Blog 2 Importance of Free Will in Our Society

One of my favorite types of novels are dystopian, meaning that they are set in an undesirable future. Some famous dystopian stories are 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games. A constant feature in these novels is the lack of free will in society. The citizens in these novels are oppressed and whether they realize it or not, they have no choice in how they live. Sometimes the rules force them to take certain jobs, or they are told whom to marry, or perhaps they are subjected to awful laws that force their children to kill each other for sport. 

The most intriguing thing to me about these novels is that it would only take a short time for our current lives to fall into these types of tragedies. Every time we give up a right, we make it that much easier to take away other rights. For example, when the Nazis wanted to enslave the Jewish people of Germany, they didn't come and put them into murder camps on the first day. They took away their rights one at a time: first they harassed them, prohibited them from earning a living, and made them wear stars to identify their religion; then they moved them into ghettos and stole their homes and possessions; and finally they moved them into concentration camps and slowly and systematically murdered them.

If we don't learn from our previous mistakes, we can easily be made into slaves of anyone who has the will and resources to rule over us. We have to remember, Hitler was elected by popular vote.