What exactly is freedom? Is it something that is inherently human, or is it something that we are taught? In WE freedom is frowned upon. D-503 talks about how he despises the “free time” in the daily schedule. He can’t wait for the day when every one of the 86400 seconds of a day are scheduled. Now, does “freedom” of D-503 mean the same thing as “freedom” does for us, of course not. D sees “freedom” as chaos. D sees freedom as the worst thing in the world. D strives for the ultimate “unfreedom”, the ultimate rationality. At first this seems like a bit crazy. Then I got thinking would it really be. If one wanted to insure freedom of people to do anything they wanted and insure freedom of life then an intense amount of government overview would be necessary. This makes sense and this close control of the government is exactly what the guardians do in WE. So the more freedom one wanted in this “perfect” society, the more government control would be necessary. This constant escalation of freedom would eventually lead to WE’s unfreedom. A time when the power of the government is so great that they could tell the people what freedom is, what freedom they wanted, and that freedom is not freedom at all ( in the book’s case at least). So at what point does freedom become chaos and mathematical rationality become the perfection of society? When does a free choice become a demanded choice? I hope the book tells a bit more of the One State’s history so it can possibly deal with some of these questions.
Friday, January 25, 2008
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I'm not sure I understood what it was you were trying to say when you said: "If one wanted to insure freedom of people to do anything they wanted and insure freedom of life then an intense amount of government overview would be necessary."
To me it seems to be the opposite way around: that the more governmental control there is, the less personal freedoms there are. People wouldn't be able to do anything they want because the government is limiting freedoms by mantaining its control. I think the Patriot Act is an example of this. It takes away some peoples freedom of privacy to maintain some level of order in society.
I think that citizens in We have a desire for safety and order. Freedom is so unappealing to them because it is dangerous. It is like buying a dog from the Humane Society and releasing it into the wild. The dog is free, but many dangers exist in the wild (predators, lack of food,...). I think this is why they except the amount of control the One State has over their lives. They would rather stay in the cage.
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