The education of the next philosopher-in-residence is a dangerous moment for the Community, for a true education will reveal the artificial character of the political horizon. The Receiver does not frequent the marketplace or the gymnasium as Socrates did.īoth novel and movie tell the story of Jonas, the youngster selected to be the new Receiver of Memory. While it is stated that the people long ago chose “Sameness” for themselves, it seems plausible to posit a forgotten Founder who, understanding the connection between memory and wisdom, made a place, an honored place, for a Socratic philosopher while at the same time insulating the Community from the disruptive potential of his presence. The Receiver’s official purpose is to be available to give advice to the Committee of Elders in the unlikely event that something unexpected arises. Like Nietzsche’s last men, the residents of the Community mistake this shrunken existence for utopia. “We have invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. And much poison in the end, for an agreeable death. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle the last man lives longest.Ī little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. “What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” thus asks the last man, and he blinks. Everyone else lives the diminished life of Nietzsche’s “last man,” memorably described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: He alone lives deeply, with joy and pain derived from the books that surround him in his library and the memories that have been entrusted to him by the previous Receiver. This “Receiver of Memory” is greatly honored but also radically isolated by the tremendous burden that he bears. The central conceit in The Giver is that the memory of the past-the past before the societal transformation to “Sameness”-is possessed by a solitary individual. So too with The Giver, which is not to say that the movie doesn’t have its good points. I don’t know about the first two in that list (not having any plans to see or read them), but the print versions of the last three are superior to the cinematic ones. More specifically, The Giver is a 1993 “young adult” dystopian novel by Lois Lowry, just brought out in a film version so now you can expect to find the story (and its sequels) shelved under the bookseller’s rubric, “Now-a-Major-Motion-Picture Books,” along with The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Lord of the Rings, The Great Gatsby, and Romeo and Juliet. The Giver is not political philosophy, but it’s the next best thing: science fiction. Instead of Carthage-scale eradication, the society in The Giver has found a new mode-seemingly kinder and gentler-by which to neutralize memory, thereby creating a pliant citizenry. In chapter 5 of The Prince, he counseled harsh measures like wiping out the entire population as the only sure mode to exterminate the remembrance of things past. How persistent is memory, politically speaking? Machiavelli argued that “the memory of ancient liberty,” possessed by republican peoples, is tenacious, presenting an obstacle for a ruler bent on tyrannizing those long used to self-government.
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