When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
theguardian.com
When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
1–10 of 212 posts
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#2My high school's district required students to read The of Lord of the Flies.
My freshmen English teacher hated the book so much he broke district requirements and told my class he was giving everyone A's on that assignment. He asked the class to read any substitute book in its place. To this day I still consider him to be a wise teacher.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#3That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies.
But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.
So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#4It's not quite as simple as "it works like 'Lord of the Flies' or it doesn't". Nicholas Christakis, in his book "Blueprint", devotes a chapter to a database that he and his grad students made of shipwrecks, where the survivors lived long enough, in enough isolation, that they had to more or less put together a temporary society. There were lots of cases where they turned on each other, and lots of cases where they did not.
My review of Christakis' book, in case you're curious: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2851365787
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#5My high school's district required students to read The of Lord of the Flies. My freshmen English teacher hated the book so much he broke district requirements and told my class he was giving everyone A's on that assignment. He asked the class to read any substitute book in its place. To this day I still consider him to be a wise teacher.
I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#6I think the state of nature as imagined by the likes of Thomas Hobbes is more just an assumption that is more based on observations of conflicting social groups, as such it is an emergent nature. But, I think humans evolved on the basis of mutual cooperation is a better survival strategy. So I think we have this ingrained base nature that wants to work together with other humans.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#7That's a wonderful story and and an uplifting rebuttal to Lord of the Flies. But to be fair, six Tongan boys were probably far hardier and well equipped than the typical British schoolboy of that time would have been. It seems they thought nothing of stealing a fishing boat and heading to sea, and they most likely had abundant life skills already - they basically relocated from life on one pacific island to another.…
> So a great story but I don't know how much can be extrapolated from it about human behaviour in general.
Given that this really happened, a lot.
Lord of the Flies came out of the fantasy of an English superintendent. Yet, it has permeated our culture as a cautionary tale about human behavior. It is 100% fiction.
I’d like to recommend Humankind by Rutger Bregman - a wonderful book dismantling the toxic narratives we have about ourselves.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#8I wish the article had more information about the boys' time on the island. It's mostly about the captain that found them.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#9The six boys were significantly older than the Flies boys - 13 to 16.
Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)
#10It's not quite as simple as "it works like 'Lord of the Flies' or it doesn't". Nicholas Christakis, in his book "Blueprint", devotes a chapter to a database that he and his grad students made of shipwrecks, where the survivors lived long enough, in enough isolation, that they had to more or less put together a temporary society. There were lots of cases where they turned on each other, and lots of cases where they di…
These are the type of fascinating comments that keep me coming back to HN. Thank you.