The essay below appears as Chapter 3 of The Last of Us and Philosophy.

“He Who Fights with Monsters”

 Inner-Circle vs The World in The Last of Us

Dylan Skurka

Ellie: If you don’t think there’s hope for the world, why bother going on? I mean, you gotta try, right?

Joel: You haven’t seen the world, so you don’t know. Keep going for family, that’s about it.

Imagine you’re a brilliant physicist, making a name for yourself as the leader of a group of world-class researchers working with nuclear fusion to help tame the devastating effects of climate change. You understand that the fate of countless people may rest on your shoulders, and the only way for you to succeed is to essentially dedicate the entirety of your life to your job. One day you fall in love, and a few months later you find out that you are going to be having a child, leaving you in quite the predicament: to be the best parent and partner you can be, you realize you will need to neglect your demanding job so you can spend quality time with your family. To be the best scientist you can be, though, you will need to be a poor parent and partner, neglecting their needs so you can immerse yourself in your meaningful work. If you could only choose one path, then, which one would it be? Would you prioritize the well-being of your inner circle at the expense of the wider world, or would you help the wider world at the expense of your inner circle?

The Last of Us is about a deadly fungal pandemic rather than climate change, but the underlying dilemma between the inner circle and wider world is the same. As a result, nearly all the characters in The Last of Us can be divided into two camps: the “tribalists” are those who choose to put their inner circles first, while the “joiners” are those who prioritize the wider world. One of the most pressing questions that unfolds in the show and video game is how one can justifiably choose between tribalism or joinerism when both sides are defensible positions.

The Joiners and the Tribalists in The Last of Us

Tribalists in The Last of Us, such as the anti-hero, Joel, tend to be the most cynical and untrusting characters we encounter, often due to a combination of personal disposition and past experiences. Long before the fungal infections, for example, Joel had already been jaded by his time spent fighting in the Gulf War, enduring grueling combat that he would come to learn was unnecessary and thankless. Thousands of people would die, and thousands more, including Joel, would be scarred for life.

Joiners, in comparison, are optimists and ideologues who are drawn to fight for bigger causes that imbue their lives with meaning. “Tommy’s what we used to call a joiner. Dreams of becoming a hero,” Joel says mockingly when talking about his younger brother who volunteered to fight in the same war that he did, albeit for very different reasons.

Rather than explicitly championing tribalism or joinerism, The Last of Us refuses to show its hand, taking a cryptic stance towards both sides by criticizing one perspective one moment, only to support it the next.

In the first episode of The Last of Us, when the fungal infection begins to spread in their neighborhood, Joel, Sarah, and Tommy are speeding in a pickup truck to find safety. As the three passengers make their way through a dark, desolate landscape, a disheveled young family suddenly appears in front of them on the road. A woman, they see, is hugging her young child, and a man is waving his arms in primal desperation, pleading with Joel’s group to pull over to help them. Joel, Sarah, and Tommy only have a few seconds to make a collective decision, and as Tommy begins tapping the breaks, disagreement ensues:

Joel: What are you doing?

Tommy: They’ve got a kid, Joel.

Joel: So do we! Keep driving.

Sarah: We can put them in the back…

Before Sarah can even finish her thought, the stranded family is already well behind them, the father’s increasingly pained howls now fading into white noise. Avoiding his younger brother’s disappointed eyes, Joel fumbles for an excuse, knowing that what he’s about to say is going to be a lie, “Somebody else will come along.”

As bad as we may feel for the stranded family, the context undergirding Joel’s decision— the risk of getting infected and the limited time to find safety—makes it easy to sympathize with his tribalist sensibilities. All he’s trying to do is protect his family. What’s so bad about that?

Shortly after they drive past the stranded family, Joel and Sarah, now separated from Tommy, are forced to abandon their vehicle in an infection hotspot. With an infected man chasing them, they wind up in a deserted field where a fully armed military officer shoots their deranged pursuer and proceeds to point his gun at them:

Officer: Don’t move!

Joel: My daughter’s hurt. Her ankle…

Officer: Stop right there!

Joel: Easy now—we are not sick.

Officer (Speaking into his walkie talkie): I’ve got two civilians by the river… Yessir… Yessir.

Joel: We are not sick… Sir… WE ARE NOT SICK!

In one of the saddest scenes of the entire show and video game, we see the officer ignore the screaming man in front of him and unleash his weapon. The bullets only graze Joel, but the result is much worse; he is suddenly left with no choice but to cradle his daughter in his arms as she slowly bleeds to death—a parent’s literal worst nightmare.

In this scene, it’s difficult to think of the military officer as anything but evil for what he does to a father and child pleading to be spared. But if the officer is evil, why isn’t Joel equally evil for what he did to the family pleading for help beside the road? It certainly can’t be ruled out that the military officer—a man with a family of his own—was concerned Joel and Sarah were infected and believed he did what he had to do out of self-protection, or that defying his superior’s orders meant he would be punished for insubordination. Wasn’t the military officer doing the same thing that any good soldier does when he shot at Joel and Sarah: following his superior’s orders?[i] Why is it then that no matter how hard we try to understand where the military officer is coming from in this scene, Joel still unambiguously comes across as the more sympathetic character?

One way to make sense of the conflicting feelings that result from both scenes is to note that we feel compassion for Joel when he abandons the stranded family because we’re viewing his decision through the lens of his inner circle—if the lives of a few strangers must be sacrificed so that Joel and his family can protect themselves, then so be it. In a masterful twist, though, this inner circle that we are so invested in suddenly trades places with the stranded family and they become the few strangers who must be sacrificed for the interests of the inner circle of the military officer! In other words, we are led to believe that Joel’s tribalism is clearly the morally superior position to joinerism, but once Joel is harmed by the tribalism of someone else, we suddenly view joinerism as the morally superior position.

FEDRA, The Fireflies and Utilitarianism

In the years following the spread of the Cordyceps virus, when resources are scarce, throngs of people are left dead and infected, and civil society collapses on itself, the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) emerges as a powerhouse authoritarian regime that institutes “Quarantine Zones” (QZs) around the country. In response, the Fireflies gain momentum as an anti-authoritarian militia group that violently resists FEDRA’s political control and devises a plan to develop a vaccine for the infection.

Diametrically opposed as they may be at first glance, both FEDRA and the Fireflies are proponents of joinerism to the extent that their underlying motive is to save humanity; it’s just that for the former, the most expedient way to achieve this end is through meticulously managing the world’s remaining resources, and for the latter, the best way to serve humanity is to focus on eradicating the infection altogether.

Philosophically, FEDRA and the Fireflies lean heavily towards utilitarianism, an ethical theory that holds that the morally right thing to do is to maximize happiness for the most people. Although most utilitarians are willing to admit that we should give some special consideration to friends and family when making moral decisions, a key component of this theory is its emphasis on impartiality. We shouldn’t, from this point of view, merely benefit those we love and occasionally help strangers, but rather always think about how we can best support those in need beyond our inner circle. In fact, the contemporary utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer, contends that we have a moral duty to help the most vulnerable people in the wider world right up to the point that we would completely sabotage our own quality of life if we kept on going, or, as Singer puts it, “sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance.”[ii] Utilitarians like Singer have often been criticized for how demanding their theory is.[iii] If we take Singer’s words to heart, for example, we might be compelled to donate huge sums of our money to impoverished people across the world who we don’t even know, only stopping if we would become impoverished if we continued to donate.

It’s inspiring, then, to see the demanding moral aspirations of FEDRA and the Fireflies, who dedicate their lives to helping as many people as possible, whether they know these people or not. “No matter what anyone out there says or thinks, we’re the only thing holding this all together,” reasons the head of a FEDRA school, Captain Kwong. “If we go down, the people in this zone will starve or murder each other. That much I know.” In risking their lives by defying FEDRA’s orders so they can end the pandemic, the Fireflies courageously demonstrate their willingness to fight for a greater cause as well.

Tribalism, Communitarianism, and Aristotle

It’s also easy to admire the tribalists in The Last of Us when we look at the world through their eyes and see how far they’re willing to go for those within their inner circle. Henry, for example, brims with humanity when he consoles his eight-year-old brother, Sam, exuding a calm confidence, even though he is painfully aware of how unsafe they are. Joel, too, proves to be heroically loyal to his family when he resolves to go on a dangerous mission across the country to save Tommy.

Some communitarian philosophers would support key aspects of Henry and Joel’s tribalist ethos by emphasizing the importance of partiality in moral decision-making. Echoing Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) thought that humans are social animals, communitarians stress the integral role that our family, friends, and broader community play in shaping our identity, and the special obligations we have towards them as a result.[iv] In his Nicomachean Ethics,[v] Aristotle expands on his “social animal” portrayal of humans by noting the indispensable role that close relationships play in attaining a flourishing life.[vi]

With these considerations in mind, it’s easy to root for the tribalist characters even when they act in arguably morally objectionable ways. For example, Henry represents the tribalist mindset when, to get medicine for his younger brother, he informs on a beloved leader of a rebel group who promises to save Kansas City from a particularly corrupt QZ that has “raped and tortured and murdered people for twenty years.” Surely Henry’s actions inadvertently led to the deaths of many who could have been saved by this leader and contributed to keeping many others stuck in a cycle of oppression and injustice. And yet, it’s fair to wonder what the purpose of saving the world is if your own tribe isn’t any longer part of it. When the world only promises disappointment, the only way to get by is to “Keep going for family,” as Joel says in defense of tribalism. “That’s about it.”

When You Gaze Too Long into the Abyss

Although The Last of Us doesn’t explicitly conclude whether it’s more praiseworthy to be a joiner or a tribalist, it says a lot about how doing bad things, even for justifiable reasons, can turn ordinary people into monsters, adopting the Nietzschean warning that, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”[vii] Entrenched in the utilitarian calculus of saving as many people as possible from getting infected, FEDRA’s joiners become monsters when they decide to round up uninfected men, women, and children under the false pretense of bringing them to safety, only to kill them with the senseless rationale that “dead people can’t be infected.” Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, reveals the dark side of joinerism as well when she lures a young Ellie to a hospital so she can kill her to extract a potential cure for the infection from her body. Even worse, Ellie’s mother was Marlene’s life-long friend whose dying wish was for Marlene to protect her daughter at all costs—a promise Marlene vowed not to break.

When tribalism goes too far in The Last of Us, the result is the twin-headed monster of narcissism and nihilism, best exemplified by one of the show’s most evil characters, Kathleen. Named the commander of the rebellion group in Kansas City after her brother is killed, Kathleen essentially funnels all of her tribe’s resources towards capturing Henry, her brother’s informant, characterizing every problem they face in the show as somehow leading back to him. She tells her compatriots, “This is Henry’s work, understand? And he won’t stop until we stop him.” Like FEDRA and the Fireflies, Kathleen murderously abuses “the ends justify the means” reasoning to betray other people’s trust in her bloodthirsty quest for Henry. In one memorably horrific instance of this, she promises to spare a group of prisoners if they inform on his whereabouts, only to order for them to be shot and their bodies burned once she squeezes a confession out of one of them.

Besides the ruthlessness she displays towards those who she deems enemies, Kathleen’s fanatical tribalism makes her a poor leader for her in-group as well. Not only does she misrepresent Henry as a constant threat to her community’s safety, but she also ignores obvious signs of the actual threat of a deadly onslaught of infected people, recklessly putting her people in grave danger. Appropriately, when the onslaught eventually happens, Kathleen ignores her opportunity to escape so that she can finally kill Henry, only to get pulverized by an infected ghoul the moment she is about to pull the trigger. Blinded by revenge, Kathleen gazed too long into the abyss; and in return, the abyss gazed right back at her.

Appreciating the Beauty of the Other Side

Perhaps the lesson of The Last of Us is that when taken to extremes, both tribalism and joinerism turn us into monsters even scarier than those infected by the Cordyceps. In what might be the most enduring and fulfilling relationship of The Last of Us though, Bill and Frank discover a purpose that eclipses anything joinerism or tribalism can ever hope to offer. Bill and Frank wisely come to understand that finding peace isn’t about overpowering your enemies or righting every wrong—it’s about accepting that, despite our differences, we should attempt to find common ground and humanize others. If we can learn from Bill and Frank, there might just be hope for our world too.

Dylan Skurka is a Philosophy PhD student at York University in Canada. His research focuses on the intersection between transcendental phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry, perilously straddling the line between the Continental Philosophy Fireflies and the Analytic Philosophy Disaster Response Agency (or APEDRA, for short) in their post-apocalyptic battle in the unforgiving wilderness of Academic Philosophy. He heads his school’s graduate student philosophy blog, “Brainwandering,” and his work has been published in Philosophy Now. In his spare time, he enjoys infecting his wife Sasha and their baby on the way with bad jokes and incoherent rants about Edmund Husserl.

[i] Some might think the distinction between killing and letting die is important and that the military officer makes the more evil decision than Joel because he tangibly kills Sarah while Joel merely lets the family on the side of the road die. I’m inclined to agree with James Rachels (1941-2003), though, who argues that whether one kills someone or lets them die is not as important of a consideration, ethically, as the justifications underlying one’s action. Since the military officer has at least equally good reasons for killing than Joel does when he lets the family die, Joel’s passivity on its own isn’t more justifiable than the military officer’s act of pulling the trigger. For more on this argument, see James Rachels, “Killing and Letting Die,” in Lawrence Becker and Charlotte Becker eds., Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2^nd Edition (New York: Routledge, 2001), 947-950.

[ii] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics: Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1993), 229.

[iii] See, for example, William Shaw, “Consequentialism,” in Hugh LaFollette ed., Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Fifth Edition (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 31-39.

[iv] Daniel Bell, “Communitarianism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/communitarianism/&gt;.

[v] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing,

2019), Book VIII.

[vi] This isn’t to say that communitarians and Aristotle think that special relationships should be the only consideration when making moral decisions. For Aristotle, for example, being virtuous entails considering several different morally relevant factors on a case-by-case basis. So, even if close relationships play an integral role in our lives, as Aristotle suggests, that doesn’t mean that he thinks that there aren’t instances when the virtuous person should justifiably put the wider world’s interests before the interests of their tribe.

[vii] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmem and Paul Cohn, (Ware: Wordsworth, 2008), §146.