Divergent Discussion 1: Faction Values, which is most important? #INSURGENTUK #CANDORUK

This post is part of the Team #CANDORUK campaign for #INSURGENTUK. Click on the picture above for more information.

As part of the Insurgent release week madness I thought it would be fun to have some discussion posts about Divergent. I got the ideas for these topics from the HarperCollins Divergent Discussion Guide that can be found online here. These posts will contain spoilers for Divergent but I'd like to keep them spoiler free for Insurgent so please keep that in mind when you're commenting. I'll be welcoming members of Team #CANDORUK here every day to answer a different question so please give them all a warm welcome!

Taking part in today's discussion we have:

Carly - Writing from the Tub

Keren - Gothic Angel

Jo - Once Upon A Bookcase

M & Little M - We Sat Down

Alison - Big Book Little Book

Today's topic:

There are five different factions in Divergent - Abnegation who value selflessness, Amity who value kindness, Candor who value honesty, Dauntless who value bravery and Erudite who value knowledge. Do you think that these are the most important values for a healthy society? Which value do you think is the most important? Are there any other values that you think should have been included?

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My Thoughts:

I have to say I think these are all important values for any society but I don't believe it can be healthy for people to pick just one of these value to focus on. At one point in the book Four says that he wants to be "brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest" now if everyone tried to do that then Tris's world would be a much better place.

Personally I think each of the values are of equal importance, I could come up with arguments for each of them as to why they are the most important but as we see from Divergent putting too much focus on any of them tends to have a negative effect if you ignore the other qualities to do it. Each of the factors have a lot of good points but they also have downsides because they are so focused on their particular ideal. If they took the positives of each faction and merged it into one set of beliefs then I think that would make a massive difference to the society and make things a lot better for everyone.

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Carly's Thoughts:

I think the five values are probably the most important for a healthy society, yes. I think the thing that stops the society in the Divergent world being healthy is that each person (aside from the factionless) only works to embody one of those values. Candor work to be honest at all times but often their kindness and selflessness suffers as a result of this. The same goes for the other factions. The Erudite strive for knowledge but can be cruel and selfish in their quest for it. The Dauntless can be headstrong as they show their bravery and can make potentially unwise choices because of this. If every member of the Divergent world (and ours!) worked hard to truly embody all five of their core values then it would most likely be a happier, successful society.

I want to say that knowledge is the most important value because, really, I think that's the part of my life I pay most attention to but for society as a whole I think selflessness is the most important. If everybody had a more selfless approach to life I think there would be far fewer problems in the world. I think that the idea of selflessness in the Divergent world is taking it too far and isn't viable for a healthy society but selflessness is definitely good quality I think everybody could work harder to have a little more of in their values.

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Keren's Thoughts:

I'm not sure that a 'healthy society' can be formed from these Factions. Or at least not from these Factions alone. I don't happen to think that the society in which they live is a healthy one. I'm not entirely sure that it would even be possible to live in a world divided as such in real life. It worked in Divergent, to a point. but I think what you realise when reading it is that, it starts to show cracks - and if left, they will become huge fissures.

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Jo's Thoughts:

I do think these are important values for a healthy society, but not the way it’s done in Divergent. We have our charities, we have our armed forces, we have our scholars and teachers, and we have our law enforcement – and if you look at our government, whatever you think of it, there are people that have experience with each. I don’t think I couldn’t name one of the values as most important, I think they are all equally as important to keep our country running. I don’t necessarily think it should have been included, but the only other value I can think of that is present in our society today is belief – the various religions, and the clergy of those religions. As an atheist, I don’t think society needs belief in any god, but it is one I feel others might find lacking. Although there is mention of god in the book, there isn’t a faction that is devoted to religion, and I think religious people could possibly see that as a flaw, when the people in Divergent hold other values with such importance.

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Little M's Thoughts:

I think they’re all really important.

M's Thoughts:

I’d probably add liberty (freedom).

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Alison's Thoughts:

I think it’s hard to pick out one quality that is important for a healthy society. Human beings are diverse creatures with diverse needs and this should be reflected in the society they live within. In Divergent these factions came about as the opposites of the qualities that were destroying mankind, which seems to imply they were looking at qualities they didn’t want rather than ones they did. I do think that all of these values are important but I don’t think that one is more important than another. I also think that to be able to display many of those values you need to display some of the others. I identify most with Abnegation but I don’t think its the most important

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Thank you to everyone for taking part, I've really enjoyed reading all your answers!

I'd love to know what you all think too so please join the discussion in the comments. A lot of the Candor team will be checking back throughout the week to see if you agree with them or not!