This post is originally published on LessWrong. The Benefactor, the ancestor of Orwell's Big Brother, is the absolute ruler of OneState. ... He rules over a human society that is deemed to have achieved, with only negligible exceptions, absolute perfection. Men have finally become, if not actually machines, as machine-like as possible, utterly predictable and completely happy. All the messy inconvenience of freedom has been eliminated. Mere details, a final touch-up here and there, one last adjustment -- these are all that remain. the Great Operation at the end (a sort of lobotomy for the removal of Man's last imperfection, the Imagination) is the final touch. That not every Number wishes to go under the knife is understandable, but ... seeming cruelty can be the most genuine love of Mankind