Why are the citizens in the community also unable to have feelings of pleasure or true happines?

As explained by The Giver, a key aspect of their society's decision to establish Sameness rather than expose people to the risks of climate variation or mistaken choices was their desire to remain safe from the pains that humanity and nature used to suffer. In one of Benjamin Franklin's classic formulations, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," and Jonas's society has permanently chosen safety over liberty. The disadvantages of this choice become all too clear as, for example, the citizens do not question their way of life or even their orders to kill the young and the Old through release. Furthermore, the absence of pain in their society desensitizes them to emotions, including positive emotions. The Giver portrays what might today be called an extreme kind of "sustainable" society, one in stasis that can neither draw lessons from its mistakes nor remember its mistakes to prevent future ones, especially without the aid of The Receiver. This is a society in which the humans cannot be said to be fulfilling themselves as human beings; their development is stunted in many ways in the name of stability and predictability.