Examples Of Free Will In The Giver

The most outstanding problem in a utopia is the illusion of free will. Under most modern philosophies, we assume that all humans have the ability to determine their futures through their decisions. In a “utopian” society, every person’s decisions must be predetermined to retain order. Every human’s actions must be predictable in order to plan and prepare for all possible problems. If you assume that humans can make decisions that were created entirely in their own minds, then at some point, a person’s actions would be unprecedented and the society would not know how to handle somebody thinking for themselves. For example, if a member of a utopian society acted in their own self-interest to try and move up in their occupational hierarchy, that would not be in the interest of the society as a whole. Finally, if other members of society notice that the “free will” the utopia provides is false, then they will act in their own self-interest rather than on their predesignated path. The free will problem forms the basis of the plot in most fictional depictions of utopia, such as in The Giver.
Utopias operate on an “order” that acts like a book balanced on the sharp end of a pencil; when it works perfectly, it works perfectly, but when any outside power disrupts the utopia, everything goes to ruins. A spell of chaos in a utopia is like a drop of poison in a glass of water. In the event of an eruption or a hurricane, all order would be pushed aside and self-preserving instincts would dominate. Imagine a million citizens on the brink of disorder, when suddenly a storm takes the homes of a thousand families. Thinking that those families would be immediately reincorporated and accepted into the society assumes not only that humans are inherently good, but that they are completely free of