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With Halloween on the horizon, burning questions about the undead need to be answered: Can being a zombie be considered suffering? Submitted By |
Anyway, to answer the question, no. A zombie is nothing more than a walking pile of meat. When a person becomes a zombie, they first die, and then lose everything that makes them....alive. Zombies have virtually no reasoning skills, no distinct personality, do not feel pain and do not need to breathe. They can walk (sort of, and depending on which movie you watch), they can see just not comprehend the world around them, and feel only the most basic instinct any living creature can feel: the need to eat. Technically, they don't even NEED to eat. It doesn't sustain them. But even when we're born we have the urge to eat. It's burned deep into us and can't be shaken. Perhaps the reason they seek out live flesh is that they've regressed back to a hunter mentality. Early humans were hunters; predators. It's in our genes. Of course, as we developed empathy and the like, we suppressed our need to hunt all the time and found other ways to get food. But zombies are stripped of empathy. They feel nothing, both mentally and physically. They ARE dead. It's just that their bodies haven't gotten that message yet.
"When There's No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth" ~ Dawn Of The Dead
- Location:Home
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:"Dawn Of The Dead" by Murderdolls
Comments
http://www.xombified.com/flashtoons.htm
Otherwise, I rathermuch agree with you. However, one must also consider what TYPE of zombie we are dealing with. See, there are two basic types of zombies: magical and scientific. Scientific zombies are like those in Resident Evil or 28 Days Later; it is a virus or serum that has made the flesh animate. Such things can be said that all empathy has been stripped, elsewise they would not function. Magical, on the other hand, gets trickier.
While it can be said that a magical zombie is still nothing more than animated flesh, one must consider the type of magic used in such a ritual. Voodooism, for example, uses zombification as a form of capital punishment. The zombie then becomes a servant for...well, that part wasn't fully clear in the little research I've done, but they are bound to their new master unquestionably. Under such a thought, could one say that they are stripped of all that made them human? Such a punishment would be worth of capital crimes should the "human" be trapped inside the zombie's head, forced to be nothing more than an observer.
Most standard forms of zombie, yes, is an unfeeling inhuman thing that cannot suffer. But just because vast hordes react one way...
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