Your opinion does not always matter
In his most famous book, 1984, George Orwell writes about Oceania, one of three futuristic, authoritarian governments that rule the world. To keep its citizens in line, the government of Oceania uses surveillance tools and the looming threat of harm or death to control the actions and speech of its citizens. For example, the secret Thought Police monitors giant telescreens that operate as televisions, security cameras, and microphones. With the information from these telescreens, the Thought Police has the authority to arrest a person for a “thoughtcrime” or the criminal act of having unspoken thoughts and beliefs that oppose or question the government.
The government of Oceania is made up of four branches or “ministries” that rely heavily on the use of propaganda that is constantly transmitted through the telescreens. Newspeak, a type of double-speak and the official language of Oceania, is created to control the people’s understanding of the real world and to discourage critical thinking. For example, the Ministry of Truth controls all the government statistics, education, entertainment, and the news media. The military is called the Ministry of Peace. The Ministry of Plenty controls the distribution of resources. And the Ministry of Love runs the Joy Camps for detained and tortured political prisoners. This use of deceptive and manipulative language to shape people’s thoughts and opinions is the real meaning of the term “Orwellian.”
George Orwell’s 1984 vision of Big Brother’s impact on society does not seem too far off the mark of how we are living in society today. Governments are expert at using euphemisms to describe politically charged themes. For example, the words “collateral damage” are used to denote the killing of innocent victims. “Ethnic cleansing” describes the forceful removal or genocide of a minority ethnic group and “immigration detention centers” are essentially prisons.
Modern-day Big Brother finds its way into our homes through giant telescreen TVs that citizens purchase themselves. Citizens also have the option of leasing or purchasing mini telescreens called smartphones. With these mini telescreen smartphones, citizens can sign up for Facebook and Twitter accounts for the sole purpose of monitoring the expressed thoughts and opinions of the masses. On social media accounts all around the world, your friends have taken on the badge of the Thought Police making rude, authoritarian comments such as whether you should or should not give your cat a bath or how awful that outfit looks on your not-so-perfect body. And these combative comments are made while claiming to live in tolerant, democratic society.
The personal policing of people’s speech and actions is not confined to your phone screen. I was at a friend’s birthday dinner when a man asked me, “Why do you talk about God all the time?” I replied, “Because this is me. And it makes me happy! Did I not allow you to be you and express your opinions? And allow you to be happy as you expressed your opinions? This is what is wrong with us as a society. We cannot let people be who they are without getting offended.”
His answer? “Well you got me there.” He then got up and moved two chairs away from me. I could see by the reaction in his face that this person essentially agreed with me. However, this self-proclaimed atheist was rattled by the knowledge that he was easily offended and intolerant of a person who had accepted his belief system.
It is easy to place full blame on governments for the chaos in society. But while its citizens freely volunteer to control another citizen’s comments and actions with their forceful but uninformed opinions, Big Brother can sit back and relax. Government has properly done its job by providing opportunities for “we the people” to do its dirty work and divide us.
Choose to live Christ’s message of love by not taking offense (the true meaning of sin) just because we see and experience the world differently from one another.
Mother Owl
