1984: Modern Parallells (Book review from an anarchist's perspective)
Hi friends,
A while back I started reading George Orwell's 1984. Although I already knew what the story was about, I still wanted to read it because it's such a classic. Now I've finished reading it. It was a lot to take in, especially because this book was written long before the year 1984. Therefore, it's quite frightening how so many of Orwell's predictions (partially) came true.
In this post I will share the things I noticed were very similar to the world we live in now.
Source: wlm3.com
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
This is the party slogan of Ingsoc, the ruling government in the book. I think all three sentences are quite literally true today.
First of all, War is peace. Since 9-11 Western powers have constantly been at war under the pretext of "spreading democracy" and also defending freedom at home. The ugly truth is that this isn't the case at all. The wars have created more new enemies, which of course justifies eternal war under the same pretext.
Secondly, Freedom is slavery. Governments and their supporters around the world claim that democracy is freedom. The truth is, however, that in a lot of countries we work around half of our time for the state through taxation. So, if having a 100% of the fruits of your labor taken away, at what percentage is it not slavery? If we were free, we would have had the option to opt out of the government racket.
Thirdly, Ignorance is strength. Nowadays, especially in public schools, education becomes more about obeying than learning. Moreover, kids are only taught what to think, not how to think. However, the more you have been in school, the more prestigious you ought to be in the real world.
Source: openculture.com
Big Brother is Watching You
This one is the most obvious. Today we live in a massive surveillance state. Now, being in public and on the internet is your own choice, but the problem is that various government agencies spy on innocent people that don't want anything to do with them in the first place. They'll say: "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide," but it isn't that simple. As it turned out, the US government keeps a watchlist for people who are sceptical about the government and it considers them terrorists.
What's perhaps even more frustrating, is that people don't really care about it either. I've heard a lot of people say: "who would have thought all of this could happen, and now it's normal!" In my opinion, it should NOT be normal. I think we should hold the state accountable of the things they do with the money they took away from us.
Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult
This one should be obvious.
Source: Pinterest
Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.
Over the years we have seen a lot of statements coming from the government that turned out to be "fake news". However, most people still believe them and anyone that points out that it turned it the government lied, is a crazy conspiracy nut. For example, the attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that alledgedly sparked the Vietnam war, was a false flag attack. Iraq never had WMDs. The attack on Pearl Harbor was not a complete surprise attack. And recently the governments around the world have been spreading more lies: there still isn't a shred of evidence that the chemical attack in Syria was carried out by the Syrian Army, the White Helmets are more or less Al Qaeda's medics, and Trump never sent an armada toward North Korea.
All these events have been reported and exposed as lies and false flag attacks, but you're still a crazy tinfoil-wearing idiot for pointing it out. Ignorance is strength.
Source: YouTube, @corbettreport
There is still hope
The battle for a freer world still hasn't been lost. A great example of this is the recent CNN blackmail debacle, which showed that people still are concerned about being controlled, misinformed and used by government and government cronies like the mainstream media.
We need to stop the world from going down the path it's currently going. Therefore, we must start working together and take action. Yesterday I posted about some of my favorite platforms to connect with other freedom-lovers, and I'm still discovering more of those platforms and meeting new people. However, it's also time to turn our connections to real life actions.
If you made it to here, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think about the book and feel free to share your opinion.
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Glad you liked it! Typical how some of these (educated) predictions turned out to be reality. I guess we could say that the expectations of the digital (r)evolution will become reality in certain ways aswell. Let's make sure that cyrptocurrencies will be a positive outcome 👌
Let's hope so! Thanks for reading.
Well, reality seems a long way off from people waking up. But where I do see light at the end of the tunnel is in cryptocurrencies, or better said cryproeconomics. These systems turn out, by the looks of it, to be places where transparency really is in the core and governments do actually have a hard time controlling it. Money is power and this is something the current rulers know all too good. So by shifting towards crypto we untie ourselves little by little.
I agree with you that so-called cryptoeconomics has a lot of potential. As for now, cryptocurrencies are very difficult to control, as they are decentralized p2p and anonymous. However, we are witnessing more and more attempts from governments around the world to either gain control on crypto or simply ban it. Large corporations and banks are also heavily investing in the development of blockchain technology and over here in the Netherlands you can even receive subsidies for R&D! So we'll have to be aware of which tech to use and which to refuse.
Thanks for reading!
Great post and thanks for posting! You've got a new follower.
Thanks for reading!
This is a great post. It especially makes me think of how consumer culture is intersecting with gadgets now that all have listening features. Our constant surveillance is more brought upon ourselves than imposed by a government. Not sure if Orwell could have written a more chilling introduction to his novel than our reality.
True words!