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Last night, I read pages 643-650 of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. Stu Redman is picking Glen Bateman’s brain because Glen is a sociologist, and Stu wants advice on how Mother Abagail and her team can rebuild society after the super-flu. Glen says that he cannot predict the future, and so Stu tells him to give him some educated guesses. And Glen does so.
Glen admits that he has been wrong in the past. For example, when he first met Stu, Glen predicted that a bunch of communities would form and would compete for scarce resources, sometimes violently. But that has not exactly panned out, Glen observes, for the dreams that the survivors have had have drawn them into one of two communities: that of Mother Abagail (a prophetess), and that of Randall Flagg (the villain); in short, there has been more cohesion than Glen anticipated. Glen also acknowledges that there are areas in which his analysis is not exactly scientific. For example, while Glen thinks that the people with technological expertise will gravitate towards Flagg because they like having the trains run on time, and a dictator like Flagg is likely to run a tight ship, Glen predicts that more people will gravitate towards Mother Abagail, for (misanthropic as he may be in the book) he believes that more people are good than evil. Yet, Glen realizes that Mother Abagail’s team needs to get into gear, otherwise it will be giving Flagg’s team the time to develop the expertise to attack the Free Zone (Mother Abagail’s side).
Glen is not infallible, and he’d be the first to admit that. But he has a background in sociology, and so he’s able to offer some solid educated guesses. Sometimes, he’s wrong. Often, he has good stuff. And what I read last night was good stuff. Glen, for example, wanted Mother Abagail’s team to reaffirm the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to remind themselves that they are Americans and come from a country that has certain democratic ideals, otherwise they might go with a dictatorship out of a sense of vulnerability. Glen also wants Mother Abagail to have some position of authority, since she is the one who drew the survivors. Glen’s analysis has a certain practicality.
I have a background in religious studies, but that does not make me infallible. I do hope, however, that it has equipped me to make some decent educated guesses.
