Are we the experimental rats?
Lately I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the young-adult literature and movies. I’ve found it for example in two dystopia books: “The maze runner” by James Dashner and “Divergent” by Veronica Roth. The trend I’m talking about is seeing the life as an experiment. In both of the books the main characters eventually find out that their life was controlled and examined by other people sitting in some laboratory, that the home they took for a save enclave surrounded by danger was in fact their prison. The phenomenon of the popularity of such ideas seems fascinating for me. A few weeks ago I’ve been talking with my aunt about those books and the vision of life as an experiment, when she said: “You know, there might be some true in that. Like with the books of Jules Verner – everybody thought it was a total fiction, whereas many things appeared to be true”. I have to admit I was surprised at that statement. It made me think it all over even more deeply.
Why do people want to believe such things? Why do people underestimate their freedom? I guess the answer is simple: because it’s easier. On every failure you can just say it was programmed that way. Somebody else is taking the decisions. You don’t have much influence on what you do. That vision is equally pessimistic as the Shakespeare’s theory theatrum mundum – the world is a theatre and people are the actors directed by God. I guess the experiment theory is the modern version of the one of the theatre that was present even in the ancient times. Which is actually fascinating that even so many centuries later, people still think similarly. Our live conditions have changes, the technic has developed, but the human fears and problems are still the same. On the one hand, they want freedom, but on the other, when they really get it, they turn their minds into the direction of pessimistic theories that we are just the toys in somebody else’s hands. Freedom is difficult: you’re the one responsible, it depends on you if you achieve your goals or not, it depends on you what your life will be like. This scares people. Just look at the work market: how many people dream about starting their own company, about making some difference? Many, many, many. And how many actually do something to achieve it? Very few. Why? Because it’s easier to go every day to the same office, do what the boss tells you and later go home and not worry. Starting something on your own demands much more, and the most difficult is that you have no boss there, no guide. You’re all alone on the ocean full of storms and unknown reefs. But I believe it’s better to try and fall and learn and fall again, instead of just obeying the orders of others. Because when you go through the storms, you see the unbelievably bright sun on the sky clear as ever.
Why do people want to believe such things? Why do people underestimate their freedom? I guess the answer is simple: because it’s easier. On every failure you can just say it was programmed that way. Somebody else is taking the decisions. You don’t have much influence on what you do. That vision is equally pessimistic as the Shakespeare’s theory theatrum mundum – the world is a theatre and people are the actors directed by God. I guess the experiment theory is the modern version of the one of the theatre that was present even in the ancient times. Which is actually fascinating that even so many centuries later, people still think similarly. Our live conditions have changes, the technic has developed, but the human fears and problems are still the same. On the one hand, they want freedom, but on the other, when they really get it, they turn their minds into the direction of pessimistic theories that we are just the toys in somebody else’s hands. Freedom is difficult: you’re the one responsible, it depends on you if you achieve your goals or not, it depends on you what your life will be like. This scares people. Just look at the work market: how many people dream about starting their own company, about making some difference? Many, many, many. And how many actually do something to achieve it? Very few. Why? Because it’s easier to go every day to the same office, do what the boss tells you and later go home and not worry. Starting something on your own demands much more, and the most difficult is that you have no boss there, no guide. You’re all alone on the ocean full of storms and unknown reefs. But I believe it’s better to try and fall and learn and fall again, instead of just obeying the orders of others. Because when you go through the storms, you see the unbelievably bright sun on the sky clear as ever.
Published on October 22, 2015 01:35
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Tags:
divergent, dystopia, experiment, shakespeare, the-maze-runner, theatre
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