Thursday, March 18, 2010
Daily Question for March 22, 2010
Imagine that you are Jonas and you have just read your instructions for "Receiver". The final instruction says that you may lie. Upon reflection, you realize that every other person may have been given the same permission. What do you think this would do to your perception of your world? How would you react to such a mandate, given that you have been so thoroughly trained to NOT lie?
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I would think that maybe everything any adult has told me could have been a lie. My life could have been a lie. It would give me hundreds of doubts. It would bug me to lie and it would feel very uncomfortable . I would also probably suck at lying because I had never lied before. I would probably not lie anyways.
ReplyDeleteI would probably go into a state of shock because if everyone was given the instructions that they can lie after they were given their jobs then it would probably mean that many of the things that my parents and everyone else older then me have said could have been a lie and it would seriously affect my life since I am now told I could lie to other people just like the people older then me were probably doing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you Grim and Handz. It would almost be kinder for him to find out that he could lie on his own than to have that stark directive placed in his instructions.
ReplyDeleteI would be dumbfounded. Once Jonas was took aside for saying he was starving, and they corrected him that he was hungry. That is how trained that people were not to lie, then to see it in his instructions would have completely boggled his mind. I would see my whole world differently, and it would have raised a lot of questions. What if everything that I was ever told could be a lie? My whole life could be a lie. It probably would freak me out.
ReplyDeleteWell after a few hours of reading that I think I would begin to be completely paranoid. What if everyone including my parents have lied to me since birth? I would be so mad that everyone else could be lying that I would start to lie almost about everything. Since I could do it why not use it?
ReplyDeletei would be in great amount of shock and after a great time thinking realize that how many people in the world actually already lie and if i got the instruction that i may lie i would take that opportunity and lie not just for the sake of lying but to bend a story a little to get a better view of a different story. But its easy to say this from my view because i wasnt hard core trained not to lie but if i lived in a society that is that strict about lying like that than my answer would probably be different
ReplyDeleteYou have got some great insights here. Learning that you could lie would be akin to having your world shattered. While it mentions that he considered that other adult could also be given the instructions that lying was optional, it does not say anything further about that. Perhaps the idea was simply too much for Jonas and he could not think more on it or else lose his belief in his world.
ReplyDeletei would think that all the adults were lying and that they couldn't be trusted. i would wonder if my whole life is a lie. i would doubt the whole community. then i would wonder if i was the only one that could lie. i wouldn't want to lie because it would be hard to do and it would feel weird.
ReplyDeleteKnowing that now you are able to lie, and to be free in waht you ask would be such a shock. Lying would now give you the opritunity to manipulate people, but it would require serious bravery to use after your world just got blown apart when you became 12
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with you, Squig. Having the power and having the nerve to use it are two very different things. But, I wonder if Jonas allowed himself to really develop his doubt, and anger at his new "Assignment", would he feel justified in lying and manipulating?
ReplyDeleteJonas, would feel justified for awhile, but then it would be a shallow justification. Nomatter how much Jonas would lie it would just dig his boundries deeper
ReplyDeleteSo the lying would create a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts for him? Interesting insight! BTW, we missed you in class today.
ReplyDeleteI would be tottally dumbfounded and in a complete state of shock because pretty much one the the most important rules in the community no longer applied to me and I would wonder if I was the only one who had gotten the heart-wrenching sentence or if others had gotten it too.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think it would be very confusing for Jonas
ReplyDelete