A good time to read George Orwell’s prophetic ‘1984’
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
As soon as you read these opening words of George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel “1984” you know something is wrong. You can’t trust the clock or the time.
Life is turned upside down. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and most especially lies are presented as truths — all by some all-pervasive power called “Big Brother” in the book.
Orwell’s novel is considered one of the most prophetic ones about the times in which we live, predicting the situation we find ourselves in today. It’s a story about Winston Smith who follows the party line, which attempts to control the narrative to protect those in its power through lies — until few even recognized the truth. The principle is that if you tell lies big and frequently enough, eventually enough people will believe and act on them.
Those who try to be truthful are found out by Big Brother and persecuted for “thoughtcrimes.” Winston realizes his greatest crime is thinking for himself because he has been told “to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
As he begins to think for himself, Winston realizes he is not only motivated by lies but always being watched to see if he believes them. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
At the end of the novel, Big
Brother wins with these chilling last words describing Winston’s loss of individuality and submission: “He loved Big Brother.”
Big Brother in Orwell’s novel represented totalitarianism or the control of a country by a single leader or party.
If you have never read Orwell’s novel, it might be a good time to do so because it offers insights into some issues today — lies to support a point of view to promote those in power, propaganda to shape public opinion, the slow eradication of personal freedom, and the demise of democracy.
Orwell’s novel is not a particularly comforting tale, but one that helps us to understand ourselves better today. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote the philosopher George Santayana in his 1905 book, “The Life of Reason.”
The forces of mass propaganda and control in this time, especially through social media, seem almost too powerful to overcome. We seem besieged with too much information, leaving us confused or with only one source of information and thus open to only one point of view.
How is one to sort out lies and truths, reality from hallucination, facts from fantasies? The best answer I have found is to use the brain one has been given. Orwell’s guidance? “To see what is in front of one’s nose.” But he cautions that this needs a “constant struggle.”
In the last few weeks, I’ve witnessed many attempts to convince us that what we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears is not true.
Using Orwell’s guidance to see what I actually see, I have resisted the propaganda of those trying to convince us otherwise for their own benefit. I hear some politicians claiming the January 6 attack on our U.S. Capitol was a “normal tourist visit” (Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia), while over the last few weeks I’ve watched people with partisan banners breaking windows to get inside and hitting police. I also saw a video of Rep. Clyde blocking a door to prevent “tourists” from bursting into the House chambers.
In times such as ours, the use of one’s own mind is the best vaccine against the virus of lies. Think for yourself provides one guard against liars and possibly leads to facts and truth.