A Dystopian Government in Disguise

A Dystopian Government in Disguise
In the contemporary society, the primary purpose of setting up a government is to institute a regulatory system that guides the society towards perfection. However, does the perfection of the society guarantee peace to its inhabitants? A government establishes laws and rules that restrict some human activities deemed to cause disharmony in the society due to its evil implications. People’s actions are put under scrutiny using the law to determine how they impact on other individual’s well-being in the same society. Therefore, any action perceived to cause harm to the second party in the community is taken care of through administration of punitive measures, making up a utopian nation. The Giver, a novel by Lois Lowry, portrays a utopian government that is achieved through seclusion of this community from the rest of the world ‘elsewhere,’ thereby manipulating people’s minds into a state of sameness. The society developed in this story is a perfect society without memories of any perceived evil incidences hence valuing everything as the correct thing according to their government. However, this is a dystopian nation in disguise that infringes citizens’ freedom of decision making and differentiating the right from wrong regardless of Hobbes refutation hence compromising the social trust.
In the first place, a utopian nation portrays the likelihood of infringing its citizens’ freedom of decision making. In a society, individuals deserve the right to exercising their freedom of decision making.

Once one exceeds a standard societal age into adulthood, they are granted the power to make their decisions with limited influence. Nonetheless, this is not the case in The Giver nation where the government has taken over the mandate of making decisions for people through the limitation of their access to their memories. Lowry in her novel writes, “There’s nothing we can do. It’s always been this way. Before me, before you, before the ones who came before you” (153). Jonas believes that there is no way out of reconnecting people back to their memories as the government has completely taken over their decision-making freedom hence they cannot revive their lost self. Peter C. Meyers in his articles quotes, “Men living together according to reason, without a common Superior on Earth, with Authority to judge between them, is properly the State of Nature” (632). Meyers expresses Locke’s philosophical view about the human state of nature which depicts humans as people who naturally have the power to judge between them; the hence limited need for administrative laws. The inclusion of these statutes to govern people; therefore, should not justify the infringement of their right to decision making. However, their power to make some decisions that would compromise social safety deserves mitigation not taking the whole power away as in The Giver nation.
Additionally, a utopian society shields its people from identifying the wrong from the right. Therefore, there is the possibility of human exploitation against their knowledge. In Lowry’s novel, Jonas’s community does not hesitate to release, eliminate, individuals who find a hard time to keep up with the societal demands like slow learners and the old aged persons. Jonas’s father says “No, I just have to make the selection. I weigh them, hand the larger over to a Nurturer who’s standing by, waiting, and then I get the smaller one all cleaned up and comfy. The I perform a small Ceremony of Release and” (Lowry 135-136). Despite the fact that Jonas’s father does not understand the reason, he is dedicated to his duty if poisoning and killing the lightest of the identical twins. Ethically the action is inhuman where there is no substantial reason behind taking one’s life, but does so because of an administrative order. In a reflection of a utopian society, Jonas’s father power to differentiate the right from wrong has been taken away hence doing the wrong without questioning.
Apart from that, Hobbes argues that by the state of nature man is not a social animal hence a society exists in the presence of state’s power. People are naturally selfish as they compete for the success of power. “In this selfish quest for power and quest for the creation and possession of satisfying, pleasurable things, all men are basically equal—equal in their possession of at least some power to attain success, and equal in their possession of sufficient power to deny success to others” (Diem par.16). According to Thomas Hobbes, human beings requires the authoritarian government to manage their selfish power as for the sameness in The Giver. However, the establishment of this Hobbes’s type of government would compromise the trust in people. When people’s power that stirs them up into finding their place in society through social comparison and competition is taken away, they are likely to lose their self-trust and societal trust. Jonas is portrayed not to like the idea that people in their community were not allowed to look at the nakedness of other characters lest they are punished for the same (Lowry 29-30). However, he feels there is a need for people trusting each other rather than hiding their nakedness in fear of the punitive administration. A community that is made to believe that their neighbor is dangerous to their existence as well as a success only pulls down the people’s trust that eventually goes as far as not trusting their government.
There is a struggle in the modern society to shun a dystopian government for a perfect one. However, the degree towards this achievement may end establishing a utopian government dystopian in disguise. The desire to create an ideological government has the possibility of denying its people the right to decision making, the power to distinguish the right from wrong at the same time it compromises trust in individuals. A utopian government replaces the power of citizens’ decision making with laws and regulation that coerces them into taking responsibilities of things they do not if they are right or wrong. In the long run, the presence of law indicates that the humans cannot trust each other hence broods a new people that entirely depends on the law in place of trustworthiness. Therefore, a dystopian government is preferable for maintaining the sociability of humans compared to a utopian state.
Works Cited
Diem, Gordon Neal. “Locke, Hobbes And The Free Nation”. Freenation.Org, 1998, http://freenation.org/a/f53d2.html.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. 1st ed., Laurel-Leaf, 2002,.
Myers, Peter C. “Between Divine And Human Sovereignty: The State Of Nature And The Basis Of Locke’s Political Thought”. Polity, vol 27, no. 4, 1995, p. 629. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/3234963.