A social experiment

Long ago, I became very tired of reality shows on TV. But I've found myself watching a few episodes of the latest series of Survivor .

If you don't know Survivor, it works like this: a group of people are dumped in the middle of nowhere, with almost nothing, and they have to try to survive while scheming and plotting against one another. The contestants are divided into two teams, or 'tribes', and they compete against one another in a series of challenges. The losing tribe each week has to vote one of their number off. When there are only a few people left they start competing as individuals, until the last person left wins a million US dollars.

I normally find these types of show very irritating. First of all, they're fake. The group of people are not all alone on a desert island or in the jungle -- there's a whole team of camera people and producers and even medics there, though the viewer just doesn't see them. I think they're also a cop-out. Why bother trying to create an interesting drama, a clever and thought-provoking script, and paying top actors, when you can just get a few people to eat live bugs and gain a huge audience? It's TV scraping the bottom of the barrel.

A few series ago it got even worse when the producers tried to spice things up by dividing up the tribes racially -- whites in one, and blacks in the other. They came under a lot of criticism for that, understandably.

But I've found this latest series of Survivor rather intriguing. This time round, they're conducting another social experiment. One tribe has been given everything they need -- furniture, food, shelter and fire. The other has nothing. And guess what -- the tribe with all the advantages has been winning all of the challenges, week after week. And each time they win, they get more food, and more luxuries. The 'have-nots' go home each time with nothing.

It's a fascinating parallel of life in the real world. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And it's all too clear why. The 'have-not' tribe is hungry and weak. They don't even win the challenges that require more brain than brawn -- after all, how can you think clearly when you're starving? Because they keep losing, they get depressed, lose their confidence, and fight amongst themselves. It's a vicious circle.

In the real world, all too often, the poor (countries and people) get blamed for their predicament. They're told they're lazy, inherently inferior, and so on and so forth. What's interesting about the Survivor set-up is to see how arbitrary it all is. Both tribes have a mix of people from different ethnic and educational backgrounds, and with a good gender balance. Yet because of a random selection according to the rules of this particular game, one group was set up for success, and the other for failure.

In its own rather silly way, Survivor reinforces the findings of Jared Diamond, who in his book Guns Germs and Steel, set out to investigate why some societies in history managed to advance technologically and materially, so much more than others. His conclusion was that it has nothing to do with inherent biological differences but can be traced back to the natural resources available in different parts of the world. Societies which had access to plants and animals suitable for domestication (and good climates and fewer natural diseases), tended to advance much more quickly.

Survivor turned up another fascinating insight into human nature last week, when the winning tribe were faced with a predicament. As usual they won the challenge, but were given a choice. They could either keep their comfort (their camp with all its luxuries), or could choose to retain immunity and not have to vote off one of their members. But they couldn't have both.

They chose to keep their comfort, and sacrifice a team member. The harmony and unity they seemed to possess through their successive wins just crumbled at this first hurdle. So much for team spirit. Material comfort won over solidarity. I wonder if the remaining members had any trouble sleeping in their comfortable beds, after that. Sadly, I don't think so.