Government Control (the lack of it)
Government Control (the lack of it)
By: Tyler Croll
The novel “The Road” depicts the place the world will become after its civilization and more importantly government control is destroyed. Now that there is no kind of project to keep the world tamed, the world has become a very immoral, dangerous, and scary place. Finding food is a struggle making surviving extremely difficult, and people are killing other people freely, showing the demoralization of society. Also, due to the desperation for food, sickness, and lack of mental well-being, cannibalism has had its toll on these people, along with burning a baby. This just shows that without some sort of control over them, people think they can do whatever they want and don’t guilt over anything. People need government control or they are going to think anything is OK, and it will lead to the demoralization and insanity of humans and the world. So, without government control upon the world, people hide from each other and kill each other instead of doing anything productive; it is as if the whole world is at war with each other until the last one survives…and then what?…the world dies. People don’t have any sort of structure holding them together; to rebuild society. Without government control; without security and safety; the world cannot function. There are no rules, so it is like a human is just another animal who fends for itself and its family (that’s it), a carnivore even, until the animal is extinct…
for your last sentence when you say “it is like a human is just another animal” well are we not. Humans can actually be worse than animals. ie. when a wolf hunts its prey, it hunts in a pack, and before it kill the animal it almost bows before it. some researchers say that they are thanking the animal in their own way. humans are more ruthless than that. we fight for the sake of fighting and when there is a loser we dont thank them or even try to apologize, all humans do is say “now pay for the damages.”
well the way i see it., that would depend on what you concider an animal. One could easiy argue either way. Are peoples actions often worse than those of an animal,yes, but i think the intelectial capability of humans are about the only thing that sets us apart from animals other than that were are pretty much the same. But frankly that makes our actions that much worse for we are able to comprehend what we are doing. And i think that this is what makes dystopic novels so powerful, the fact that it is people doing these horrible things tha we can’t coprehend happening and yet, we can..
Yeah I agree with Matt entirely; the message I was trying to get through was that now that the world has been shattered, people have lost track of all morals and began to not take into concideration what they are actually doing when these actions were once titled “immoral” by humans before… This connects them to animals since animals (more so carnivores) first instinct is to do what it takes to survive…and they don’t really comprehend what they are doing so it sets them far apart from humans. So, now that there is no kind of system to monitor the actions of people, they have changed their perspectives on life – no such thing as moral/immoral actions anymore, survival of the fittest…the human population is just another species of animal now…
Humans are more intiliectually inclined then animals to become a society based upon survival of the fittest in the absence of a higher authority. The poopulation would be divided into groups of those who uphold basic moral principles and those who would not. I think the good in people would outweigh that of the curropt. Society wouldn’t be as it would today if it werent for the ability of humans to distinguish between right and wrong regardless of if there were law. Civilization did not start with laid out laws, they were gradually put into effect over thousands of years. If all governement and higher authority were to banish i think our society today would be smart enough to carry on humanity in a non “survival of the fittest way” based upon natural law.
The prior comments remind me of my ISU novel, “I, Robot.” This novel does fit the genre of utopia/dystopia that we are currently considering. The underlying question throughout the novel is what does it mean to be human, since there is robots who can mimic the actions of humans. Hence the only apparent difference is humans’ abilities to base decisions on emotions and morals and if we lost those capacities then what would humans be… The day humans totally lose all morals is the day the world ends.
You’ve started an interesting discussion here gentlemen. One that Golding toyed with in writing the Lord of the Flies. Matt G at times has spoken hopefully about The Road. Matt F is just plain hopeful. In Anthem the protagonist Equality, is told he is immoral by rebelling against the WE gov’t. It is only when he escapes society with electricty or light as he calls it that he is able to rename himself Prometheus. He then feels vindicated for his previous moral transgression… as his perspective shifts as he encounters the readings of Western society. Who decides what is immoral or moral? The protagonist in Anthem (and ex-Russian Ayn Rand) certainly finds an outlet here to explore the collective theorist who had a stranglehold on her mother country? Might a Westerner escape to Russia and condemn our social underpinnings as immoral?
This is the problem with the world and the place that much racism stems from. Everywhere in the world there are different morals and people are constantly trying to impose their morals onto others because they feel that they are superior. This is seen in many areas of the world. One minor example of this is the fact that in certain parts of the world they eat dogs, nowthe majority of western people would find this revolting to eat their pet, but it is normal to other people. In the say way that eating a cow is normal for us. The idea of morals also pops up in the road, particualrily when people are having babies for the sake of eating them, this is naturally shocking to me and my group members as well, but this is our moral judgement, the people doing this are from a different time and are trying to survive, are we right to impose moral judgment?
I think it’s interesting how in your novel, The Road there is a lack of government control which creates a dystopia while in the novel The Chrysalids there is too much government control which leads to a dystopia.
yea i found this to be one of the interesting things about the road, I liked that it had a different persective than most. it was interesting too see what someone might happen without a government instead of a controling government