The Giver

Remember "The Giver" by Lois Lowry? I read it many years ago, probably for school. I might have gone back to read it again at some point. At the time I thought it was about how utopia can't exist - like, the message is that a perfect society isn't really perfect.

But I was thinking about it and I realized it's a different message. It's about the memories. The Giver's job is basically to hold on to all the memories of the bad things so that history doesn't repeat itself. And I think that's missing from today's tiktok-educated Gen-Z. Someone on Facebook pointed out that older people tend to be pro-Israel and young people are pro-Palestinian. I didn't ask where she puts the line between young and old.

It reminded me of another thing I heard once, something like "if you're not a socialist when you're young, you have no heart; if you're not a capitalist when you're old, you have no brain." I don't think this quote has to be taken literally but I like the point about how people's opinions change as they get older and learn more about the world. (Maybe the point is that young people are more fueled by emotion?)

So which is it? Are older people pro-Israel because they have more knowledge and experience? Is it because they remember the intifada or 9/11 and know what terrorism is like? Were they always pro-Israel? Or is it an age thing, did their opinions change as they got older and the young people just aren't there yet?

Going back to Gen-Z's, it's not only them. There are lots of lucky people in the world who really don't know terrorism and war, and they really don't understand just how shitty a situation can be. They're busy trying to find a "good guy" and a "bad guy," an "oppressor" and a "victim." One foreign reporter (on the BBC maybe?) asked if trading three Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli hostage means that Israel thinks that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli lives. I mean, WTF? Does she have any idea how negotiations work? Like, she actually thinks that Israel decided on a whim how that hostage deal would look?

The point is that if you want to have a strong opinion about war, you actually need to understand war. Tiktok needs a Giver.