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The ultimate gaslighting, however, happens when he makes Winston doubt reality altogether and, as such, the importance of thinking for himself: “If he THINKS he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see him do it, then the thing happens,” Winston muses. “It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination. What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.”
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MORE IDEAS ON THIS
1984 is the story of a man questioning the system that keeps his futuristic but dystopian society afloat and the chaos that quickly ensues once he gives in to his natural curiosity and desire to be free.
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Orwell had been an Imperial policeman in Burma (modern-day Myanmar) and fought in the Spanish Civil War. He later worked as a journalist during World War II. As such, he had seen the terrifying impact of governments with comp...
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"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-George Orwell
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Besides the fact that it is well-structured, relatively easy to understand, and successfully relies on a few strong characters to drive its points home, 1984 has held up incredibly well over time, and not just because of it...
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While I would recommend this book to anyone, you’ll find it an especially great read if you’re concerned about freedom and sovereignty . For more context on its publication and Orwell’s ideas,
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Just before, in the last part of the book, the inevitable happens — Winston and Julia get caught by the Thought Police — Winston concludes that “sanity is not statistical.” What he means is that “there is truth and there is untruth, and if you cling to the truth even against the whole world, you ...
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9 reads
The book is structured into three parts, and in the first, we get to know the protagonist Winston Smith. At nearly 40 years old and in bad physical shape, Winston is somewhat of an anti-hero. He works in the Ministry of Truth in London, which is part of Oceania, one of three large
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Winston’s job at the record department is to, ironically, falsify historic records. The goal is to erase everything that contradicts or makes “the Party,” the governing political power, look bad. Originals are burned in giant furnaces, and every newspaper article gets rewritten every time the Par...
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15 reads
Having had little individuality to begin with due to the short material leash the state kept him on, Winston is now forced to give up his last shred of self thanks to months of physical and psychological abuse. O’Brien doesn’t just get him to lie about basic reality, such as claiming he holds up ...
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One of Winston’s colleagues works on the Party’s latest edition of the “Newspeak” dictionary. Newspeak is a language devised specifically to eliminate rebellious thinking at the root. Think about it: If you didn’t have the vocabulary to express an idea, wouldn’t that also make you less likely to ...
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For example, if the word “freedom” was erased from the English language, would Americans still understand it the way it was meant in the Constitution? In the book, the word “free” still exists, but by means of deleting many other words...
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The form of language shapes how we can express ourselves, and how we can express ourselves shapes how and what we think. Therefore, language may be the single-most important way to either empower or ens...
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Winston, however, more desperately wishes for a better future — not that he could do much to bring one about. Julia’s definition of freedom begins and ends with her choices, whereas Winston thinks freedom also means being able to think and say what is true and what you truly believe. “Freedom is ...
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8 reads
In this case, the evil Gambuto referred to was consumerism, but gaslighting, defined as “manipulating someone using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning,” is also what totalitarian governm...
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10 reads
This is Winston’s final admission of defeat. After all, if the Party can rewrite history as it sees fit, it can dictate “whatever happens in all minds” and, therefore, what “truly happens.” When he returns to the real world, he is happy to drink the same gin he has always been drinking, sit at th...
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The 17-year-old climate activist who’s not happy with how their government is handling global warming, the 55-year-old who thinks their government will surely take care of them in retirement, and anyone who’s suspicious of technology’s long-term impact on our mental and societal health.
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After their capture, Winston and Julia are separated, and both are tortured into not just compliance but becoming mindless Party drones like everyone else. As it turns out, Winston’s coworker O’Brien, whom he thought to be a fellow secret rebel, is actually a high-level Inner Party member, eager ...
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All in all, this is an outstanding book with several important, cautionary messages, some of which we should heed today. What happens if news blogs change their headlines after publication? What role does misinformation play in election...
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“The best books are those that tell you what you know already,” Winston Smith concludes as he finally leafs through the pages of a forbidden book he’d been dying to get his hands on. In that sense, 1984 by
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Published in 1949, 1984 was his warning to Western nations not to succumb to then-popular communist ideas. Despite leaning more left than right himself, Orwell feared unquestioned socialism would, ultimately, escalate...
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Besides altering language and falsifying history, the Party also controls its citizens via more direct means. For one, everyone could be a spy, and children regularly report their parents to “the Thought Police,” a sort of Gestapo which makes in...
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At first, Winston thinks Julia is a spy, but when she gives him a love note, the two begin meeting in secret, sleeping together, and commiserating about how much they hate the Party. There is, however, one key difference between them: Julia has no interest in overthrowing the Party. “If you keep ...
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In 2020, just as the pandemic came into full force, Julio Vincent Gambuto told us to “prepare for the ultimate gaslighting .” “Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we ‘open back up’ and move f...
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CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
1984 by George Orwell - Book Summary
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We are born under circumstances that would be favourable if we did not abandon them. It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either di...
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