Be Controlled

I often imagine that there are “mirrors'' randomly appearing as dribs and drabs in our quotidian lives, and we can usually find “ourselves” being reflected in various circumstances, including dramas, myths and history. For instance, perhaps one day you’ll realize that the plot of the movie is actually what you’ve experienced in early life while sitting in a theater. Furthermore, though it is diffusely admitted that the utopia, which resembles the community established and subtly criticized by The Giver, isn’t able to exist in the genuine world; however, I found not only mine but the reflection of the whole society in the “mirror-like” story.

Being conscious of the community Jonas dwelt in was controlled by the Committee of Elders, yet most of us neglect that we, in reality, are under control as well. Nowadays, the actors who play the role of the Committee are social media and—ourselves, unfortunately. As numerous of information is spreading widely and rapidly through the Internet in the 21th century, when technology is highly developed, we consider ourselves difficult to be misled due to the huge amount of news we receive from different sources every day, which made us firmly believe that we can distinguish fake news from the true ones by ourselves; however, as a matter of fact, we turn out to be easier to be led astray owing to aggravating tendency of information explosion.

It’s a contemporary phenomenon called “post-truth,” which means that a part of the truth is purposefully emphasized or modified (mostly by social media) and further reverses the truth. Moreover, the characteristic that we tend to believe what we agree with inherently before or even after deliberating on it and our biases contribute to the situation, representing that words speak louder than facts. Sadly, just like the innocent residents in The Giver, we seldom realize that we are manipulated and even believe that there’s nothing ever concealed from us. Therefore, we need Jonas, the one who was able to doubt and change the present condition, as an awakened who will invariably come to our rescue when we encounter dilemmas. Although Jonas wasn’t a authentic figure, all of us are capable to become Jonas once we build up our own capability of media literacy and thinking not only independently but also objectively, which is especially important for us because these abilities are necessary skills in order to keep a foothold during the era of globalization as well as the key to the truth—the world decorated with all sorts of colors and a variety of memories, including both delightful and painful ones.

I’ve heard a fabel named “the boiling frog” —if a frog is suddenly dropped into boiling water, it will perceive it and jump out; however, if the frog is put into water heated tardily to boil, it will ignore the hazard and eventually be killed by the high temperature. As long as we are used to questioning and pondering over everything we interact in our lives, we can escape from the gradually boiling water called “post truth” or “fake news” either and make a huge step towards the non-standard (which means there will be individuality, emotions and love) but perfect “utopia,” which is the unknown place Jonas and Gabriel happily slid into in the end of The Giver, I guess.