Philosophy In Television (Part 4): The Stand (2020)

"I have your blood in my fists, old mother.  Pray your God takes you before you hear my boots on your steps."

--Randall Flagg, The Stand (season one, episode three)

Difficult circumstances have the tendency to bring people to contemplate explicitly philosophical things like the nature of reality, how to know if something is true, what priorities, if any, someone should have, and what they truly want out of life--things shied away from by the average person except in small, likely random doses.  In The Stand, a 2020 streaming adaption of the classic Stephen King novel, an apocalyptic virus nicknamed Captain Trips kills the majority of humans worldwide and clears the stage for the survivors to realize this exact truth, albeit in a fragmented, cloudy way due to the absence of true rationalism.  More specifically, the virus allows two figures to rally the often philosophically aimless survivors of the outbreak to their sides: Mother Abigail, a woman 108 years of age who calls to others in dreams and credits God with her ideology, and Randall Flagg, an alluring but predatory leader who likewise calls to others in dreams.

Mother Abigail makes enough statements about her theology to clarify that she is indeed referencing Yahweh when she mentions God, as she cites events involving Jesus, Jonah, and other Biblical figures.  Her leadership ultimately hinges in part on mysticism, even though she is connected to mass dreams that clearly transcend ordinary experiences, but, even so, in her best moments she resembles an Old Testament prophet who has the fortune of standing on a different historical side of the life of Jesus.  She at least admits that her (philosophically asinine) foundation of her relationship with God leaves enough "unknowns" that she needs to postpone certain decisions, even if her epistemology is irrationalistic some of the time if she believes more than what she can actually prove.

Still, Mother Abigail's telepathic dreams and her occasional prophecies that do come true establish that there truly is strong evidence that she does speak on God's behalf.  The fact that she is specifically a Christian theist gives her in-universe followers even more evidence than the present historical evidence that it is indeed Christianity that accurately describes the uncaused cause (which can be logically proven to exist regardless of what societal context or historical information one has access to).  Getting beyond the logical fact that an uncaused cause created time and the physical world is the part that a rational person handles by rationalistically assessing other evidences that might point to God having a certain nature, all of which falls short of logical proof, without actually believing in the unprovable and going past commitment to evidentially supported possibilities.

Randall Flagg, the "Dark Man" of New Vegas, has no concern for epistemological and metaphysical truths that do not help him maintain a psychological grip on his own subjects.  He displays extreme tyranny in his use of punishment methods like crucifixion (even though his style of it still goes nowhere near the cruelty of Roman crucifixions), his allowance of gladiator fights for entertainment, and his goals of subjugating outsiders for the sake of his own power instead of for the sake of truth.  Flagg's response to the apocalyptic outbreak and related breakdown of standard civilization is to merely manipulate people in an objectifying manner that treats them as nothing more than a means to a personal end so he can rule through offering pleasure and inspiring fear.

One of Mother Abigail's highest appointees eventually exposes how Flagg's influence is primarily rooted in fear instead of rational or moral authority, something that starts the process of eroding the irrationalistic support for Flagg in New Vegas.  This marks the beginning of his downfall.  Despite the blatantly supernatural power Flagg demonstrates throughout the series, his defeat comes shortly after due to what seems to literally be a highly abnormal kind of lightning directed by the deity of Mother Abigail.  The event destroys his New Vegas and at least silences Flagg for a time.  However, in the last scene, he is shown appearing to an isolated tribe of people untouched by the Captain Trips virus, a tribe that starts to revere him as if he is divine after he displays some of his powers.

The final scene of The Stand emphasizes that there will always be the possibility of human societies and the individuals within those societies being corrupted as long as humans exist.  There is no place, no matter how remote, that cannot be tainted with sin.  It does not even take an apocalyptic disaster to give everyday people the chance to seriously think about whether they want to side with truth or with selfish preferences that might promise convenience but lead to ideological stupor and possibly to destruction.  No one has to wait until a legitimate apocalypse to decide to stand on the side of reason and justice and stand against the arrogance, utilitarianism, and cruelty Flagg displays in the streaming adaption.  Even when faced with cataclysmic chaos, it takes a rare kind of person to not stray from the path of rationalism to the left or the right of truth in favor of potentially appealing assumptions and errors.