Andrew Semisch

Pahomov

English II

26 March 2019

Each Pray’r Accepted and Each Wish Resign’d

A pig’s head, buzzing with flies, speaks to a boy. A macabre moment in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, following a group of young boys stranded on an island torn between savagery and civility in their own new world, perfectly illustrates the religious cult concept and the mind altering aspects of cult teachings. Explored within the novel is an eternal duality. Egoism versus mutualism, Locke vs. Hobbes, the right of the individual vs. the power of the state. Somewhere in a grey middleground is religion and cult-like behavior. Cults can manipulate people to conform to a rigid belief system and use said system as a weapon, to consciousness-altering effect. How can people be inducted into these organizations so easily, without force or violence? How can leaders like Charles Manson or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh hold so much power over the human mind? These questions have led me to posit this: Cult leaders have an answer that their followers need to know. Humans’ natural paranoia of the unknowable attracts them to these figures who claim to hold the universal secrets that their students have been longing for, and so become dependent upon.

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill… You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?” (143). The pig tells the boy, Simon, this within a hallucination or dream state. Much like Jesus to God, Simon is written as a martyr and the successor of the deictic. The Lord of the Flies, through the dregs of the boys’ slaughter, enlightens Simon to humanity’s true fears. That the beast is within, and its presence is inescapable. Throughout the novel, the new island inhabitants go from extreme to extreme in their endeavors to suppress their fears, and to live comfortably - until rescue that is. This only acts against them, though, and their paranoia grows. There is nothing more terrifying than that you cannot fight back against. It’s for this very reason that we have the term “existential crisis”, it’s a state of fear induced by the uncontrollable and the Lord of the Flies cashes in on this fear, in a sense. With its grim charisma, it twists Simon and man’s fears into urges and commands. It says, “You’re not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island!  So don’t try on it, my poor misguided boy, or else.”

Between the years of 1969 and 1971, Charles Manson led a cult, dubbed the “Manson Family” in a series of nine murders. He often spoke to them of “Helter Skelter”, his prophesied race war of apocalyptic consequences. Although his ramblings were evidently delusional and he had been diagnosed with mental disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoid delusional disorder, his follower base stood loyal, often committing these murders in his name as a sort of effigy or tribute to the man. He was able to keep this power over the Family through the same means as the Lord of the Flies. He said once, “Anything you see in me is in you. If you want to see a vicious killer, that’s who you’ll see, do you understand that? If you see me as your brother, that’s what I’ll be… I am just a mirror.” This short quote, jumbled in with the ramblings the man was known for was a glimpse of surprising profundity. He frames his crimes and flaws as not personal, but human. Preaching this doctrine to the right, susceptible people had great consequences for anyone involved, including Manson. His godlike power over the Family led to the prosecution of the lot of them in court, as well as the deaths of nine innocent people.

Unlike Manson there is no such punishment for the vocalized fears, speaking through this hog’s body. That’s what makes it godlike in an even deeper sense. It has complete control of Simon but only through the ability of Simon’s self. The Lord of the Flies is nothing more than Simon’s own rope, tied to himself. His unshakable fears are simply so because they are primally instilled upon him. If the novel did not place the boys on their island, they would not have returned an animalistic nature and their animalistic fears. “What set me on fire was the thought” Manson once said. Perhaps the primitive state that the boys’ secluded society reverted to wasn’t the cause of their existential and internal conflict but the exact opposite; The lack of authority and answer found near constantly in adolescence was the domino that crashed, releasing the shackles suppressing our primeval instinct. This is the same primeval instinct that our societies and religions are built upon fighting against. From the clothes on any individual’s back, to capitalism or any other monetary system, to the idea of infrastructure which quite literally defaces the natural world, formed by millions of years of erosion and the chaotic allocation and reallocation of Earth’s matter. We have been trained to fight back against this most natural foundation of our planet in favor of our own system.

Manson gave people an attractive alternative. An alternative that went against the rhetoric proposed by any religious acolyte before him. Thinking about the word of any one large group’s God, what are the faithful as well as the non-believers told? In the end any given group will tell the world this:

Our deity is the truth and the truth is bound to reality. We are all bound to that God’s rule and that God knows all. Our God is not connected to the natural world; our God is it’s sculptor and controls every action that occurs within it. Our God is the great decidor.

Charles Manson was not without his god complex but his ideology was freeing to those who longed for a divine answer yet refused the binding nature of conventional faith. In essence, his followers were seeking the fire to their thought. They required the chaos of nature, completely eradicated in modern religion - no doubt tied to the doctrine of the superiority of people that theology teaches. The idea that we are greater than a bonobo, or a jungle orchid, or the moon.

Manson does not make his “children” in his image. Summarized from his 1991 interview (mid-conviction) with Ron Reagan Jr., he does not order his followers. He reminds them of their own personal demons that haunt them. The Lord of the Flies does not command Simon, but tells him what Simon, the Manson Family, or even Judas of their own actions which they cannot control. Manson knew how we, people, worked too well and served as a catalyst to the wrong-doings of the Family. In a sense this makes him the Lord of the Flies. He who does not speak to our sins but knows what they are nonetheless. He who has has embraced the nature world as his own but is far from its controller. Alexander Pope once wrote, “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d ..”

Works Cited

Abelard, Peter, et al. Letters of Abelard and Heloise. To Which Is Prefixed a Particular Account of Their Lives, Amours & Misfortunes. By the Late John Hughes, Esq. Together with the Poem of Eloisa to Abelard. By Mr. Pope. And, (to Which Is Now Added) the Poem of Abelard to Eloisa. By Mrs. Madan. Printed for W. Osborne and T. Griffin, and J. Mozley, Gainsbrough, 1785.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Penguin Books, 2006.

Reagon, Ron, reporter. Interview with Charles Manson. Prison Interview with Convicted Murderer Charles Manson - Ron Reagan Jr., 10 Sept. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXq4FgZV1FI.

Systems. That’s the big word this year, the one nobody seems to stop talking about. In class after class, we’re asked to speak about what systems affect us, which systems are visible and which are not, and what a system is. To define a system, a lot of my classmates turned to the examples of the prison system or the credit system. All these things that make people generally unhappy. I can’t speak for the world, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that as people we don’t like feeling unhappy. We like positive systems that distract us from the negative ones and just make us feel good. For me that’s the regional rail train system.

The regional rail is just some trains. That’s really it. You get on and you get off some time later, surprisingly far from your initial location for how much you paid. I’m less interested with how it gets you where you’re going, and more concerned with the experience. I’m not sure what exactly about it I love but there’s just something meditative and calming about it. As you leave the city, you can see the urban area slowly fade and become more green; turning into a series of small towns and eventually farms and rural areas. To think that people take this ride 360,000 times each day is insane to me.  For me, it’s a calming and infrequent experience but for others, it’s their boring or stressful daily routine.

The really interesting thing with this example, though, is that it can be applied as a metaphor to any number of systems.  When one person sees a just means of protecting citizens from criminals, another sees as a flawed institution that harms minorities and prevents past felons from living a comfortable life. How a system affects the individual directly correlates to how that system is perceived. When I think of systems I think of the regional rail because it positively affects me in a way different than it affects many others. Some people like it because it gets them to work in the morning, (more often than not people hate it because it gets them to work in the morning), some people hate it because the trains usually aren’t the most punctual or clean. The majority of people, though, just don’t think about it.

When was the last time you sat down and thought to yourself, “How does the regional rail make me feel?” It’s a strange question, no doubt, but it’s also one that not many people have an immediate full answer to. The thing about SEPTA, and many other systems actually, is that they’re either not present in someone’s life at all, or all too present and the individual is just normalized to the experience. This happens a lot with systems - good or bad - all the time. Of course we don’t notice this because, well, that’s the point. Since 1976 the US government has executed 1,427 people for a criminal offense and we’re just cool with that? I mean, of course we’re not, but it’s become normalized to a point where we don’t even realize it’s scale. This example is especially true in states like Texas, where more than a third of these executions have occured.

But we don’t think about that on the regional rail because the regional rail is for peace of mind and enjoying nature go by. The regional rail is for getting your ticket after you’ve gotten on the train so you get one of the big tickets that they punch a bunch of holes in. It’s like an unintentional anti-system system. It’s this 403 mile web of steel tracks and cars going roughly 100 miles per hour, all communicating with each other over invisible waves in the air and I sit myself down and don’t exist for a few hours. It’s cathartic.

Throughout the school year I have been conducting research and gathering the research of others on the subject of homelessness and homeless shelters. There are more than half a million people experiencing homelessness currently in America. Unfortunately, it’s estimated that only about half of the homeless population can be sheltered at a time. In my research I found that life in shelters can be almost as bad as living outside

, without shelter. In shelters the homeless can be subjected to racism, transphobia, and other types of xenophobia to harmful effect. My research on this can be found here and here.

In my agent of change, I partnered up with Tyria Brown-Smith, a classmate of mine also researching homelessness, to create a presentation to raise awareness for the national problem of homelessness in America. Her previous research can be found here. While this issue is huge and seemingly impossible to completely fix, we found it necessary to raise awareness. Many victims of homelessness suffer from mental health problems due to their physical environment and from being ignored by hundreds of people1, day in and day out. Hence, if we would be able to change that, even slightly, it would be positive growth for the cause.

Upon the class being assigned our Y&tW project last quarter, we were asked to observe our daily world to gain inspiration for a topic. Off the top of my head I had a few ideas, but the national epidemic of homelessness was the most prevalent in my mind. As a resident of Philadelphia, the homeless are seemingly everywhere downtown, many of whom are ignored by the probably hundreds of people that pass by them every day. While I don’t personally know anyone who has experienced homelessness, they are a big part of the city that I’ve lived in all my life. While our project does encourage donation to a few different organizations attempting to remedy the problem of homelessness, we mainly wanted to relay a message of sympathy and, fittingly enough, brotherly love. While there is no quantitative way to measure opened minds, we hope and believe we made a difference.

Earlier in the school year I researched homelessness and the quality of homeless shelters online sources. Although these countless articles, anecdotes, reviews, and more were beyond helpful as a starting point, they yielded only a limited point of view into the life of someone staying in a homeless shelter. The conclusion I came to after conducting this research was that, as one would expect,  shelters are in pretty bad condition. An extremely easy way to see this would be, surprisingly, through Google Reviews. This was great for my research since it showed first hand experiences, both good and bad from a variety of people and locations. With this in mind I decided to set up an online survey for those who have stayed in a homeless shelter to fill out. This would let me see for myself whether the data I had previously collected was true.

One of my main focus points is trying to understand if race or sexual/gender identity played a part in the mistreatment of the people staying in shelters. This was, coincidentally, one of the greyest areas in any of the articles I read. One thing I commonly found while sifting through reviews were claims that white men were commonly being mistreated the most. I found this to be a bit… strange because of, well, literally everywhere else white men have privilege. So to combat the unclarity of this issue I just asked homeless people myself. For my original research I made a survey on google forms about homeless shelters and race/gender dynamics in said shelters.

I posted this survey to three subreddits. r/Philadelphia, the Philadelphia subreddit, r/Homeless whose name is self explanatory, and r/SampleSize, which is a community made for taking surveys and collecting poll data. Although I submitted to all three of these and received a mere 12 responses out of the 377 views I got some pretty grounding data. Among the 12 responses homeless shelters are biased against LGBT+ folks, even going as far as to “out” them to others staying in the shelters. Aside from that, the allegations of biases against white men were true (at least so far as to the responses I collected). Multiple of the survey takers stated that since there were few white men they were often targeted for theft (a common problem in shelters) and were less likely to have their belongings returned in a theft. I have included some of the responses in the picture below. (Here) is a link to the survey and it’s entire responses

There are more than 500,000 homeless people living in America today. About two thirds of those are living in homeless shelters. What you may not know about these shelters is that they could be even worse for their inhabitants than the outdoors. To hear the testimonies of many people who formerly resided in these shelters is jarring. Many tell stories of how they had been raped, had their belongings stolen, were forced to sleep in the cold with no blankets, and more.

As a citizen of Philadelphia, I see and interact with the homeless on an almost daily basis. While they need money and shelter, sometimes you run into someone who just wants a hello, or to listen to some music. I think that many find it easy to forget that the homeless are people, and when they’re not being ignored and exposed to the harsh outdoors, they go to homeless shelters which can be shockingly even more dangerous. The evidence is everywhere. After only ten minutes of sifting through Google reviews I found complaint after complaint of theft and neglect by employees and inhumane sleeping conditions. Of course some of these locations have close to no bad reviews but others are almost unbelievable. One location, “Gaudenzia House of Passage”  had multiple reviews saying that the people staying there had to “sleep in a chair in a cold room” for three weeks before being admitted a cot.

As bad as these shelters may seem, things only get worse for minorities. Especially for transgender women.  This can be shown in the pie chart below.

Pie Chart Link

While LGBT identifying people make up about 11% of the total population, estimates of how many homeless people are LGBT range from 20% to upwards of 40%. In an equal society this would not be true. Many queer people are forced out of their own homes because of their sexual or gender identity, most notably trans women and gay men. Let’s talk about race. As seen in the following pie chart, black and African-American people make up the vast majority of the homeless population. Black people only make up 13% of the total American population. That’s a percent increase of over 6 times.  

Pie Chart Link

Clearly our problem, as a nation, is not only with the state of homeless shelters or with xenophobia creating poverty inequalities but both; they intersect. To make homeless shelters more hospitable we need to somehow terminate the fact that there are these systematic inequalities and vice versa. From here I would like to personally interview some of the people affected by the homeless shelter system in America and more personally, in Philadelphia. The research I have done so far has been eye-opening to say the least and has only pushed me to continue studying and to try to make a difference in this issue.

Annotated Bibliography Link