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A review by jnzllwgr
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
5.0
Inauguration Day - 2025, USA
What a legendary book. What an incredible, potent and very much still relevant book. We may all know the basic framework of the story, but I had never read it (and watching the movie was 30+ years in the rearview). Poignant in this present political climate with the Inner Party being identified as an oligarchy. And Doublespeak is essentially a Trumpian methodology. Despite its age and how much the world has technologically lept beyond what Orwell may have been able to imagine in the 1940s, the book holds up. It can be any time and, in many ways, it feels that some of the structures are in place. It’s a sinister concept. Society implements controls that wring out of it all that we might consider joyful about the human experience. Power is everything.
.
It’s not like any culture offers complete freedom. We co-exist with all sorts of individuals and we all identify with certain groups within society. We have means of signaling for approval of being a participant within the group. To do so, there has to be an other — individuals outside of the group. We are constantly calibrating our indirect declarations to others that we adhere to the group — whether it’s through affirmation of the groups values or through our proud objections and conscious exclusions to others. Status is signaled in fashion, our knowledge of the arts, our breadth of vocabulary/word choice/turns of phrase, our displays of wealth and displays of faith to a creed. 1984 is our society, distilled and in extremis.
.
How much of reality is constructed in the minds of each person versus a group? How much of that is your choice? What are “alternative facts”? How much of this is unavoidable due to our social nature? How many ideas our ours versus lizard brain notions of survival to reduce competition/ assert dominance? We have so many layers to the onion, we think we have autonomy?
.
What I really want to emphasize is important about this book is that the totalitarian regime in 1984 has eradicated science from the society. Technological advances have all but ceased. For the most part, all levels of society live in a dark age…accept for when surveillance matters, which is all the time. I could not help but draw a correlation between the anti-science rhetoric of our own culture: Robert F Kennedy Jr. may be the most significant concern in this matter with his poo-pooing of man’s medical triumphs.
.
While the broad societal template of 1984 does not to appear to have manifested, Orwell’s understanding of human behavior and power dynamics make for a prescient work. Mix the Orwellian with the Romans’ notions of Bread and Circus, you probably have a good construct for how our society operates today. Up until now, we just haven’t had a real totalitarian in the White House. It’s going to be an interesting 4 years. Hopefully limited to that.
What a legendary book. What an incredible, potent and very much still relevant book. We may all know the basic framework of the story, but I had never read it (and watching the movie was 30+ years in the rearview). Poignant in this present political climate with the Inner Party being identified as an oligarchy. And Doublespeak is essentially a Trumpian methodology. Despite its age and how much the world has technologically lept beyond what Orwell may have been able to imagine in the 1940s, the book holds up. It can be any time and, in many ways, it feels that some of the structures are in place. It’s a sinister concept. Society implements controls that wring out of it all that we might consider joyful about the human experience. Power is everything.
.
It’s not like any culture offers complete freedom. We co-exist with all sorts of individuals and we all identify with certain groups within society. We have means of signaling for approval of being a participant within the group. To do so, there has to be an other — individuals outside of the group. We are constantly calibrating our indirect declarations to others that we adhere to the group — whether it’s through affirmation of the groups values or through our proud objections and conscious exclusions to others. Status is signaled in fashion, our knowledge of the arts, our breadth of vocabulary/word choice/turns of phrase, our displays of wealth and displays of faith to a creed. 1984 is our society, distilled and in extremis.
.
How much of reality is constructed in the minds of each person versus a group? How much of that is your choice? What are “alternative facts”? How much of this is unavoidable due to our social nature? How many ideas our ours versus lizard brain notions of survival to reduce competition/ assert dominance? We have so many layers to the onion, we think we have autonomy?
.
What I really want to emphasize is important about this book is that the totalitarian regime in 1984 has eradicated science from the society. Technological advances have all but ceased. For the most part, all levels of society live in a dark age…accept for when surveillance matters, which is all the time. I could not help but draw a correlation between the anti-science rhetoric of our own culture: Robert F Kennedy Jr. may be the most significant concern in this matter with his poo-pooing of man’s medical triumphs.
.
While the broad societal template of 1984 does not to appear to have manifested, Orwell’s understanding of human behavior and power dynamics make for a prescient work. Mix the Orwellian with the Romans’ notions of Bread and Circus, you probably have a good construct for how our society operates today. Up until now, we just haven’t had a real totalitarian in the White House. It’s going to be an interesting 4 years. Hopefully limited to that.