Zombiism, and The Life of the Undying
Azriel Pierce, First written on 12/27/25.
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At the heart of all zombie related media, there are the conditions of the undying body and self and powerlessness replaced by pure instinct and unheard, unresolved wounds.
To understand exactly what zombiism is as not just a condition but an identity, a state of once-human, and as a lived, everyday experience is to focus on the real zombies of the past, and taking the focus from fictionalized and popular depictions in media.
Zombie as a state derives from the Haitian Creole word, zonbi. The word zonbi comes from "nzambi" in the West African Fon language, and means something akin to a deity or a god, specifically a supreme creator such as Nzambi a Mpungu in traditional Kongo religion. It is important to remember that since the zonbi of Haitian origins was introduced into mainstream media, not only has its original conception been ridiculed for its root of practices (Vodou), but the condition itself is seen as this evil, Devil's magic that could only have spawned from African tradition. The myth of the zonbi in traditional Haitian Vodou is not wholly practiced by all Haitian people, and this is because of French colonization of Saint-Domingue in 1659. West African people were enslaved on the island after the indigenous Taino people had been depopulated in the area due to violent European influence. This violence allowed for the Spanish colonization of what is now known as the Dominican Republic, which then allowed for the West Indian island of Tortuga to be claimed by the French - then, the entire western portion. The West African enslaved peoples were forced to endure generations of slavery, and as time went on, the culture of what is known now as Haitian culture developed, including the myths and traditional religious beliefs in the zonbi.
The zonbi though, was more than just a myth. While steeped in the illusion of the rotting corpse trope, the zonbi is a literal, physical being that exists through a means of induced brain death that limits motor and speech skills, rendering the zonbi a powerless being. The zonbi is essentially not made from a viral illness, not made from a bite, is not a species, and is not a race. A zonbi, in Haitian origins, is a human being that is resurrected by a bokor (vodou priest) to once again endure slavery. The myth of the zonbi is one that resulted in protection rites for the dead, placing mustard seeds and thread in graves where the myths are prolific. Death for a lot of enslaved peoples was better than slavery, and so choosing death is something that gains them autonomy - while they had no choice in slavery. The zonbi lacks autonomy in that they endure slavery to another master, regardless of their intentions.
In this, we can see how most popular zombie media of today holds strong ties to race-washing, slavery, and religious assimilation. In that media, those topics go either unseen or ignored. While acknowledging that the zonbi of Haitian myth and the walkers in The Walking Dead are two different entities, there are threads missing that lock the two concepts together, especially after entertainment industries and fiction writers claimed zombies as their own concept. These threads were cut by the myth and Haitian people themselves, communicating to wider audiences and putting out information that lambasts those who conflate the two, given the negative connotations involved with becoming a zombie.
Zombie as an Identity...
Modernizing towards the word zombie is focusing on the fiction, but claiming the word zonbi would mean indulging in cultural appropriation. We must come up with our own language, like such:
Zombiism - The state of being zombified, or the state of having a zombie-like neurological wiring/disease.
Infected - Someone who has been permanently; culturally, medically, socially, or religiously zombified.
Rising- The act of becoming, or being forcefully turned into an infected.
Potential - Someone who has the potential to be an infected, or someone who is given partial symptoms of zombiism due to being bit, fed on, or intimate with one.
Horde - A grouping of the undead. "I am an infected, we are a horde of infected."
These terms require new input into community and communication, one that will take identification to happen. I am not a zombie, I am an infected. My rising was probably after my first death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in another reality. It wasn't enough to kill immediately but the shrapnel and the bullet scorched through any chances of surviving minutes later.
I was once a potential because I had cannibalized someone, and my moral compass was already spinning and I hadn't eaten for days and was hallucinating a world where I was good. As all realities do, they die out, and since I died in that reality so there was no where for my clone to go but into my CR. Now, there's two of me in my head. Me, and another me from a different reality.
Zombie as Once-human...
Not all infected were once-human. This experience is not limited to human beings, as we have neurodegenerative diseases such as Mad Cow disease, scrapie, Chronic Wasting disease, and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
These are documented diseases that can turn a living being into an infected, as they are all transmissible. In the case of the medically infected, it is always fatal.
For the culturally or socially infected, there is the belief in zombification through means of degrading social systems that are placed into livelihoods that affect us psychosomatically, then permanently stunts our growth. An infected may have been risen by trauma inflected upon them at a young age, and that system in life stunted their growth and often leads them to regress or remain in a dissociated state. The permanence here is that there is no therapy or CBT that can break that, even if the trauma holds no "value," the zombiism is forever a part of them. This is the same for the culturally infected, besides the fact that an infected has a culture that degrades one into rising.
The religiously infected are very similar to the Haitian zonbi, but can encompass many spiritual practices. A possible rising situation can be that an infected is risen when they began attending a service that provided a trance state for meditation, intense enough that it had altered the mind's capabilities and thoughts, thus rewiring them. This rewiring is less literal than the other cases, but egregious religious zeal can lead into unreality and psychosis, even possibly cotard's syndrome. Again, its permanence and the actions done in said belief of zombiism is what makes zombiism incurable, even in non-medical situations.
The innate instinct to "follow the herd" is not necessarily zombiism, but with enough degrading from the social system, it could force a potential to rise as an infected. Those system's standards, beliefs, ideologies, and structures become too familiar to leave behind, and with/or without encouraging hands to pull one out, zombiism is something that leaves behind marks of its former self, and someone who can be "cured" is never truly cured. It is with you when you die, and that is often shown in the brain scans or your skeleton and how it was affected by the systems in place. A hard life with bone deep scars will reflect upon the skeleton left behind, and the bones of the once-human can be determined as a hard-worker. Of what? That is something only the buried knows.
Zombie as an Everyday Experience...
I am acutely aware that I am an infected in my everyday life.
I have a hunger for not just blood but human skin, I am an ethical cannibal, and routinely bite and mark people if I am allowed to. So far, I have only drank my own blood and eaten the skin around my nails. For the most of my childhood and to this day, I had found paper to be a nice taste because of my eating disorder - Pica. Toilet paper as long as it's fresh and clean, writing paper, construction paper, whatever. It was the taste and texture. Thin, rough to chew, aromatic inking, with a hard swallow. If I am not with a partner or do not wish to draw blood, I will choose to eat paper. There were times as a kid where I had routinely eaten the clovers outside my house, and it took moving away to a better home for that habit to break (as well as not having plants in our yard).
These cravings to eat something that isn't typically food is common in all infected. Being able to resist that urge is hard for many, but comes natural after you have lived like so for such a long time. I have not yet craved for brains, but I have been further developing a need to chew on things like hard stimming toys or crunchy food. Squishy items should quell it, but sometimes things like jello is easier way of getting full if you are hungry. The ethical cannibalism concept is something explored in a historical and cultures across the globe, and the only thing that would ever stop me from doing it is if impairment or death is involved. The voluntary loss of a failing or otherwise unused human organ should be recycled not through currency on a market or through the earth but by a feast, declaring its death with your teeth. Since my body is this alien, and I wish for my genitalia to be alien as well, I have looked into nullo subreddits and have found several body mod spaces where after medically removing the phallus and testis, a trans nullo went and cooked their parts safely and with consent to the others eating it. Not only was it symbolic, it was supposedly good.
The point of living with these urges, as well as wanting to peruse blood drinking and ethical cannibalism is not to produce or legitimize the markets selling these parts but to instead make it easier for those to consent with each other. The nullo removing their parts and getting to keep them in clean jars is not a black market trade between hospital and patient. The living being that chooses to have them removed VS. the theft of it unknown to the patient are two completely different standards. Once it is in the patient's hands, it is their actions that decide what happens, not the ability to obtain these parts in the first place. When I remove parts of myself, I am willing to eat it for the deities I believe in.
There is no sun that scorches us but instead as an infected, we are more susceptible to anger and emotions of those around us and within ourselves, making us unstable due to our neurological wiring. With our failings at emotions, we seem to do perfect in mindless tasks or repetitive senses just fine, and oftentimes enjoy them to get our memory back on track. The average infected is highly intelligent, but is aware of zombiism's affects on the undying brain, and as life goes on - they will surely begin to lose parts of themselves. I suppose to the need to feast on humanity or our former living species would make sense, as we yearn to have warm breath and skin, but know that it is too late for us. I do not believe we even eat brains at all but rather we consume our species because we no longer hold the mindset of morality when we are undying. We are not governed by the same morals as our former species, even if we tend to follow the laws and not commit crimes. The feasting of our species is entirely about our fear of losing who were were, and by eating them, we are connecting those loose ends.
I have wanted so long to embody zombiism in my real life, and I believe that at some point, I will get my own rite of passage into this lifestyle.
