{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Audius","provider_url":"https://audius.co","title":"The Untitled City by Justin Empire • Audius","description":"The Untitled City\n\nJustin empire\n\nAt first, the city appears to be a utopia.\n\nNobody holds grudges. Nobody remembers arguments. Nobody remembers losing loved ones. Nobody remembers wars, crimes, betrayals, or political oppression. If someone hurts another person, the incident effectively disappears from both of their minds within seconds.\n\nThe government has built its entire society around this condition. Food arrives automatically. Bills are paid automatically. People don't need to plan much for the future because their lives are carefully managed. Most importantly, nobody asks questions about the past because nobody can remember it long enough to care.\n\nThe citizens aren't necessarily being openly oppressed. They genuinely believe that everything is fine.\n\nThat is what makes the arrival of the humans so dangerous.\n\nWhy remembering causes chaos\n\nThe humans initially believe they are helping.\n\nThey teach the inhabitants techniques that allow them to retain memories. For the first time, people can remember conversations from yesterday. They can remember their families. They can remember friendships. They can remember promises.\n\nBut then they start remembering something much worse:\n\nWhy the city became the way it is.\n\nPeople begin remembering wars that happened generations ago. Old political movements return. Families discover that their ancestors killed one another. People remember betrayals, injustices, stolen possessions and broken relationships.\n\nSome citizens discover that people they currently love were once their enemies.\n\nOthers discover that the government didn't create this society purely to help them. Perhaps the forgetting system was originally created after a catastrophic war, when the population collectively decided that remembering was too painful. Over generations, however, the system became permanent, and eventually nobody even remembered why they had chosen to forget.\n\nThat creates the central question of the film:\n\nIs a painful truth better than a peaceful lie?\n\nThe government's perspective\n\nThe government becomes much more interesting if it isn't simply evil.\n\nFrom its perspective, the memoryless society works.\n\nThere is virtually no crime motivated by revenge because people forget why they were angry. There are no ancient ethnic or political conflicts because nobody remembers them. People don't suffer from grief for very long. Wars cannot continue because the reasons for fighting disappear.","html":"","width":500,"height":480,"thumbnail_url":"https://audius-discovery-2.altego.net/content/baeaaaiqsea3pvbu7fwg7aapfko3tiwnm5yvy3vtb7flqhbrmtwfkfhasoasjk/480x480.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":480,"author_name":"Justin Empire","author_url":"https://audius.co/kissinginlove","cache_age":3600}