Fear The Walking Dead, SROTW: Believe In People, Believe In Yourself

Fear the Walking Dead season 7

When you don’t believe in people, what kind of person does that make you?

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve dabbled in cynicism about people from time to time. On more than one occasion, I have just cut out the middleman and adhered to the crux of Wes’ “People are people” mantra: People suck. If I’m being honest, there will still be times when I stand by that sentiment.

However, I also temper that with the belief that people have the capacity to be better if they so choose to. I know that people can be good, even great. I’ve seen it, sometimes even in the simplest of gestures. This knowledge keeps me moving forward when my cynicism about people hits its peak.

That gets me thinking, though: What would happen if I, or anyone else, didn’t have that? If someone were to have zero faith in people, what would that do to them?

The first thing I can think of is that it would make them think that being part of a group would be a bad, maybe even dangerous, thing to do. Why would you want to team up with a person (never mind multiple people) if you just took for granted that other people were always going to tend towards their own self-interest, even to the point of jeopardizing a valuable partnership? You wouldn’t.

This mentality can quickly evolve into full-blown paranoia, believing that anyone else isn’t simply self-interested but hostile, and may lead you to adopt a “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy when dealing with other survivors. This outlook isn’t necessarily good for long-term survival, as it’ll wind up leading you to off someone who does have a group, which won’t be happy to discover you killed their friend.

Worse still, though, what does that do to you mentally? Going around in a zombie apocalypse, convinced that everyone else is selfish garbage and out to get you? I can only picture that as being a recipe for driving yourself into paranoid lunacy, despair, and eventually death.

If you don’t believe in people at all, what would you be surviving for?