When sitting on my front porch or strolling the streets of my town, it’s nothing to encounter zombies. A few of them are elderly, walking slowly and giving the street ahead of them the “thousand-yard stare,” that vacant look once associated with combat-fatigued soldiers from World War II. For these old people, one can feel pity for their physical conditioning while applauding their efforts to remain engaged in life.

Others I’ve encountered, sometimes during the pre-dawn ritual of a coffee on the porch or on any stroll through town, are the opioid zombies or those who by genetics or a bad roll of the dice are short a few fuses in the brain. They breathe the same air as the rest of us, but otherwise they are far away, talking to ghosts or singing songs from long ago.

Others are the walking dead of all ages, those pedestrians whose reaction to “Good morning” is either indifferent, as if they were deaf, or a quick glance and a nod of the head. Among these are that large subspecies who only have eyes for the phone in the palm of their hand or whose earbuds have cut them off from all human contact.

Then there are zombies whom I meet most frequently in the daily news and commentary. In a scene from the 1940 film “The Ghost Breakers,” we find a working definition of these walking dead. Here Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope) and his female friend Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) ask Geoff Montgomery (Richard Carlson) about zombies:

Larry: You live here?

Geoff: Yes.

Larry: Maybe you know what a zombie is.

Geoff: When a person dies and is buried, it seems there are certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life.

Mary: How horrible!

Geoff: It’s worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.

Larry: You mean like Democrats.

These zombies, found mostly but not exclusively on the left, have exchanged reason, common sense, and critical thinking for ideology. Rather than questioning the beliefs of their leaders and gurus, generously and euphemistically described as progressives, these golems simply accept those beliefs at face-value.

Emotion charges the engines of this ideology. Several of my relatives and acquaintances, for instance, despise Donald Trump not for what he does, but for what he is. As one 60-something man told me, “I’ve never hated anyone in my entire life, but I hate Donald Trump.” A longtime friend who’s about the same age loathes Trump because of his behavior – “he lacks the dignity to be president.”

Some conservatives I know are the same. Their minds are so colored by spending hours a day browsing right-wing websites and listening to podcasts that they are just as effectively brainwashed as some blue leftie. They’re more bearable only because, unlike so many on the left, they just want to be left alone and are willing to grant others that same wish.

So, how do we avoid joining this crew of the living dead?

Searching online with a simple question – “How to avoid becoming a cultural zombie?” – I found plenty of good replies. One of the most popular answers recommends spending less time on screens and social media, and more time face-to-face with people.

Some sites – and I heartily concur – suggest reading books as a preventative against zombification. When we read a book, particularly a good work of fiction, we enter another world and are, whether we realize it or not, lured into an engagement with that world.

Here on our living room sofa or in bed we are in a classroom where lessons range from empathy to courage to resilience, and so much more. A novel I just finished, picked up on a whim for 50 cents, was Louis L’Amour’s “Down the Long Hills,” which told the story of a couple of youngsters, ages seven and three, battling for survival against the wilderness, the weather, Indians, and outlaws. Here were lessons in ingenuity and resolve, and I plan to hand on the book to some of my grandchildren.

Finally, the best defenses against zombification are intentionality and mindfulness. Do we taste the food we eat or just absentmindedly chew? Do we treat strangers needing help with kindness or look away? Do we greet the day as a blessing or just another 24 hours to be gotten through?

Back in the 1970s, the United Negro College Fund used to run a television ad with the tagline, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Zombiism occurs when you spend too many hours a day wasting your mind, when you vacate your brain and let others use it as a playground. Stay alert, stay intentional, stay mindful, and you’ll stay human.

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This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Unsplash