The Community of the Future in The Giver
It is the year 2065. The world has been getting
progressively more crowded, violent, and fragmented. The air and water
have become more and more polluted, and the natural resources exhausted.
Even the mountains have been mined for their rock, and levelled to make
room for more Malls, Worshiptoriums, and Sports Arenas. The US has divided
itself into separate countries; some based on race, others on level of
intelligence (the country of Shmartiopolis is especially feared for its
technology), still others on religion. By far the most populated is the
Mall of Dollahstan, where consumerism has run wild, and everything is based
on the dollar. Citizens are implanted at birth with an electronic soul
that measures how many dollars they have earned, and more importantly,
how many they have spent. Those that spend too little are Rejected from
the Mall.
In reaction to all this, a large group of
people, dissatisfied with the way the world was going, fled north to upper
regions of Canada, near the Arctic Circle. They had all fled from their
respective countries, and were looking for a way to live more peacefully
and happily together. Using technology, they managed to create a sort of
a force field that made their community largely invisible to the rest of
the world. They learned to control the weather, and almost every other
aspect of life, so that there were no differences to battle over. They
found peace in what they called the Sameness. They found that it was mostly
people's differences that led to conflict; differences in looks, ability,
income, mood, desires, even clothing could lead to conflict and suffering.
Over time, they realized they could even forget
what the rest of the world had been like. They also realized they needed
to have some memory of what things were like Elsewhere, but the burden
of everyone having those memories could lead to differences and conflict,
so it was decided to select one person per generation to hold the memories
for all. That person is called the Receiver.
Here is my proof...