A Participant’s Reflection on the Collapse of Meaning
We are not merely watching the rise of the zombie in culture—we are dreaming it, breathing it, becoming it.
The zombie is not just a figure of horror; it is a mirror held to our collective soul. And in its vacant gaze, we see a society that has lost its center—a people who have forgotten how to stand for anything at all.
“In the absence of a shared narrative,” writes Vervaeke, “the zombie becomes a symbol of domicide—a being disconnected from home, meaning, and purpose”.
This article is not about zombies as a form of entertainment. It is about zombies as teachers. Viewing as a participant in the Zombie Apocalypse, we must sit upright and fearless before their gnashing teeth, not to conquer them, but to recognize what they say about us. Because behind the shuffling gait and the moan of the undead is a quiet scream:
“We are the aftermath of meaning’s collapse. And we are still hungry.”
The Meaning Crisis: Four Horsemen of the Modern World
Vervaeke and his co-authors offer a structure we can sit with—four horsemen of the zombie apocalypse, modeled on the Christian Book of Revelation. These aren’t just metaphors; they are symptoms of our time:
- Famine – Not of food, but of purpose.
- Pestilence – The loneliness epidemic spreads like a virus through our relationships.
- War – Not just bombs, but the cultural warfare of identity, ideology, and fractured narratives.
- Death – Not physical, but spiritual—a severance from self, community, and coherent worldview.
When the zombie comes, it brings these shadows with it. And unlike vampires, werewolves, or other mythic monsters, the zombie does not seduce or reason. It devours. It remains. It is the end of conversation and the beginning of entropy.
I remember rehearsing for my role as one of “The Infected” in I Am Legend. As we moved through the city together—feral and stripped of language—there emerged a strange tenderness. Wherever we stopped, we became a kind of home. When we rested, we huddled close, our breath syncing like shipwrecked souls clinging to a single raft in the dark. “Home” was no longer a place we sought—it was a state we conjured, a perimeter drawn by our shared presence. As long as there was more than one of us, we could be home. That insight shaped the choreography I created: the first image of the horde, huddled tightly under Will Smith’s flashlight, not as predators—but as something wounded, exiled, wrapped together in a common gravity.
Why Zombies, Now?
To the warrior, timing matters.
The zombie’s rise in media—films, video games, memes—is not accidental. It coincides with a breakdown in the institutions that once held culture together: religion, marriage, state, and even science as a moral compass.
The zombie is the consequence of abandoning the discipline of fearlessness. Of refusing to look clearly at the chaos within. The zombie is our untrained mind, our discarded armor; our cowardice-made-flesh.
In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky offers a chilling confirmation:
“The Great Stories are not timeless… they must change their forms, or diversify their endings”.
Zombies are one such mutation of the Great Stories. They are what we tell when the hero can no longer rise, and the gods have stopped returning our prayers.
But What Does the Zombie Want?
In my story, The Diamond Widow, the zombie confronts the wolf with a whisper: “Together. Always.”
This is not just a phrase. It is a teaching.
The zombie is not here to be slain. It is here to be listened to.
Its hunger reveals our own—our craving for unity, for identity, for meaning in a world too complex and fragmented to make sense. It walks not just because it’s dead—but because we haven’t yet found a place to bury it.
“We hunger for meaning in the normative void of a collapsing worldview… The zombie apocalypse represents the death of faith itself.”
When we fight the zombie with bullets or blades, we miss the point. The zombie cannot be stopped that way. Its lesson is not about combat. It is about surrendering the illusion of control and facing the void with open eyes.
This is the sacred path. The warrior does not avert his gaze. She leans in and participates.
The Sacred Art of Meeting the Zombie
From a spiritual perspective, the warrior’s path begins with the willingness to be still in the face of terror. To see clearly the fear, the loss, the hunger—and instead of fighting it, bow to it. Not in submission, but in recognition.
In this sense, the zombie is a gatekeeper.
If we are to pass through the zombie age intact—not as survivors but as reawakened beings—we must absorb what it teaches.
We must reclaim:
- Cognizance – our awareness.
- Communicability – our shared language.
- Community – our sense of we.
- Culture – not as nostalgia, but as a living myth.
This is how we become more than the Walking Dead.
A Final Word to the Brave
You may be tempted to laugh off the zombie. To reduce it to late-night horror flicks or Halloween costumes.
But beneath the satire is a scream, and beneath the scream is a silence waiting to be filled with a new voice of reason and invitation.
The zombie has no voice because we lost ours.
Now is the time to speak again. Clearly. Fearlessly. Sacredly.
And perhaps, if we do, the zombie will no longer haunt our stories. It will take its place in the sacred circle of monsters we’ve befriended, each one a mirror, each one a guide.
In this daring moment, may we stand like flames in the face of the dead—not to destroy, but to illuminate.
First, we’re born, And then we die, And in between
Most of us spend all our time crying, Crying, crying, crying,
Once, we were blind, but now we can see,
It feels good to be a zombie…
Now I see there’s nothing to get in
and nothing to get out of!
It’s that simple!
We move slow
‘Cause there’s no need to run
Besides, what’s the point of running
When it’s love that you’re running from?
Life was a jail, and we found the key
In the bite of a zombie
Ooh
—Midnight Gospel Episode 1
The zombie is here. Not to destroy us—but to ask what we truly stand for.
If anything at all.