“I was taken aback at how densely detailed each one was…There was something vulnerable about each of them.” by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
In an alternate world, disease is eradicated through the use of organ transplants. These donations are from human clones. The “special” people are kept in a protected environment, in boarding schools and government housing. Most are accepting of their fate. It’s understood that after three or four donations, they will die: “completion” as they call it.
In what is the most telling part of the story, a teacher warns her students that, “You will never have regular jobs. You will never marry or have children. Your lives have already been decided for you.” (She is immediately fired.) The next day, the head of the school condemns her, calling this an act of “subversion”.
“Forward thinking always has its detractors. We will not be swayed.”
The students applaud.
An allegory?
Here in America, we have Generation Snowflake. The term “snowflake” originally began as a compliment. “We may look alike, yet we are all different.”
As most of you are aware, there have been calls for the shutting down of free speech. “Free Speech” according to Gen. Snowflake is “dangerous”. Snowflakes want “safe spaces free of micro-aggressions.”
On Nov. 8, 2016, you saw the reactions from the snowflake crowds when Donald Trump won.
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Two years later, we are witnessing right-wing commentators being deplatformed from the Internet. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are all guilty of shadow-banning. Far-left politicians claim that “Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.”
Where is all this going?
What happens in ten years when Gen. Snowflake runs the world? Will writers be arrested for articles like this? Five years ago, you may have laughed at this suggestion. Who’s laughing now?
First, comes the silencing of the opposition. Next, there will be prison for anyone who speaks or writes something that may inspire a crime. The truth is, anything may potentially inspire a crime: a cartoon, a videogame, a film. Shall we ban everything that’s potentially offensive? Will TV programs made in the twentieth-century be removed for not being PC enough? What about books? All forms of media or art?
We are entering dark times, times where if we don’t fight for the right to be heard, we will lose this, our most basic freedom.
“Never Let Me Go” is also a 2010 film, directed by Mark Romanek and stars Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley
Text © 2018 – ERN
