in total, will one day get it out. Which of course it may not do at all, or may only keep it going long enough to recruit its replacement, who may only be able to do, at best, the same. Sounding familiar?
And even Tyrese is killed because his eyes are on violence and the basic innocence of those it's done to. A mistake, or just "a risk" he "had to take - and took?" We never get to know, is the answer.
The contrast between their policy and that of Rick's group was neatly captured in the revolving door setpiece, where Glenn and Noah see high-risk cooperation as the obvious solution (note that their ability to break the glass is not made obvious to us, though), whereas Aiden's buddy sees the option to cut and run and takes it. This would be lauded where he lives, and may be next week, but prevents group functioning of the sort that has permitted Rick's people to survive in the conditions they have. The need for not only outsiders but hardened ones to keep the machine running seems to have only recently been acknowledged by the Congresswoman, though the two recruiters seem close enough to the wavelength of Rick's group, if not quite Rick's. But the hardened mindset requires loyalty, just as much as the competence that inspires that loyalty and permits it to matter. It's not so much communism as a sort of family, hence theoretically a system at odds with that of the community - which, while not clearly a democracy, at least retains a connection to it through its retention of a pre-apocalypse elected leader.
Rick's group isn't sustainable either without recruiting from outside, is their problem, but this leads to troubles of other sorts, since the more closely the in-group bonds the harder it becomes for them to trust or consult others. While absorbing the priest, they're not kind to him, and that's probably part of why he turns on them. We're pointedly reminded elsewhere that Rick no longer even asks the questions that were once used to screen potential members.
The whole season's keynote is the decision of the Terminal leader in the flashback at the end of the first episode. The imoortsnt part of this decision wasn't going cannibal but drawing a firm line between "us" and all others, the line permitting any stealing, murder etc. Since he claims to Rick that he was a decent person until that moment, we're clearly supposed to be worried that he represent the end of a line Rick's already following. Rick kills the cannibals in cold blood, which, given the absence of alternatives, is at least ambiguously justifiable. We start to really worry about him at the halfway point, when he executes Bob 2 in pretty much the most fucked up way anyone on television has ever killed someone. Note that Bob 2's main crime is loyalty to his own people, since he dies trying to save them - and without any murderous intent toward Rick's group. Given that he is in a car, has a gun, and has no tied limbs it isn't very plausible that Rick had no choice but to do what he did, either. Again, it's left just a bit ambiguous, since Rick didn't know how close Bob 2 was to his friends, and assumed the effort to retrieve Beth required complete surprise, and any effort to subdue rather than kill the man he was chasing would have involved slightly more risk to himself. But whatever disquiet we felt during the church scene (note the similarity of the staging of that to the horrific cannibal sink one, by the way) is multiplied severalfold here.
Since we know Rick is a good person the point to all this is that his sense of what's necessary is changing. The fact that others cannot immediately be trusted combines with the fact that one might not have time to find out if they can before they have caused the deaths of one or more of those one does trust (which amounts to loving and valuing them as much as one does oneself, a la the stereotype of a Marine unit). Rick's plausible conclusion is that everyone should be treated as hostile by default, and the notion that even innocent others should be killed for the good of one's own isn't far off from that perspective. The episode with Aaron is so chilling because there is simply nothing he can do to earn even Rick's provisional trust. The accident of proving himself in battle, combined with the willingness of the rest of Rick's group to hear him out, is pretty much all that saves him.
Rick is wrong, but why? Because of the slippery slope between the two positions, the show is arguing. When you kill to live a life that will simply consist of further killings promoting longer living your life no longer matters. And yet no line can be drawn short of that since even the non-hostile need to be treated as potentially hostile. You basically end up having to either sacrifice some of your own safety in order to permit some open pathway to trust ... or you become the Governor, like the head cannibal basically had.
The hospital leader is another foil for Rick, since she didn't directly exploit others but considered it necessary to permit that exploitation to occur in order to keep order. Her own slippery slope was similar to the one Rick's going down: in order to not be killed or enslaved by the police she commands not through loyalty but through condoning their enslavements of others she at last considers, perhaps accurately, that she must herself enslave Noah. She may not enjoy her privileges, but it finally doesn't matter, since she ends up with a society where the only shared values are mere survival (not worth it, hence the sex slave's suicide) and the conferring of all resources on the vilest of the strong. She's a bully and a protector of bullies in effect, even if her intentions had all along been the opposite.
So you can't not trust anyone and you can't have a gradated understanding of rights or you get sick in a way thst will kill you - the cannibals' declaration of war against everybody meant they'd survive only until someone stronger wandered by, and Beth's rebellion, while symbolic, suggests that the suicidal slave's desperation would also be channelled cooperarive efforts by the weak, assuming that coups by the ambitious strong don't get you first, or the annoyance of other groups at finding you cannot be trusted since you are so invested in the appearance of conscienceless strength.
Kind of converges on Game of Thrones here too, no? Nice never works but neither does mean, but mixtures don't work either because these two at last fail to mix at high pressures. And since mean's final doom, however delayed, is the same as nice's but mean also destroys any throughline of meaning to living in the first olace, you go with nice. And hope that every way that you see the nice fail can serve as a lesson, another piece of knowledge about the labyrinth nice is stuck in that, in total, will one day get it out. Which of course it may not do at all, or may only keep it going long enough to recruit its replacement, who may only be able to do, at best, the same. Sounding familiar?
And even Tyrese is killed because his eyes are on violence and the basic innocence of those it's done to. A mistake, or just "a risk" he "had to take - and took?" We never get to know, is the answer.
