1984: A political message

While I was reading the book 1984 from George Orwell, I immediately realized that his message was in connection with "politics". I found very interesting how scenes from the book are a clear reflection of what we can see in today's world, and how certain political strategies politicians used long before, are the same ones that they manage now in order to gain control over us.

 Nowadays, we can see how people have been actively protesting against politicianss worldwide, because we, the citizens of the world have realized one more time how the world of politics is trying to manipualate and control us by controlling the information that is presented to us as well as by overwhelming us with techonologies in order to makes us blind of what is happening around us. Now if we look at our world, we can see how the same things that Orwell narattes are happening today, but what calls more my attention is the fact that even though writers like George Orwell have provided us with such a strong and powerful message, we in general seem to not even care about it, and we continue to carry on with our lives. Perhaps, this is happening because the political powers have already took control over us. Or maybe, we are aware of this terrible issue, but as politics have been manipulated us for so long, we are static, and although we can reflect on that, we are not capable of doing any action in order to stop this or do something about it. For instance, the party’s big slogan was “ War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”.(George Orwell, 4) Here we found how the party uses propaganda in order to make people believe what they want them to believe. We can say that the propaganda that Orwell describes in his book was a kind of weapon for the political party not to allow citizens have their own way of thinking but proposing them this message, in order to make them believe that what they say is the right thought, and that is also what they should be thinking of, because in some way is beneficial for them.

Moreover, another important element that called my attention, was the constant surveillance that the political party had on people. Surveillance was almost everywhere in Oceania, the mostly used way is television. There was a two-way screen, so-called television in every apartment and on street but they only serve the purpose of monitoring and propaganda, the Party got simultaneous image of what citizens were doing. Children were also used to keep track of their parents, “The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations” (George Orwell,76). Now, let's make a connection with what is happening today with the so called "Internet". Almost everybody has a virtual account, but do we know the danger of this "inoccent" activity?, are we totally aware of what governments do with our personal information?. It has been proved that through the virtual accounts, goverments collect all the information and keep track of every single activity that we do, and most of the time this information is sell because of different purposes.

 So, considering this and more, I can say that we as unique individuals, need to concentrate on our pure essence, and reflect on what is going on around us, and not believe everything we read, see or what is told to us, because the politcal world has always looking for more power, and the only way they can gain control and power, is by telling us lies and also by overwhelming us with techonologies, news, trends, irrelevant information that will makes us focus on irrelevant things in order to not rationalize, and behave like robots who do whatever someone tells him to do.

Sources:

Orwell, "Literature and Totalitarianism," (op. cit.), p. 134. 

Herbert Marcuse, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology," Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9: 3 (1941), pp. 414-439, 

Aubrey, Crispin & Chilton, Paul (Eds). (1983). Nineteen-Eighty-Four in 1984: Autonomy, Control & Communication. London: Comedia.

Howe, Irving (Ed.). (1983). 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism In Our Century. New York: Harper Row.

Howe, Irving (Ed.). (1983). 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism In Our Century. New York: Harper Row.