Zombie Me
Dien Ho asks, What's So Bad About Being A Zombie? This passage, especially the last line, cracked me up:
[T]he life of a zombie has characteristics many of us strive mightily to achieve. Their lives are highly centralized and simplified, since their needs and wants often revolve around just a few things, like brains or human flesh. They are largely indifferent to pain and suffering. Short of severe head injuries, zombies enjoy a type of immortality. Zombies do not care about most of the pesky concerns that fill our daily lives: they do not care about the weather, their appearance, their social status, their retirement plan, their morning commute, and petty office politics. They are not concerned about the threat of terrorism, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. And they certainly do not become jealous, depressed, worrisome, or suffer the other anxieties that regularly plague our waking moments. Indeed, if we focus on just these qualities, the life of a zombie resembles the ideal state of a disciplined Zen Buddhist monk who has managed to let go of his earthly concerns.
Mr. Ho also asks: If one can be better off dead ”“ as many advocates of euthanasia have suggested ”“ surely one can be better off undead?"
Professor Ho, incidentally, then goes on to ask what makes the living better off than the undead. He reaches no dispositive conclusion (which isn't surprising, since philosophy has always dead-ended, just as it had when Christ came to take thought to the next level), but, drawing on an array of philosophical precedent, he says "a caring and deliberative attitude towards one's life-projects is a necessary condition for a meaningful life" and that "the failure to reflect upon them entails the absence of meaning." Because zombies can't do such things, their existence is worse than ours, though he also holds out the possibility that many of our existences aren't much better:
In the brilliant parody Shaun of the Dead (2004), as he steps out in the morning for his paper, the eponymous protagonist hardly notices the world has been taken over by zombies. In the background, zombies drone along in the same manner as they did while they were humans. This parody succeeds precisely because all too often our herd-like reality reduces us to a zombie-esque existence ”“ an existence devoid of reflection, and thus meaning.
