Prevention
The severity of the problems in the original 1984, as well as the likelihood of them happening, just increases as time goes on. With newer and newer technology that could be used to spy on us, the thought police could be almost unnecessary. There would be no safe places. The importance is that we prevent it from ever getting to that point by securing our basic rights and fighting to protect them. The good thing is that this is what America is based on, though it is not impossible for what happens in 1984 to happen here. It is important that we as people keep enough power that the government cannot do anything it wants with impunity. This also includes the bigger business and such that have hands in our government. It is important that the small number of people at the top should not be able to control the much larger amount of people at the bottom. This is really the only way of preventing 1984 from happening today. But another important idea is, if 1984 does start to happen, then we need to fight to prevent it before it gets too powerful.
You make some great points here. Just in the way that the Party kids are indoctrinated into a love of the Party, kids in America today are "indoctrinated" into a love for freedom and "the American way." That sounds bad now that I've written it, but that's probably a good thing because, well, freedom is a good thing, and one effect of this freedom-focused society is people are absolutely terrified of totalitarianism (which is why 1984 is still popular, and also why we're well positioned to escape Big Brother
ReplyDeleteI like your point about keeping power among the people, but also, the Proles make up so much of the population of 1984's society and yet they have no power, and apparently, will never have any power. But I do think that your point is more about democracy and catching totalitarian societies and fascism while it's first rising, which I do completely agree with.
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