Freedom vs Security - George Orwell, 1984
Freedom vs. Security:
1984, a Mirror of Today’s Governments and their Methods of Mass Control
Tanks to technology and, mostly, its applications in the field of communication, governments and business corporations from all around the world have now more power than ever to track and influence what we buy, what we listen to, what we read, what we watch and, ultimately, what we believe. Recent terrorist threats and armed conflicts that have taken place around the globe have prompted a general feeling of vulnerability among the international community. Now most citizens are not likely to complain, or even ask questions, when they are deprived of their individual freedoms and privacy, they assume that this reduction of individual freedoms is meant to increase the security of the population, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. These sets of measures are part of a plan to satisfy the aim of those in power. They want to achieve total control of the masses and, for that purpose; they threaten the equality under the law, the individual freedom of choice, and the dignity of every individual.
As David Brin mentions in “The self-preventing prophecy; or how a dose of nightmare can help tame tomorrow’s peril” (1999), George Orwell, in 1984, describes a form of government which is akin to the tyrannies of today, a nation in which the masses are ill-educated and free speech is punishable. The elites do this to preserve their short-term status, dooming society to disaster in the long term.
1984 is a book that in many ways represented the fears of the time, in which the “threats” of socialism were omnipresent on the headlines of western media. But, where Orwell thought to be portraying the dangers of communism, he ended up describing today’s neoliberalism, a perfect portrait of a government that has used war as a tool to justify cutting the freedoms of the people; that has used speech codes to limit our range of thought and to kill human individuality; that uses media to
1984, a Mirror of Today’s Governments and their Methods of Mass Control
Tanks to technology and, mostly, its applications in the field of communication, governments and business corporations from all around the world have now more power than ever to track and influence what we buy, what we listen to, what we read, what we watch and, ultimately, what we believe. Recent terrorist threats and armed conflicts that have taken place around the globe have prompted a general feeling of vulnerability among the international community. Now most citizens are not likely to complain, or even ask questions, when they are deprived of their individual freedoms and privacy, they assume that this reduction of individual freedoms is meant to increase the security of the population, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. These sets of measures are part of a plan to satisfy the aim of those in power. They want to achieve total control of the masses and, for that purpose; they threaten the equality under the law, the individual freedom of choice, and the dignity of every individual.
As David Brin mentions in “The self-preventing prophecy; or how a dose of nightmare can help tame tomorrow’s peril” (1999), George Orwell, in 1984, describes a form of government which is akin to the tyrannies of today, a nation in which the masses are ill-educated and free speech is punishable. The elites do this to preserve their short-term status, dooming society to disaster in the long term.
1984 is a book that in many ways represented the fears of the time, in which the “threats” of socialism were omnipresent on the headlines of western media. But, where Orwell thought to be portraying the dangers of communism, he ended up describing today’s neoliberalism, a perfect portrait of a government that has used war as a tool to justify cutting the freedoms of the people; that has used speech codes to limit our range of thought and to kill human individuality; that uses media to
Bibliography: Conquest, Robert. “Orwell, socialism and the Cold War.” The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell. Ed. John Rodden. Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 2007. 126-132. Crick, Bernard. “Nineteen Eighty-Four: context and controversy.” The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell. Ed. John Rodden. Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 2007. 146-159. Beadle, Gordon B., “George Orwell and the Victorian Radical Tradition.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1975), pp. 287-299, The North American Conference on British Studies Brin, David. “The self-preventing prophecy; or how a dose of nightmare can help tame tomorrow’s peril.” On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future. Eds. by Gleason Abbott, Jack Goldsmith, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton UP: Princeton, 2005. 212-230 Goldstein, Philip, “Orwell as a (Neo)conservative: The Reception of 1984.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 44-57 Midwest Modern Language Association Manuel, Frank E., Utopias And Utopian Thought, A Timaly Appraisal. Beacon Press Boston, 1967 Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin Books: London, 1987. Rejali, Darius. “What do you trust? What do you count on?” On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future. Eds. by Gleason Abbott, Jack Goldsmith, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton UP: Princeton, 2005. 155-179. Resch, Robert Paul, “Utopia, Dystopia, and the Middle Class in George Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Duke University Press, DOI: 10.2307/303755