Equilibrium

Equilibrium is a film I like to revisit occasionally, because the premise of human beings' capacity to feel is what begets a chaotic world, almost seems unquestionable, especially for those who are sentimental about the prospect of a Utopian society. As human beings, many of us have been in a situation where our emotions have conquered our sense of diplomacy, allowing some form of violence to serve as the agency for settling the issue. Recognizing that the lack of control of one's emotions can lead to violence, or poor decision making, is a universal human penchant, and abdicating human beings from the dictatorship of emotions in order to establish a world free of violence including war, is grossly self evident.

At first glance this premise strikes as a revelation, but as the film develops the premise is not so cogent and not so epiphanic. Equilibrium presents a society where human emotions are controlled by the scheduled injection of a drug called "prozium" during specific times of the day. Every member of the society takes the drug at the same time. A rigid opposition to emotions is ubiquitous. Everyone must live a life free of emotion, from adults to children. This is a society where music, colors, paintings, and even crying is forbidden. Those who revolt and strive to live an emotional life are branded as "sense offenders", and their offenses are punishable by bullets, or incineration. Paintings are burned. Books are burned. People are burned. Dogs are shot. Obedience to the state is rewarded.

The enforcers of the ethos that emotions are the cause of war and violence, are not cognizant that they are using war and violence to sustain a world free of war and violence. If war and violence are used to sustain a world free of war and violence, is the world really free of war and violence? No. The peaceful society sustained by scheduled injections of "prozium" and violence against sense offenders indicates that there is a war. It is a war against emotion. And the violence against those who choose to feel is the signature of that war.

Those who participate in this society appear to sustain an equable way of life that is partly characterized by a internal trilateral resistance of prozium and reason versus emotion. Is this constitutive of a peaceful and happy person? Peaceful perhaps. Happy perhaps not. Indeed this issue presents an interesting question of whether a peaceful society is a happy society. While this society appears to be peaceful, describing this society has a collection of happy individuals would be challenging. With emotions being so stigmatized, happiness would have to be defined by the ability of people feel the least amount emotions as possible. The less one feels, the happier one is.

Since there is such a relentless vigilance against emotions, the members of this society are watchmen of their own emotional suppression, and they are perpetually encumbered with the task of controlling their emotions by the injection of prozium. As peaceful as this society aims to be, there is constant control by the authorities as people deal with the struggles of controlling their emotions. Sense offenses are dealt with draconian swiftness, and because emotional suppression means no war and violence, this does not necessarily mean there is peace, for one the challenges of being human is to have reason and emotion come to an equilibrium.