Truth isn’t truth- 1984 (Book Review)

Big Brother. 2+2=5. The memory hole. “Truth isn’t truth.”

In the world of 1984, Big Brother is always watching. The ruling party has its own language “Newspeak” which served the purpose of narrowing down thoughts and “Thought Police” to guard against free ideology. A state where every word is monitored, history is rewritten or deleted to serve the purposes of those in power, individuals holding contradictory views or “Thought Crimes” could be “vaporized” meaning they don’t really exist in view of the “Thought Police”.

This 70 year old dystopian fiction is even more relevant in today's era of fake news and Deep fake manipulating the facts and truth, the rise of global authority. The book you will even read after so many years whenever you see instances of power abuse, truth being silenced, when we want to know how bad things can get.. “Two and two made five, and you have to believe it”- the rule which suppresses your own rationality and conscience thinking is as haunting as presented by the novel.

In 1984, it was the State , in 2020 it is the Social Media, and the bunch of private companies in Silicon Valley who control and shape the speech and thoughts.We want to access every service for free, but we deny accepting the fact that big giants like Google and Facebook use their customers as a product , as a source of their big database which is now their private property.

In the world of 1984, Big Brother is always watching. Orwell’s telescreens are not very different from the smartphones that enslaves us.

Orwell feared the ban of books in 1984, I fear the censorship of ideas on Internet, in movies. Orwell feared that we would be deprived of information, that’s the truth when facts are molded in the name of creative freedom or instead, bombarded with so much making it difficult to know what is real and what is fake. What kind of democracy is this when your actions are influenced by not our own perspectives, but the shouting media and web.Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us ( weapons) , instead what we love will ruin us (smartphones,TV screens) as of 2020. That’s sums up everything that George is trying to say as a warning back then, which is the reality of today’s world.

“WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”