How would a society with no sense of accomplishment or worth be convinced to reestablish such principles?

Question

Here's the scenario:

I have a society that has eliminated all traces of accomplishment, self-worth and emotions. People are entirely neutral, and as a result all conflicts have been eliminated.

Since there is no sense of accomplishment, achievement or self-worth (basically everyone is apathetic) people just do what they do. All needs are handled by the controllers, and everyone goes with the flow. People are assigned to certain positions, and they do them. All mental illnesses and physical ailments have been eliminated, and the society is completely peaceful, and docile.

Occasionally, a child is born that does not conform to these principles. Once the child is identified as a non-conformist, the child is killed. The parents feel no remorse for this. Very rarely will a child be born that is a non-conformist and not be killed, but it's been known to happen.

Over time, several dozen children have been born (and not identified) to be non-conformists. They have emotions and feelings naturally, and they have self-worth and goals. As a result, they wish to bring the society back to its former self, of having empathy and other emotions. The age ranges of this group of people is very vast. Some are 12, some 20, all the way up to 150 or older (another result of this Utopian society is that the life-expectancy is enormous, some people have been known to live to 200 years old). These people are also able to locate other persons who also have emotion via telepathy, and as such recruit in secret. The group currently numbers 56, with 17 other persons out there who have not been (as of yet) recruited. The society in total numbers in the tens of billions.

Some notes: there is no police force, as there is no crime. There are only "controllers" (who run the government, basically we would refer to them as parliament et al), and "enforcers" (who assign people to their respective tasks). Everyone is of super-human intelligence, and people are perfectly content doing whatever job is necessary. In contrast to many future science-fiction societies, there is no form of "tracking" of people. Everyone is implicitly trusted as the society as-a-whole believes that there are no living non-conformists.

So, the question is, how would the revolutionary group achieve its goal of bringing the society back to its emotional state? How would they remove the solidarity and apathy to help the society go back to having feelings, emotions and goals?

Answer 1

"As a result, they wish to bring the society back to its former self, of having empathy and other emotions."

I really do not understand this. The rational response would be to leave and live in a separate society. The rational response to non-conformists by the society would also be to exile them. Even if this society was somehow contained so that leaving is impossible, segregation within the society should be achievable. Both plotting revolution and killing non-conformists are irrational impulses based on emotion without any real benefit. Where would these violent impulses and patterns be coming from?

The killing can be explained as a historical remnant from the time when such atavistic individuals were numerous enough to be a real threat. We can presume a separate society of atavistic individuals in conflict with and hostile to the apathetic people. If the competing group was violent enough killing might make sense.

The rational goal for the atavistic people in this case would be to get the society to stop killing them on discovery and become an accepted part of society. You'll note that real world "different" minorities such homosexuals do not AFAIK plot to take over the world and turn everyone into homosexuals. Being accepted as different but equally valuable seems to be sufficient. Why would your people insist on a revolution almost certainly resulting in large numbers of people dying since that is what revolutions do?

Gaining this modified goal would be relatively simple. It would also, if you insist, serve as the first step for the irrational goal in the question.

You simply need to establish the "emotionals" as different from the old enemy and as adding something valuable to society. If the enforcers are unemotional, they will not be emotionally attached to the rules as written to the point of bothering to resist rational arguments. Blind adherence to rules requires emotions. I'd assume something like that explains why the ancient conflict was won by the people not having emotions making their thinking rigid.

As you note that the revolutionaries have telepathic abilities this is easy. Telepathy would make early detection of non-conformists trivial so we can assume the enforcers do not have it. Since telepathy would give huge advantage in any kind of conflict, we can safely assume the old enemy the kill rules were meant to stop from reappearing did not have it either. This means that the non-conformists are provably something entirely new and different and the rules should not be applied to them.

You seem to be assuming that the enforcers would refuse to admit this and play by the book anyway. The problem is adherence to rules, conservatism, and the need to save face are all emotional responses to uncertainty. Your enforcers would be simply incapable of even understanding such reaction. They might read enough history to have heard of it as something the old enemy used to do. They'd have no reason not to accommodate a safely small number of people with a special talent. They might insist on surveillance and even suicide devices as safety precaution in case the emotions still lead to irrationality and violence like they used to. But that is about it.

You'll note that unemotional people have no reason to discriminate against minorities or have prejudice against those different from themselves either. So once you convince the enforcers not to kill you, you are home free.

Answer 2

Start by removing the drugs from the water. ;)

Putting some drug in the water of a city that causes emotional reactions or a psycho-active response. Start with just one city. It will force some kind of response, and freak out a lot of people. You need to shake up a sufficiently large number of people to wake them up from their daze of apathy. All you need is some small percentage at first, but then they can help spread the movement. The good thing is with so much apathy, most people aren't going to be trying extra hard to catch these 'criminals', they will just be going through the motions.

This would need to happen because the only reason why this world hasn't seen a huge reduction in population from lack of interest in sex is because of the long life expediencies.

On top of that, people who don't care or have any drive do not push research or invention, so the whole society would be stagnating and that means dying.

Answer 3

Don't try to "solve" the society, because it will fight back.

Instead of trying to make everyone non-conforming, try to make everyone just non-conforming enough but slip past the identification. Never strike a bulwark head on, when you can just skirt along its edges.

Eventually, this level of subtle non-conformance will erode their ability to terminate non-conforming individuals. That's when your movement can pick up steam. That's when you can do your story-specific solution to the story-specific way they got rid of emotions and drive in the first place.

Answer 4

I was writing an answer on the same direction as @Night_fox. The problem I faced is that with a super intelligent society will never use "formats" or written rules for their controllers.

I'll guess those rules will be stated IN THE CITIES in a complex way. I can imagine something like the shape of the buildings will tell the controllers the interpretation they need. Also they shape of the schools, streets, houses, etc, will tell the controllers everything they need to detect non-conformists in a different range of ages, but most of them will be focused on the kids. Probably just a few controllers (up to +100 years old) will be focused on finding non-conformist adults.

I will suggest the old-fashioned bombing. Primary targets will be the key buildings where you could find a lot of kids or newborns at the same time (basic schools? hospitals for newborns?), forcing to use alternative places for such activities and reducing the controllers specialized at training the new generations.

Answer 5

If you could find a way to change all accessible formats of the rules that the controllers are using in one moment, that might do it. Since they are so trusting and completely unmotivated they would simply show up for work and use the new rules. After all, who cares? If the rules where changed to stop the killings, then the non-comformist would most likely take control of all society in a short amount of time simply because they are more motivated to do it. Also once the non-conformist got traction in society they could start schools and competitions that would reconnect people with their feelings.