1984 Capstone Project

In A World Where....

Implicit Argument of "1984" by George Orwell

The novel “1984” by George Orwell clearly states that obsessive amounts of government control can and does destroy individual freedom in a society.

How is This control Possible Over a Society?

The way in which the government in this future dystopia keeps control over its people is through a combination of manipulation, surveillance and fear. Which is forced by the thought police, which Winston makes clear in the opening chapter, who are able to watch everybody all the time and see into their minds.

The control of the Party is creating the unsettling feeling that you can't be sure if you are being observed at any given time.

This has the same core thinking as the Panopticon prison: inmates will behave correctly because they can't know positively if they're being surveilled at any given time, and hence, develop a superstitious behavior.Party surveillance can be diminished because people will, in a way, self-regulate their behavior according to the Party principles.

Continued...

• Psychological Manipulation:The Party torments it's own people to reduce independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts propaganda designed to make the failures of the Party appear to be working and good. The telescreens also monitor behavior meverywhere they go, citizens are reminded, especially by means of the signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities are watching them. The Party undermines family structure by telling children to become Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any disloyalty to the Party.

• Physical Control:In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also controls the bodies of its subjects. The Party constantly watches for any sign of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest.By conditioning the minds of their victims with physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.

• Control of Information and History:The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not allow individuals to keep records of their past.As a result, memories become unreliable, and citizens become perfectly willing to believe whatever the Party tells them.

• Language as Mind Control:One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell proposes, such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them.

1984 Quotes

"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork."(Part 1, Chapter 1)

Winston Smith was severely surveillance that just a little whisper could condemn himself into imprisonment. His fear drowned him every single day, thinking to himself that just a little mistake will be the end of his life.

"At times, it seems as if the telescreen is constantly watching each citizen. Winston Smith recognises that he has no idea who is behind the technology, watching him or anyone else."

"If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the telescreen."

(Part 2, Chapter 1)

The physiological torment forced by the thought police has mentally conditioned his actions and his perspective in a manner where his thinks that he is doing right but actually he his doing wrong.

Modern society is accepting the realization that the government is invading the public’s right to privacy and it’s control can and does destroy individual freedom in a society.

"But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."-Snowden(Nils. “Europe is Spying on You.”)

"I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."(Shaw,“Surveillance in Session.”)

TSA-Airport Security

NSA--The case of Osama Bin Laden

CIA -- Edward Snowden

FBI -- MLK

Telescreens -- in the novel, nearly all public and private places have large TV screens that broadcast government propaganda, news and approved entertainment. But they are also two-way monitors that spy on citizens' private lives. Today websites like Facebook track our likes and dislikes, and governments and private individuals hack into our computers and find out what they want to know. Then there are the ever-present surveillance cameras that spy on the average person as they go about their daily routine.

Media-- Spreading information to stir the public to a different prespective.

Three Reasons Current times is just Like George Orwell’s "1984"

1) History erased: In 1984, the key way Big Brother garnered so much power was by mind manipulation of the people. It ‘revised’ history – literally rewriting it to favor a communist agenda. World wars were erased from history, major inventions and other moments of human greatness, gone. As Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

2) Against pleasure: In Orwell’s 1984, it was considered unacceptable to have sex for pleasure, to eat chocolate or have an alcoholic beverage of high quality. This was intended to keep people from seeking out life’s pleasures and possibly losing interest, and loyalty, in Big Brother

3) Thought Police: In 1984, censorship was extreme. The country was filled with spies for Big Brother whose job was to infiltrate social groups and seek out dissenters of the party. People were imprisoned for thinking in a manner Big Brother didn’t approve of.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch stated in March that the DOJ has discussed prosecuting climate change deniers! Imagine – right or wrong – being charged for an opinion

colleges, corporations check you social media

Conclusion

At the time George Orwell’s 1984 was published it was considered a piece of sci-fi horror. Today, it’s not too far off from the world we live in. Governments across the globe continue to grow in size and authority.