Civilization in 1984

In the book 1984, Winston says, “It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.” (page 45) These words spoke to me on such a deep level, as I continued reading 1984 I learned why. This book will completely change your perspective on civilization now and will open your mind to resilience. We are manipulated in many ways that we are not yet aware of. In the book they promoted, “ War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.” Which anyone in there right mind knows that is not true but the complete opposite. By this statement is clear that the government of big brother is trying to send the wrong messages to the people and to manipulate and control, so that the people will not thrive to greatness and freedom.

Throughout the book they continued to try to control the people and keep them closed minded. Thoughts can be very powerful and can lead to great life changing ideas, which is a threat to their governmental system. They would much rather keep the people of this era close minded. The thought police are a group of people who aim to suppress ideas that deviate from the way of thinking that they believe to be correct. At times when they would catch you having thoughts they didn't approve of they would vaporize you, meaning they would kill you and wouldn’t leave a trace of your existence.

An example of this would be the posters they had on display all around the streets, these posters contained quotes saying,” Big brother is watching you,” obviously they had the people threatened and they were scared to define them that is how they controlled them as well. You see a lot of this in today’s society, they send subliminal messages to manipulate us through the social media’s we use the most. Maybe not for the same reason but for many more to try to get us to purchase things or vote for certain people. We can all agree that a lot of the things we do in our everyday life are much influenced by the Tv and social medial.

Furthermore, the two minute hate from George Orwell’s book 1984 is a period in time in which party members of the society of Oceania are forced to watch a film depicting the party’s enemies, such as Emmanuel Goldstein and engage in hatred acts for two minutes. This comes to show that the party intentends to raise hatred among the people and remind them why they should continue to hate them. In other words, hate week is a psychological manipulation designed to expand the hatred of the population of the current enemy of the government. Any who oppose to join part of this hatred act is killed by the thought police, like I mentioned before the people have no choice but to be a part of the two minute hate. In one occasion George says that even when trying to avoid becoming a part of this abomination, you willingly can’t avoid feeling everyone's hate and destroying what is in your path.

This seems very relatable to me, as this has happened to a lot of us when you surrounding yourself with negative and hateful people there is no way to avoid becoming just like them. We sometimes find ourselves surrounded by the wrong people and most of the time we can’t even recognize it because that is all we’ve ever known, but it is in our power to remove ourselves from these types of situations. In this time and age we have freedom to do with our lives as we please and I think a lot of people take that for granted, but it is our responsibility and duty to make a change and cut those ties. Regardless of where we come from and what our ancestors did we don’t have to be like them.

All things considered in this era impurity was every mans desire in a women, In the book Winston says,”he loves to hear about Julia’s claims of sexual promiscuity. He thinks the more raw animal sexual impurity that exist, the greater the party does not control as much as they would like to.” I know this may seem odd considering most men would much rather prefer a innocent women in other words a virgin. For that reason George loves promiscuous women such as Julia. Winston dreams of the party being shattered by primal human passions. As the relationship continues George begins to see that not only is she beautiful but they also share similar interest and opinions about big brother.

As a women I have grown up in a society that has idealistic opinions of what a women should be or look like. If you are not a virgin you are not respected as much as a virgin is because they believe the more people you have slept with the less you are worth as a women and won’t be taken serious by a man. You would think that things would have changed but women are still judged very harshly for the the sexual relationships and in many other aspects. There is still progress to be made changing those idealistic of women that have made every girl insecure at one point in their lives, there is still more to be done. It is unbelievable that after all these decades women and minorities are still fighting to be equal.

Changing history has always been in the works back in 1984 and now. The only differences was that not many people thought of change back in that era everyone was afraid of change. Not George though he knew the consequences he was brave enough to write his diary to better the future. He knew exactly what he was getting into but he also knew how to keep it on the down load and make it appear as if he is just an ordinary person. He participates in the 2 min
hate and all big brother activities so that the thought police don’t start speculating. Another point is how big brother wants to control all the people and for them to be easily manipulated and controlled. In this time and age we see a lot of history repeating itself although we now have freedom we are still watched and manipulated. We are manipulated by the social media we spend most of our time on our phones, not living in the moment.

Since we spend a lot of time with meaningless things we forget about what is important and miss out on opportunities. It’s more than obvious that the government is doing exactly the same with us like big brother did but in a less obvious strategy, giving us freedom in areas were it is meaningless and we conform. They are manipulating us but when you start to realize and understand the system you become a threat to their society and if you aren’t disappeared you end up in jail or in a mental hospital. We are obligated to summit to the system even if we don’t agree with how they run things, but we learn to just live with it and play the system so that it doesn’t play us.

All things considered, George was a futuristic thinker who wrote about issues ahead of his lifetime. He lived in a time when people couldn’t even have their own thought’s the government had complete control over society. He risked his own wellbeing to protect those of the future, which whom he didn’t not know. Although George couldn’t make a change in his lifetime, he could for the future risking everything in the process. 1984 represents a period in time that opened one man's mind to greatness to better everyone’s future even if he couldn’t better his.

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