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Monday, June 25, 2007

Some Thoughts on Big Brother


From Answers

When George Orwell's 1984 came out in 1949, his dystopic projection of a totalitarian state was far in the future. Orwell, born on this date in 1903, was dying when he wrote the book; he succumbed to tuberculosis just a few months after the book was published. Orwell coined the sentence "Big Brother is watching you," for 1984. He wrote of a society where people spoke Newspeak, a language of words with contradictory meanings designed to deceive and manipulate people, and where the individual — his thoughts, feelings and personality — would be completely dominated by the state.


It is really quite surprising how close the present is to his vision. He was only off by about 20 years in the UK. In an ironic way, the reality that many of us are watching Big Brother, does not diminish the erosion of liberty and the rise of the state that we see every day.

Thanks for the image Crushed By Ingsoc.

15 comments:

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

When I was at school and we studied Orwell, we dismissed "Big Brother" as something that could never happen now that we were in a liberated, enlightened society. How wrong we were!

Colin Campbell said...

Yes. I can remember thinking it was interesting fantasy. Not so.

Crushed said...

It's only a matter of time before they start altering history... in fact maybe it's begun.

In American films it has.

As in 1984 we keep being told we live in a better, happier world than ever before, something which contradicts our everyday experience, but most people believe it, in a kind of doublethink way.

In fact it is how prevalent forms of doublethink are that is most interesting.

I THOUGHT I'd seen that picture somewhere before...

Colin Campbell said...

You had. I am such a Fagin.

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