The Robots in The Community, Lack of feelings in The Giver

" Jonas, you and I are the only ones who have feelings," Lowry, 154.

Alright, so I got the idea for this post in class. It's a culmination of random thoughts and hopefully this all makes sense... So here goes, there's no turning back. Onward with the blog entry.

In my notes I have written, "lack of feeling empowers ppl. in The Community to 'release' others." Then as I listened to the lecture I thought some more. I postulate that, maybe this lack of feeling, or apathy even is what has led others to commit such atrocities against their fellow brothers and sisters... I cited the Holocaust as an example. Other examples of this happening, people commiting such horrible violent acts against mankind, are someone abundunt. In the early 90's the Rawandan Patriotic Army invaded northern Rwanda and eventually a genocide ensued. I believe that these people whether they be Nazi soldiers, or members of the Rwandan Patriotic Army are alike in that they put any feelings aside, if they had any, so that they could "release" or relinquish others of their lives and love.

I also thought about my psychology classes that I've taken and remembered about the Zimbardo prison experiment. In short, in this experiement college students were empowered to play in a role, of "prison guard", where they could abuse those students who were not empowered. After a few days, the students who had assumed the "inmate" roles begged the experimenter to end the experiement and eventually they were forced to do so. I used this example because it seemed fitting. People are cruel and what's scarier is that they don't feel as if they're doing anything wrong.

In The Giver, Nuturers as well as those who care for the old are given permission to kill others. The euphemism used throughout the book is "release." Infants who do progress get released. Old people are released if they want to be... Those who break the rules three times are out. On The ones who carry out the act of releasing are like robots, they have no feelings. They don't feel for those they kill and are able to be living, thriving members of the community because they do not love one another.

So, I guess that we can see how easy it has been for these people, both real and imagined to commit such acts. All they to do is hear that it is okay for them to release X person and then they don't feel bad when they do release X person.

And so, I think that this is fine now. There's enough for now... Gotta run.