Dystopian Thoughts

Now THAT blog title is bound to be uplifting, is it not?  Matched is a dystopian, teen novel.  Notice I didn't say ANOTHER dystopian teen novel, because I truly believe that Matched is different and not a cheap knock-off of say, Hunger Games or Birthmarked.  This is more of a love story, but more than a love story.
Cassia is just like any other seventeen year old in The Society.  She will be matched to the perfect job and matched to the perfect mate as well.  We meet her on the night of the Match Banquet, when all of the seventeen year olds and their parents go to their respective City Halls.  The girls names are called an on a big screen they see the face of their match, the one whom they will marry.  Usually the matches are between guys and gals from different cities in The Society, so the people being matched see their match's face for the first time that night.  At the end of the evening they are given a microchip with information about their match.  They get to know each other that way and then eventually they go on dates, accompanied by an Official.  Cassia is lucky, lucky, lucky though, she is matched to her best friend Xander.  Xander and Cassia have been friends forever and are truly excited that they now can be "more than friends" and live out their lives together.
But.
Cassia goes home and looks at her microchip, just for the fun of it, even though she knows Xander so well.  There's a blip on the chip.  Someone else's face flashes on the screen.  Ky's face.  Ky lives in her city, too, but she doesn't know him all that well.
Now Cassia starts to thinking.  Is The Society always correct when they match young men and women?
Is it good that everyone in The Society just does whatever The Society says?
True, there is no disease or poverty, no unhappiness.  But there is also no choice.  No mystery.  Everything is careful and mathematical and planned for the benefit of the greater society.
As I started thinking about the future, I thought, "Could something like this really happen?"
I think it could.  But I don't think it would.  Pretty much I think that if the really powerful people in the world ever got control of everything, they wouldn't waste time constructing a "perfect" society like The Society.  They wouldn't go to great mathematical calculations to control the common man and woman.  They would just get rid of everyone!  Pretty much I think that if people greedy people got all of the power, they wouldn't waste their time figuring out what to do with the rest of us!  They'd just eliminate the rest of us and live their own lives doing whatever they wanted to do, in their own way!
But that would make a pretty boring book.
So we have these dystopian books, like The Giver and the world in The Line instead and I've enjoyed them all.  And yes, the paint a bleak portrait of our world in the future, but I actually think that they are much more optimistic than reality would be!
Man, am I a pessimist, or what?
Regardless, Matched was fascinating.  I loved Cassia, and could never be as brave or hopeful as she.  Don't get me wrong.  I am hopeful, for the NEXT life.  But not this one.  Yet Cassia, she just keeps on fighting and trying.  And I can't wait to read the next book in the series, and I wish her all the best!