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1984

By: Eric Arthur Blaire - Read: July 26, 2021 - Rating: 8/10

"Big brother is watching!" 1984 by George Orwell is not a dystopian fiction, at least for me. It feels like a manual. The Party's control is not due to its cruelty but to its precision. Controlling the language controls thoughts. Controlling the past controls the present and the future. And Newspeak's core mission? Making dissent linguistically impossible.

Many think 1984 is about an authoritarian regime and how it isn't nice. Indeed, it is. But it isn't JUST about the authoritarian regime. The main emphasis comes down to controlling the thoughts. It was Orwell's intellectual mission, after all. Politics and English Language talks about the same idea: muddy language leads to muddy thinking.

The disturbing part is how much we've already adopted without needing the Thought Police. The algorithms control our feed, our worlds. That in turn controls the thoughts.

And Orwell thinks we must think more (on our own). And to think well, we need to write well.