The Many Vs. The Many
Some Thoughts on "The Last of Us"
When The Last of Us started to repeatedly pop up on my social media feeds, I grew curious about why the show was getting so much attention. What made it stand out from the multitudes of other shows streaming on multiple services? In an effort to understand, I decided to not only read articles about the show, but to watch the show for myself. As I did, the show’s supposed popularity made a lot more sense. What I learned was that The Last of Us is advancing the idea that in a post-apocalyptic society, brought about by a virus for which there is no cure and exacerbated by a government that overstepped its boundaries and became a dictatorship in order to keep the virus at bay, the only solution is communism.
This may seem surprising, given that the one episode that really caught the attention of many viewers depicted a gay couple “doing life” together during a zombie apocalypse. The episode was praised by many, and even called “groundbreaking” by Esquire1 for its “rich” representation of “queer” characters. There is more going on here, however, as the episode seeks to blur the line between conservatives and progressives in a rather heavy handed manner. One of the men is an anti-government, heavily armed, prepper whose workshop is adorned with a Gadsen flag, and who, nevertheless, plays soft love songs on the piano and longs for romantic companionship.
“Queering” what is now regaining in popularity among disaffected Westerners — i.e. specific conservative values like the necessity and importance of maintaining the creational, natural, heterosexual nuclear family — takes place throughout The Last of Us, so it isn’t surprising to see the writers attempt to do the same with conservatism and anti-government sentiment in general as well. What the people who are praising this episode are missing, however, is that such “rich” “representation” is not intended to boost LGBTQIA+ morale. Rather, the main goal is to advance the tyrannical, bio-digital security state goals of the World Economic Forum and its members.2
You see, in a world where technology is analogue and very hard to come by, and digital technology is no longer ubiquitous, people have to come together and form alliances in order to keep themselves alive, let alone safe. If you want to survive, you have to be able to work with others. This emphasis is in part derived from the personal experiences of the show’s director, Jasmila Žbanić. In an article for Collider, she explains that she survived the war in Sarajevo in the 1990s by working in solidarity with others who were just trying to make it another day —
“We had to be on alert, we had to survive, we had to learn how to live without anything, without civilization. There was no electricity, no food, nothing. But we managed to survive because of solidarity, and the way the city was restructured.”3
And this accounts for why the show’s social world is composed of collectives, with individual protagonists and antagonists only bearing a secondary importance in relation to the survival of the collective. There are good collectives — like the citizens of the Jackson Settlement in episode 6 — and bad collectives — like the hive-mind mushroom-zombies, the tyrannical government, roving bandits, and the anti-government Kansas City Militia.
The show specifically sets the Kansas City collective against the Jackson Settlement collective, giving viewers a false dichotomy to choose from when it comes to their resistance to an apocalyptic pandemic and a tyrannical government. Kansas City is a collective ruled over by demagogue only apparently driven by a desire for justice. She portrays herself as a heroine, a liberator of the people, but she is a sociopath compelled to violence in her grasp for more power. Her collectivist state, consequently, suffers. This is the polar opposite of the Jackson Settlement, in which people collectively own the land and resources, distribute things in accordance with the needs of the people, and thrive in a post-apocalyptic world.
They are, according to the show itself, communists, i.e. people who live and “do life” together on a commune.
Tommy: “No one person's in charge. I'm on the council. Democratically elected, serving 300 people, including children. Everyone pitches in. We rotate patrols, food prep, repairs, hunting, harvesting. Everything you see in our town... greenhouses, livestock, all shared. Collective ownership.”
Joel: “So, uh, communism.”
Tommy: ( scoffs ) “Nah. Nah, it ain't like that.”
Maria: “It is that. Literally. This is a commune. We're communists.”
Strictly speaking, what is being called “communism” on the show is actually communitarianism which views the basic unit of society to be the family, the highest ethical goal to be “the common good,” believes that businesses should not be driven by a desire for profits but for the “happiness” of the collective, constrains the free market by principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and subordinates individual rights to the rights of the collective.4
An Important Subject for Christians to Consider
Such an explicitly positive appraisal of communitarianism is significant given that, as I have explained elsewhere, communitarianism is also the driving epistemological, social, economic, and governmental philosophy of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset,” as well as that of the Roman Catholic Church’s social teaching. It is also significant given that it is right now being promoted by Reformed Evangelicals steeped in the philosophy of Abraham Kuyper (a Christian communitarian), or find themselves in agreement with the cultural assessment laid out by Carl R. Trueman in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, or who identify themselves as “Christian Nationalists” — whether they are supporters of Doug Wilson or not.
The world we are being presented with in The Last of Us, in this regard, reflects the world in which we currently live. We are confronted all around by collectivists who argue that unless we merge with the “good” collectivists — e.g. Christian Nationalists, “Paleo-conservatives,” etc — we are doomed to become part of the “bad” collectivists — e.g. communists, socialists, etc. Individualism is completely left out of the discussion. The socio-political problem of “the one vs. the many” has apparently been solved by the left and the right simply ignoring the existence of the one altogether.
Yet the question we face is now, as it has always been, whether or not we will obey God. Communitarianism’s fundamental valuation of the community over and against the individual is inherently opposed to God’s moral law which is summarized by Christ as follows —
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ …And…: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”5
In these two commandments, we are informed of the fact that before men we possess, and always will possess, complete ownership of our bodies and minds. We are also reminded that we are obligated to use our minds independently of our neighbor, before God, in order to serve him. Christianity does not endorse collectivism. It does not promote the ideas that are commonly promoted by the world — whether in The Last of Us or in the numerous media products and political programs crafted, promoted, and implemented by the World Economic Forum, the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church-State, or the Christian Nationalists who are unwittingly doing the WEF’s dirty work of collectivization and balkanization for them.
See Li, Cathy & Hines, Kristen. “Why Diversity Is Critical to Media and Entertainment —And How to Achieve It”, World Economic Forum, Sep 27, 2021, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/how-diverse-is-media-and-entertainment/.
Echebiri, Makuochi. “‘The Last of Us’ Director Explains Why They Changed the Jackson Settlement”, Collider, Feb 20, 2023, https://collider.com/last-of-us-series-jasmila-zbanic-jackson-comments/. (emphasis added)
For more on this, see Arjoon, Surendra. “A Communitarian Model of Business: A Natural-Law Perspective”, in Journal of Markets & Morality Vol 8, No 2 (Fall 2005), 455–478.
Matt 22:37-39. (emphasis added)