Insights on Society from The Walking Dead (comic)

[Consept]

If you dont know the Walking Dead is a comic book and tv series about life after a zombie apocalypse in which most people die or turn to zombies and for the ones that are left they basically have to survive with scarce resources plus the threat of death and eventually rebuild a society. 

The comic book is a much better representation of the story imo, i started watching the series but it just didnt keep me engaged tbh. 

Now recently, in our world theres been a lot of issues in terms of freedom and free speech and some predictable anti-government sentiment. In TWD it poses the scenario of what if all governments literally collapsed so there would be no control over anyone. In short its chaos, people do whatever they need to do to survive, not only that 'bad things' can now not be stopped unless someone has sufficient force and power themselves. If youre by yourself the chances of you dying are highly increased because you have no security, if something goes wrong you have no medical treatment, so you have to join a group pretty much. So it makes you look at what we take for granted in our society, its such a given that we are relatively safe, that we get medical treatment etc.

With that however comes a trade off in which we cant actually be 100% free, although there is always the option to go it alone even now, its just that it would be a stupid choice and almost anti-survival to put yourself in more threatening position. So the trade off essentially is that we cant undermine the society we're in by not following the established rules. We can, in some societies, criticise it and attempt to change and maybe improve the established order but we cant overthrow it, i mean we can if we have the power to but thats quite unlikely. 

The other thing i was thinking about is that order, control and even potential violence is absolutely necessary for you to have any kind of free speech or any kind of freedom. Green for example might criticise blue and its obsession with order and control but for green to even exist and be able to say anything without threat of violence completely relies on the order and control you get from blue. Simply put if society did collapse greens would either not survive or would have to revert to red or blue to survive, so in effect you could have blue without green but you couldnt have green without blue, i think this is something thats often missed by green. 

Also i think those in charge are always going to get a bad rap, the only way a leader is going to be loved by their followers is if they have to, in that if their survival is at stake, like in a red dictatorship type scenario. Even if a leader has the best intentions, they will always make decisions that will be questionable to some of the group or that might directly affect the individual while being the best for the group. Simply put a leader will always have to make tough decisions. In TWD the bad guy Negan has to violently punish people if they fall out of line by attempting sexual abuse, however by doing that hes also ensuring the safety of all the other people he keeps safe, he believes this to be the best way as if he doesnt rapes will occur. So people may complain that there is capital punishment but at the same time no one is getting raped. 

Anyway just some thoughts ill stop before it gets too long, welcome any comments of those who've read or watched it or anyone who is interested in the themes generally