For the first marking period assignment, I'm going to go on a spiel about "We" and OneState. OneState had been a government with too much control, becoming an amalgam of gears, as opposed to an actual community. Governments taken to the type of extreme that OneState happened to subscribed to become worst kind of society to live in. The majority becomes happy and content as gears, happy to grind and grind 'till they rust and fall, only to be replaced in the great ever-living machine of the State. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," is a quote by Benjamin Franklin that is perfect for the situation described in "We." If the oppressed do not feel oppressed, are they still oppressed? Are those who have spent their lives knowing nothing but a cell free? Would a cog feel like there is more outside of the gearbox if thinking such thoughts meant imprisonment or death? Mankind is not meant to be machines, but to be flesh. Living walking flesh lives and breathes. It thinks, it moves of its own accord for its own reasons. To tell a man not to think or what to think is like telling a lion to eat naught but leaves and grasses.
As far as quotes from the work go, my favorite had to have been this:
“And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
My reason being that a calm, calculating, computer of a man cannot attain the pleasures of life, marveling at the unknown is impossible if all you see is a finite amount of possibilities instead of vast and wondrous impossibilities as well as improbabilities.So those who see the forest for the flowers and those who see the forest as a pile of desecrated biological matter being used for nutrients by plants are at odds. Art requires the view of the flowers, and science requires the view of the bio-matter, but both must also require the opposite. Without the viewpoint of art then science would have no use and no innovation, and without the viewpoint of science then the mysteries of art would have no allure. So every single person is a little bit crazy, and that craziness is imagination itself.
