task: Exercise_Writing a blog post.pdf
Arguments
Point
- giving people jobs (employment)- good
- releasing people - bad
- not allowed to hide your feelings - bad
- system which punishes people - good
- physiological needs fulfilled (Maslow) - good
Explanation
- giving people jobs (employment)- when people turn 12 the get an “assignment” which is your job for the rest of yo life. You receive training besides school which replaces your free time.
- releasing people - murder of unhealthy/“different” newborns (if there are twins); messed up celebratory murder of old People
- not allowed to hide your feelings - no privacy - no good - no love - no self expression
- system which punishes people - strict rules are enforced and everyone follows them (3 Strikes u are out/dead example)
- physiological needs fulfilled (Maslow) - side product of the strict rules (the society is functioning well and everyone do their tasks and have responsibilites)
Example
bla
Opinion
main problem: suppression of feelings; this is the only reason people are actually released because if the feelings were there it’d be much harder for the nurturers & other staff to “release” people
maslows pyramid not even partially fullfilled due to only safety and physiological needs being fullfilled; the happiness is just a facade but due to the citizens not knowing otherwise it is suppressed
Structure
Introduction
- quote
- author, book title, tf is da community (“The Giver”, 1993, Lois Lowry)
- topic (people in community and the mc jonas)
sauce: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Blog post
What if … we got rid of feelings?
Welcome back to “What if …?“! By now I probably don’t have to explain how this works, but for new readers here’s a brief summary: For every book I read, I create a little headcanon about how the story would change if a pivotal point in the plot were to play out differently.
This week I’m reading “The Giver”, published in 1993 by Lois Lowry. At the age of twelve Jonas, who seemingly lives in a utopia, gets assigned the task of “Receiver of Memory” and learns what life actually means.
However, this time we’ll mix it up a bit; commenting on this book would be too good of an opportunity to reflect critically on our society a bit to just leave it be. Therefore, this will be less of a classic “What if …?“. If you like this format, shoot me an email or comment on this post, and I might do more of these in the future.
As always, a little heads up: I recommend you read the book first, this blog post may contain spoilers up to chapter 20.
“‘But what happened to those things? Snow, and the rest of it?’
‘Climate Control. Snow made growing food difficult, limited the agricultural periods. […] It wasn’t a practical thing, so it became obsolete when we went to Sameness.‘”
Now, to get into the book, lets start by introducing the story’s world. Like already mentioned, Jonas lives in a utopian place called “The Community”. This community is controlled by a strict system of rules and lead by a handful of “elders”. Families, or “family units”, are assigned and members are not biologically related. There are always 4 members in a family unit, two parents and two children, one male and one female. Spouses are assigned too, always concentrated on harmony and the two people fitting together well. Jobs are selected by the elders at the age of twelve, after which free time is replaced by specialized training. These “assignments” are chosen according to a person’s character, but they aren’t disputable (well, technically they are, but in reality they aren’t). Furthermore, all the clothing people wear is decided by their age and people are supposed to look as alike as possible to prevent harrasment and envy.
At first, this doesn’t sound too bad. People live in harmony and are happy and they live in a protected environment and are supplied with everything they need to live. It may sound like this is some kind of slightly-overly strict community, but overall like it’s members are happy and live a good life.
“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”
However, I have intentionally left out some aspects: Firstly, they “release” (which is an interesting way to say “murder”) unhealthy newborns, one of every twin that is born, old people and repeated rulebreakers (3 strikes - you’re out!), even for very minor “crimes”. Furthermore, they got rid of colors for some strange reason.
But the cherry on top is that the main principle of “Sameness” is to completely suppress everyone’s feelings; adults take medicine to get rid of all kinds of sexual desires and needs, kids are taught to express themselves very carefully and to never lie and family units have a mandatory sharing of dreams and feelings where you are not allowed to hide anything from your family members because that would be against the rules, of course.
The idea here isn’t all bad, by controlling feelings you prevent everything that may lead to war, death, mutual destruction under humans and all kind of other bad things.
However, this results in loss of individuality and therefore humanity.
Furthermore, this individuality is what leads to true happiness. The reason the members of the community are happy is because they don’t know happiness. Psychologyst Abraham Maslow, creator of the Hierarchy of Needs structures happiness into 5 parts:
As you can see, in the community only physiological needs and safety and security are fulfilled. However, the factors and needs that lead to true happiness are not possible to achieve in the community. Therefore, the idea is fundamentally flawed. The problem here is not whether people make a choice to live how they currently do, but that they do not have any choice whatsoever.
“How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.”
So what happens if someone doesn’t want to conform? They get released. These “carefully made choices” result in innocent people being killed without anyone knowing what actually happened. Let’s take Fiona for an example. Fiona is trained at the “art of release” at the age of twelve. She learns how to kill old people without even knowing what “killing” means and what she’s actually doing.