The Foresight For the Future “1984”

1984 is a renowned dystopian novel by George Orwell that happens in the process of only one party and a fanciful future time. In the book "1984", the author creates a totalitarian world, including state propaganda, controlled minds, standardized people, and obliterated individuality and human rights. Winston, as the main character, questions this power and becomes against the party with Julia, with whom she is in love. At the end of the story, they are caught by the government since they broke the law about forbidden emotions. They are exposed to persecution until they betray each other and love and adhere to the party by the government's brainwashing. Also, the author has fictionalized the book 1984 with the concepts of the hero, language, government, and society that can be considered elements of dystopia. In this paper, I will discuss ideas of Orwell about the power of governments on individuals and society in terms of the present time as a warning for the future. First of all, Orwell stated about his book “1984” that he did not know if the society he described in his book would ever exist, but he believed something like this would come. When we look at our present time, the governments have the power to watch their communities by satellites or cameras, listen by personal phones or devices, or reach the most private information about them due to the development of technology. It means they have a right to do everything they can interfere with their lives by using security pretexts. Besides shaping populaces by media or printed publications for what they want to be, they can manipulate people because of the usage of social networks and the internet. In my opinion, we are not so far from the reality of 1984, and it has been becoming more probable in the future. The most frightening thing is that people are unaware of this situation since they see this phenomenon as usual. Likewise, human nature tends to believe something that is accepted by most people since they have the fear of being conscious and its responsibilities will gain when questioned. Therefore, Orwell’s idea of controlling the minds of individuals by power is an easy method until “the hero” who questions this power shows up and encourages others. We here can observe that the main issue is revolting against and breaking the regularity that people get used to living. Furthermore, if we compare the approaches of this book to our present day, I think many similarities between “two minutes hate” and rage or invective processes in social media can be seen. Nowadays, social media always includes a wave of transient anger that will be forgotten after a while for specific individuals or groups since finding a target without thinking is much easier because of mass psychology. Orwell describes this situation by those lines that also the reality which seems enough to me to turn away from social media is the following: “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. ” In conclusion, in this book, Orwell submits to his readers about a dystopian world in which people's thoughts and brains are kept under control by the government with the aim that they can not rebel against state power. We can describe 1984 as a novel of hopeless attempts and desperation that cannot oppose the power that the world is ruled by because the main thing that the people of 1984 could not succeed in is to be able to maintain awareness and not give in to the power. Nevertheless, I believe that humanity is still strong enough to resist change. We should think about it while we have time because it hasn't been banned yet.