Today I was remembering that short-short, where an old school vampire is
wandering around pondering a theory that vampires such as himself were
transformed into what they are by humanity's collective unconscious, by
their resentment of aristocrats as parasites upon the rest of humanity
made literal. Then it occurs to him that in modern terms it is now the
homelss who are regarded as parasites as he sees a flash of red in the
eyes of a beggar who has just been rudely dismissed, and with mounting
alarm he considers how many more homeless people there are now than
European aristocrats in the 19th century.

Zombie apocalypses hadn't hit the big time yet when that story came out.
But really they are the real expression of that boogeyman. Fear of
the indigent. Unhealthy mobs of people dressed in rags who have lost
everything threatening to make you lose everything as well. Every
popular monster is a metaphor for some real fear. And when that fear
starts to lost its bite you see them increasingly romanticized, stripped
of what made them monsters in the first place.

On Wednesday, May 12, 2021 at 4:20:01 PM UTC-6, David Johnston wrote:
> and with mounting
> alarm he considers how many more homeless people there are now than
> European aristocrats in the 19th century.

Of course, the homeless are regarded as parasites today, because they recieve
help from the government, or at least more enlightened attitudes give them some
rights which make it easier for them to prey on those who are comfortable.

So someone could take that short-short story as an argument for abolishing
"socialism" and going back to the 19th century in how we do things!

John Savard

On Wednesday, 12 May 2021 at 23:20:01 UTC+1, David Johnston wrote:
> Today I was remembering that short-short, where an old school vampire is
> wandering around pondering a theory that vampires such as himself were
> transformed into what they are by humanity's collective unconscious, by
> their resentment of aristocrats as parasites upon the rest of humanity
> made literal. Then it occurs to him that in modern terms it is now the
> homelss who are regarded as parasites as he sees a flash of red in the
> eyes of a beggar who has just been rudely dismissed, and with mounting
> alarm he considers how many more homeless people there are now than
> European aristocrats in the 19th century.
>
> Zombie apocalypses hadn't hit the big time yet when that story came out.
> But really they are the real expression of that boogeyman. Fear of
> the indigent. Unhealthy mobs of people dressed in rags who have lost
> everything threatening to make you lose everything as well. Every
> popular monster is a metaphor for some real fear. And when that fear
> starts to lost its bite you see them increasingly romanticized, stripped
> of what made them monsters in the first place.

Hmm - no, I think apocalypse zombies are about the
rampant spread of disease. Imagine, hypothetically,
a quickly spreading pandemic virus. Imagine people
close to you becoming carriers of the plague.

With vampires it's syphilis, I gather. Maybe it's not
that they are immortally undead but just that their
descendants have it as well.