Something that makes a Clone-full Society

By Rene Magritte

I chose this painting by Rene Magritte because I thought it really emphasizes the meaning of being 'oppressed' by rules and laws. Same people, with same clothes, like clones. If people do only what they are told to, they are not more than a robot, not thinking by themselves but getting controlled by something/someone else. In the novel, 'The Knife of Never Letting Go,' people never questioned and only feared about the world beyond them. They tried not to be in negative side of the leader, Mayor Prentiss, and only damaged themselves and did not ask for the truth. This painting represents the a society where there are no upstanders, just working by the command of the government itself.

'It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.'
Mark Twain

Not every part of the world is free. Restrictions are tightening citizen’s own lives. Don't you think you will feel really oppressed when you think someone is watching over everything you do? Even though you have the absolute power, imagine you can't even do one thing that you intend to do. You can only act like one another, like clones and puppets, moving and being controlled by another being. Freedom is no more then doing what you want to do, and if I have given a chance to make a new world, I would make a world with freedom.

The reason why I think freedom is important is because it lets people express themselves freely in different ways. Humans often show themselves by paintings, words or even by music. Imagine, if people were covered by restrictions and rules, would they be able to expend their creativity which might change or improve their society? I think not. Just like Jews, having isolated seats in the buses and having limited time to go outside, they had no such thing called freedom. Maybe that is the advantage of the winner, Nazis, but even now, Burma is full of things that you are not allowed to do without permission. In these situations, people were afraid to take a stand which automatically made them a bystander, a puppet. Those people will just do what government wants, and that has nothing with challenging themselves or trying out new things, and I believe if that keeps up for few years, it will just become a stereotype.

In addition, I think freedom is the most important thing because people have rights to speak their opinions. Mark Twain has written many books; Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and so on. In his life time, there has been the 'American Civil War' and he negatively criticized the situation after the war through his books. Mark Twain was a resolved supporter of liberating men and women saying that they have rights. He actually supported them by paying the money for them to go to college( because he thought they have right to recieve education). I think that is why he wrote this quote(the quote that I mentioned earlier), saying people have rights to speak and they deserve human rights. I believe human rights are written to be useful to the world or the society. If the government follows human rights and tries to fix the ones that are not fully done yet, it allows citizens to think more outside the box because they have no worries bothering them, which will slowly improve the society’s technology, fine arts and so on.

The importance of freedom in the New world is huge. Without freedom, the new world would be silent and still with no improvements. As I mentioned earlier, Mark Twain once claimed...

'It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.'
Mark Twain

meaning the freedom of speech, which could mean freedom of expressing themselves, thinking in a new way, is important and precious.

http://dev.laptop.org/~arael/preview/famous_paintings/famous_paintings.xol/