{"id":185916,"date":"2019-03-29T08:01:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T08:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=185916"},"modified":"2019-03-31T08:28:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T08:28:12","slug":"two-ways-our-world-resembles-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=185916","title":{"rendered":"Two Ways Our World Resembles \u201c1984\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Miltimore \u2013 Activist Post March 28, 2019<\/a><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I took 1984<\/strong><\/span><\/a> <\/em>with me on vacation recently, I didn\u2019t expect to read it. Unlike the two other books with me\u2014Jordan Peterson\u2019s 12 Rules for Life<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a> and Matt Ridley\u2019s The Rational Optimist<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/a>\u2014I had already read Orwell\u2019s classic work. Or had I?<\/span><\/p>\n

It had been at least 25 years. Most of what I remembered seemed to be fragments of quotes and cliches my brain had absorbed from internet articles and pop culture. Truth be told, I had always been more partial to Brave New World<\/em>. Perhaps because Huxley\u2019s dystopia had always seemed lighter and less malevolent. Less gritty<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure which book I prefer now, but I will say reading 1984 <\/em>today was a very different experience. To a teenage mind, 1984 <\/em>is basically an allegorical prophecy of the modern police state. Big Brother is watching. Telescreens are everywhere. Children spy on their parents and report them to Thought Police.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to diminish these themes. Orwell, a one-time socialist who soured on its ideology once he got a good look at it, was prescient to observe how totalitarian surveillance states would operate. (Bear in mind, 1984 <\/em>was published two years before the Stasi<\/a> was formed.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Orwell\u2019s Philosophy<\/h2>\n

What impressed me reading 1984 <\/em>today was Orwell\u2019s grasp of the philosophy behind Big Brother, or, rather, its lack of philosophy (beyond Nihilism). Truth, we see, does not exist in Oceania, the totalitarian nation-state that serves as the setting of 1984.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The absence of truth is shown at various times in various ways, but it most famously is depicted when Winston Smith, the book\u2019s protagonist, reflects that it\u2019s only a matter of time before the Party would insist that two plus two makes five.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was inevitable that they should make the claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it,\u201d Smith tells us. \u201cNot merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that Big Brother is hostile to truth, logic, or facts (though it is). It\u2019s that truth, logic, and facts will at certain times inevitably conflict with its sole goal: control.<\/span><\/p>\n

This brings us to a second observation about Oceania. It\u2019s a land steeped in politics. It\u2019s force-fed to people. They consume it, whether they wish to or not. It is pumped out of telescreens day and night. It comes from indoctrinated children and neighbors. Some of the people reciting the Party\u2019s cliches believe it, others may not. But there is no escaping the Party\u2019s dogmas.<\/span><\/p>\n

At no point in the novel is this more thoroughly demonstrated than when Winston Smith reveals that even sex was polluted by politics. Here is how he described his initial act of love with Julia, the woman who becomes his lover:<\/span><\/p>\n

In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl\u2019s body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a blow against the Party. It was a political act.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth Decay<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

An original illustration from George Orwell’s 1984. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

We see in 1984 <\/em>a world in which politics has consumed life\u2019s most intimate actions. I wouldn\u2019t compare the United States to 1984<\/em>. But I believe parallels exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Politics, few today would deny, saturates most aspects of our lives. It\u2019s in our school systems<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>and colleges<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Football games<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, blockbuster films<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and America\u2019s churches<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. This was not always the case, and the development is not a healthy one.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the matter of truth. Last year the Rand Corporation published a report<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. It essentially said our civilization is suffering from a strange condition: Truth Decay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth Decay is defined as a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth decay might help explain why many people\u2014even intelligent sensible, grounded ones\u2014seem to feel like Alice after she tumbled down the rabbit hole.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living in an era when sanity is controversial and insanity is just another viewpoint,\u201d the economist Thomas Sowell recently stated<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Few Americans today would deny,\u00a0I think, that truth is under assault. It\u2019s one of the few ideas on which Left and Right can agree. The disagreement arises over who are the greater transgressors of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not a trivial matter. As FEE president Lawrence Reed recently observed, truth and freedom are inseparable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first casualty on the slippery slope to tyranny is the truth,\u201d wrote Reed. \u201cIf you wish to live in freedom, you must first commit yourself to truth in all things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Freedom of Speech<\/h2>\n

Our future need not be as bleak as that of 1984<\/em>. The first step to making sure it is not is to reclaim the cherished principle of free speech, and not strictly in a legal sense. Rather, we must remember that the free expression of ideas is essential to and inseparable from the search for truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The great American writer Walter Lippmann<\/strong><\/span><\/a> once explained why freedom of discussion is essential to not just freedom, but truth itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026if we truly wish to understand why freedom is necessary in a civilized society, we must begin by realizing that, because freedom of discussion improves our own opinions, the liberties of other men are our own vital necessity,\u201d wrote <\/a><\/strong><\/span>Lippman, one of the founding editors of The New Republic<\/em>. \u201cThis is the creative principle of freedom of speech, not that it is a system for the tolerating of error, but that it is a system for finding the truth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If our age is suffering a truth crisis, perhaps it\u2019s because we don\u2019t esteem truth enough. Our society seems more interested in suppressing <\/strong><\/span><\/a>and hiding<\/strong><\/span><\/a> from ideas than wrestling with them, which is what an earnest pursuit of truth demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that truth \u201chas nothing to fear from\u201d conflict. But the truth will not prevail in a world that prevents the conflict of ideas by suppressing speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four,\u201d Winston Smith tells us. \u201cIf this is granted, all else follows.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When I read this line 25 years ago I didn\u2019t understand what Orwell was saying. Now I do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing\/reporting has<\/em>\u00a0appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN,\u00a0<\/em>Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Reach him at jmiltimore@FEE.org.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was sourced from FEE.org<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rereading 1984 leaves John Miltimore with a different impression to what he felt when he first read Orwell’s classic 25 year ago <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185918,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185916\/revisions\/185918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}