Do you think he should have released the memories?

Without the bad, there is no good for comparison. Life isn't complete without both. Also, there is no such thing as good or bad emotions. All emotions are neutral, it is how those emotions affect our behaviour that is good or bad.

Bob

I would say that he should Not have released the memories, except that the 'releasing' of babies, simply because twins (or more) throws off the population control and the bigger/stronger twin is not always the better of the set. Many times the smaller one ends up smarter - which benefits society more than the stronger 'jocky' twin. I didn't even have a problem with 'releasing' the eldest because room is needed for the younger ones. If it wasn't for the killing of weaker children then I am all for eradicating emotion, want, greed, war, hunger, Pain. I'm sorry, but singing and dancing and music and kissing and sex does not outweigh the horrible suffering of people in the world - the victims of ISIS and the Boku Harim (sp) and tribal genocide and all the animals that suffer at the hands if man would all agree that a society free of all those evils must give up some of what we believe is the good

I think Jonas was right to release the memories. It wasn't just emotions and fun memories that the people lost; it was themselves, their human-ness, their personalities. It's by struggle and pain that we learn and grow as human beings. What was the point of even living in that world, with no love, no passion, nothing that mattered? Everything was just ordered and organized for the sake of it. And a society in which nobody cares that innocent people are regularly murdered, in which people don't have any concept of what killing even is, and how bad it is, is not a good society.

Living as emotionless drones isn't living at all so yes releasing the emotions was the right thing to do.

For me, it is a difficult question. Seeing the movie I felt that the people were living 'good' lives already, and that Jonas was only going to create problems when he wanted to release the memories.

Clark: Jonathan Kent; isn't it a little past your bedtime?

You could also read Aldous Huxley, his book Brave New World actually raised this question decades before this movie. When I was back in school (over 30 years ago) I said to my teacher that the protagonist in this novel was wrong, wanting emotions (love and pain), and that the brave new world without fear, pain, happiness or love, was a better place than our world that is full of beauty an terror.

I am not sure anymore. I don't say, that I would always opt for having free choice and free will. But I do know now that the terrible things we humans can do belong to us as a race as well as the wonders we ceate. It may be that our terrible deeds will destroy us one day, it may also be that we can evolve into something more advanced one day. The universe is and will be indifferent to this. It is only the individual that experiences these things, actually it all happens in a single human brain out of 8 billion at a time. So don't get blinded by the false greatness of philosophical concepts or human deeds, they may mean nothing at all to existence.

A truly stable society is one that dropped out of evolution. It stagnates and will be pushed aside by the rest of the evolution eventually. Humans will not be here forever, every form of existence has it's time and will fade away as other forms evolve. Even if our descendants will be AI machines, they will have to endure a limited existence, maybe a lifetime of billions of years, but in the end even this universe will die.

There is no great caretaker watching over us (or he utterly failed for the dinosaurs and many other great concepts of existence that were at least as promising as humans seem to be).

I believe he did the only thing that could have been done. What is the point of life if you don't actually live?

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-= J =-