There is a meme floating around Facebook showing teenagers texting, suggesting “Here is the zombie apocalypse.”

It makes me laugh, and yet I do believe there is a large element of truth in it. We have become technological giants, and yet have remained moral infants. After some dreadful run-ins over the past few years with internet “trolls,” I too was left feeling as though zombies had eaten my brains.  The concern with zombies makes sense to me.

My sense is that we become zombies the more we are distanced from our humanity. And humanity’s a funny thing. None of us wants to get hurt… so naturally we hole up in fortresses and surround ourselves with gadgets and technologies to buffer us against the cold, cruel world. We become petite divine gods in our guarded towers.

I’m reminded of the tale of The Tin Woodman from “The Wizard of Oz.”

Here is the myth from Wikipedia [links & italics removed]:

Originally an ordinary man by the name of Nick Chopper (the name first appearing in The Marvelous Land of Oz), the Tin Woodman used to make his living chopping down trees in the forests of Oz, as his father had before him. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to prevent him from marrying his sweetheart, after being bribed by the lazy old woman who kept the Munchkin maiden as a servant, and did not wish to lose her. (In a later book of the series, The Tin Woodman of Oz, the woman is said to be the Witch's servant, and it is the Witch herself who decides to enchant Nick's axe.) The enchanted axe chopped off his limbs, one by one. Each time he lost a limb, Nick Chopper replaced it with a prosthetic limb made of tin. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin. However, Ku-Klip, the tinsmith who helped him, neglected to replace his heart. Once Nick Chopper was made entirely of tin, he was no longer able to love the lady he had fallen for.

A symbolic interpretation of this myth that appeals to me says that in truth the Tin Woodman was quite vulnerable in his relationship with his sweetheart, and parts of himself kept getting “cut off” to please her, and they were replaced with tin (a false self). Eventually he was encased in tin and no longer in touch with his feelings, and thus no longer vulnerable to hurt.  He had "no heart."

Of course, then he was no longer available to relationship either. For the irony of the Tin Woodman’s story is that – while he had become impervious to pain – he was now also unable to receive love. The tin barrier impedes any possibility of relationship, bad or good. For the Tin Woodman to truly have a heart, he would have to give up his false tin self.

And so it is with our zombie apocalypse. We wish to be impervious to the “slings and arrows of misfortune,” and yet it is these very wounds that keep us human.

This may be the hardest lesson for us to learn, because it is natural to try to avoid pain.

Perhaps that is the justification for this interesting prayer: “Lord, help me to become more human.”