Some people say that in his dystopian novel “1984,” George Orwell imagined a non-existent world of the past. Today, however, the fictional world Orwell depicted in his novel has become a reality. Among other things, Big Brother watches us everywhere. Indeed, wherever we go these days, we are under constant surveillance by security cameras, invisible eyes and ubiquitous smartphones. In that sense, Orwell was a true prophet who foresaw an ominous future.
In “1984,” people are not only being watched but also manipulated by the government. For example, the Ministry of Truth conceals reality and manipulates the truth by forging evidence to match the Party’s propaganda. It brainwashes and indoctrinates the people with false mottoes, such as “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
In the gloomy world Orwell portrayed, anyone who tells the truth is punished, and thus people live in deception. Accordingly, Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary thing. The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” In such a society, those who speak the truth are not welcomed because truth is often painful. Orwell also wrote, “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
As Orwell predicted, we now live in a world of fake news and sugar-coated lies. Indeed, these days it is hard to distinguish fake news from real news and lies from truth. To make matters worse, political language “makes lies sound truthful,” as Orwell aptly pointed out. Living in such a deceptive world, therefore, people easily lose their sense of right and wrong, and even their rationality.
The Ministry of Truth also distorts history to control the present and the future. For the tyrannical leaders in “1984,” the past is a useful tool for propaganda and ideology. Thus, they deliberately fabricate history for political gain. Therefore, Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
The Ministry of Truth in “1984” even creates the Newspeak language to root out “thoughtcrime” and ensure the totalitarian regime’s security and stability. In today’s authoritarian countries, we see a similar situation: People live under the constant watch of “thought police” who surveil them to prevent and eradicate thoughtcrime.
Disillusioned by communism, Orwell wrote his allegorical novella “Animal Farm.” In the novella, Orwell wrote the famous phrase, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Indeed, these days, we are witnessing that our political leaders preach “equality” while clandestinely enjoying privileges and unlimited political power.
At the end of “Animal Farm,” Orwell wrote, "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." Here, Orwell criticized the communist leaders who, in fact, resembled the greedy capitalists they publicly denounced and detested.
Orwell wrote some insightful remarks on politics and truth as well, such as, “The people will believe what the media tells them to believe.” That is why politicians want to control the media as soon as they seize political power. As a result, today’s society is overwhelmed by fake news and lies that mislead the people. Such a phenomenon enables political leaders to easily manipulate the masses.
Orwell also told us, “If you want to know who rules over you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.” If we engage in “self-censorship” to avoid criticizing powerful people and frequently look behind our shoulders, it means that we live in an authoritarian society like the one Orwell illustrated in his novels. In such a totalitarian society, different voices are silenced, and political revenge becomes rampant in the name of “purges.”
However, revenge is a disease that plagues our souls and destroys our society. In the American crime thriller TV drama “The Blacklist,” a Russian villain named Berlin boasts, saying, “Revenge is my passion.” To him, the protagonist Raymond Reddington cynically replies, “Revenge is not passion. It’s a disease that eats at your mind and poisons your soul.” Indeed, revenge is a sickness, even though it is always sugarcoated with “justice.”
In “1984,” Orwell showed us a nightmare world that could be our future unless we are widely awakened and vigilant. Thus, he wrote gloomily, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Disillusioned by fascism and then communism, Orwell did not seem to be optimistic about the future.
Unfortunately, we are now living in a world that resembles the one Orwell foresaw in the late 1940s. George Orwell was a genuine clairvoyant, indeed.
- - -
Kim Seong-kon
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed
khnews@heraldcorp.com
