Two Thousand and Ten

Not long after the dusts of World War II had settled did the world truly grow to fear the modern concept of totalitarianism, though the fanatical vision of European and ultimately worldwide dictatorial rule perished with Adolf Hitler, the idealistic (yet confined) dictatorial taint of then Soviet Russia stubbornly remained.

In 1949, George Orwell concocted Nineteen Eighty-Four, a grim tale of the future as Orwell saw it had the Totalitarian threat not been quelled when opportunity and circumstance necessitated it, it tells tale of an independent mind in a conformed collectivist society, where ignorance is strength and independent thought is a crime punishable by death.
The story delves into the concept that history is only written by the victor and how he who controls the present, controls the past, regardless of how far back said past was, the zealous people of Oceania (a dystopian region of Europe) would believe whatever the Party (the totalitarian power ruling Oceania) fed them; the Party could say that the world was round one day and flat the next and the people of Oceania would believe both equally.
This idea of "doublethink" as it is called in Orwell's book is essentially accepting two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, knowing that something is an obtrusive lie and acknowledging it as irrefutable truth at a time, having a single, absolute belief was known as Thoughtcrime, an offense rivaled only by treason against the oligarchic Party, resulting in the torture, brainwashing and, only after the alleged criminal has accepted the beliefs of the Party and admitted their "crimes" before the entirety of Oceania were they executed.
In the slums of Oceania reside the only means for salvation of it's people from totalitarian rule, the proles; essentially the working class of Oceania, the proles represent three quarters of the population in Oceania, they are not monitored by the Party as opposed to the rest of the Oceaniac population, they are capable of thinking, feeling, breeding and writing without consequence, but never felt the need to do so as they believe ideally in nothing but the Party and what the Party represents.
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." Winston Smith

Though a rather outlandish abstraction, there is some truth to the Orwellian view of the future, in our revolutionary day and age, where independence and freedom of expression are said to be the ultimate ends, the preponderant population that lack ambition are dubbed feckless whereas the highly ambitious minority are singled out and dubbed extremists, the only existing middle ground is neutral conformism, where we are told what is normal and abide by it; what one never stops to think about is, whom, when and on what basis did someone decide that so and so is the norm? What is the inappropriate or the abnormal? If one mans trash is another mans treasure, then does the opposite not apply to those who mentally consider it? Can ALL treasure not be trash until proven otherwise? The trash sown by past decades of humanity is welcomed and treasured by the present and embraced as truth only because we are told it is, they hold the pieces to the puzzle and they put it together so we do not have to, knowing full and well that we will not bother putting it together ourselves if it has already been done for us, knowing full and well that we are willing to accept history as a given, readily available convenience as opposed to a carefully studied necessity.


That's not to say the masses should run rampant in anarchical splendor, nor that the entirety of written history is a farce, information should, by the individuals standard follow the "Guilty until proven innocent" theorem, rather than the "Hearing is believing" pseudo-theorem, which is the deplorable universal standard.

Food for thought.


"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four