Monday, November 24, 2008

[the haves] and the have nots



If you're having a particularly bad Monday, you might want to skip this post.  Can't remember what I was looking for in youtube but up came the Twilight Zone and one episode was called "The Best Ever" so of course I had to watch it. Part 2 of 3 is above here and if you can put up with the atrocious acting and 50s noir [which I sort of like], it's quite topical today.

In a few paragraphs - some neighbours are celebrating a birthday when, on the radio, the President announces a crisis - alien bombs and missiles are heading their way. Everyone helter skelters to the shelters. The birthday boy, a doctor, has made hay while the sun still shone and has a bunker, food, water, medicine and a trickle of air to breathe plus ... space for just his family and a steel door to stay behind.

The neighbours, of course, who just minutes earlier were drinking toasts to him, now start to come back over to his house - they haven't bothered building anything for themselves so they want to share his one family shelter. Trouble is there are three or four families.

One nasty piece of work turns on another and says that immigrant Americans have no right to food and shelter like real Americans and he attacks him, all sorts of proposals are put, proposals, naturally,  which will result in their particular family getting into the bunker; they argue about whose family has more right to live and then another nutter urges everyone to help him get a battering ram to break down the doctor's bunker door.

All pretence of civilized behaviour has disappeared.

Of course it raises interesting questions for this current day, in a recession, with resources slowly running out or their prices going sky high and the have-nots greedily eyeing the haves and saying the latter came by what they have immorally.  

In any societal breakdown, it's not only the Marie-Antoinettes, Tsars and Gordos who get bumped off but anyone else who actually worked for what he has.  Suddenly, all bets are off and neighbours become enemies, as in some William Burroughs novel.

What do you do in this situation?  What if you were the one who had the bunker?  What if you were one who'd never planned ahead and now wants it all?   Would the doctor have been justified in using a shotgun on his erstwhile neighbours, in order to protect his family?

9 comments:

  1. Interesting question about the shotgun. I'd say, under the circumstances (if it actually happened, and didn't end the way it ended, I just watched part 3 ;-) ), I don't know what I'd do. I'd want to protect my family but would be equally torn in helping my neighbors as well.

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  2. That's typical human nature, claw nd fight for their own self interests and damn everyone else.

    Whilst the doctor had every right to consider his family and had prepared, I could not have locked myself in a shelter with my friends on the other side in harm's way.

    I would rather everyone hole up in the biggest basement and all work to getting supplies together , all of us enveloped in community spirit/love and all with equal chance of survival.

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  3. I just realized how sappy that sounds, but I meant it.

    I always admired that the orchestra continued to play in an attmept to soothe the passengers as the Titanic sank.

    That's not only bravery , but selfless humanity.

    I guess there is a calmness in accepting one's fate and making use of what time is left instead running around in a panic.

    What would YOU have done James?
    Although, I can guess.:)

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  4. I remember that episode quite clearly, even though I was just a child at the time. I have to go with the shotgun, myself. Many I times I have heard people say that they don't see any point in spending time and money on emergency preparations because they would rather just go to some friends house and "share" with them, or wait for the government to do something.
    Seeing the show again as I got older made me think of political ideologies; people who don't want to worry about their own future, but immediately want something from everyone else when things go wrong. An excellent example of the socialist/communist outlook.

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  5. The shotgun sounds like a reasonable way to solve the situation if you had to.

    It's not the Doctor's fault that the other people haven't been so prudent.

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  6. Sod the shotgun. I'd reach for the shoulder-mounted automatic laser-guided ballistic missile system that I keep in my spare room.

    You know, just to be sure. Take out the rest of the neighbourhood while I'm about it too - Israeli style.

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  7. I think the message is, people, they're not getting their thieving, sodding hands on our life savings, such as they are. Other than that, we can be the most compassionate people in the world.

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