Is history real?
Part 1
George Orwell’s work has to rank highest in the philosophy that has affected my thinking. Nineteen Eighty Four is one of the most influential books I have ever read. It paints a scary picture of the world that comes from accepting whatever truth is handed to you. This book laid out a few ideas that I just cant get out of my head, and I would like your perspectives on them.
The first problem is that of Newspeak. It was the state’s method of keeping people in line. It is a scary concept. In order to quell the possibility of an uprising, they simply eliminated the language needed to convey the concept between people. They did not stop there though. They proceeded to eliminate all redundant words, consistently eliminating concepts that were deemed unnecessary, effectively downgrading party members to thoughtless drones, who “quack” at one another instead of trading unique thoughts. This, I am afraid is partly coming true. Day after day, I find that people speak in compressed language. It would seem that the vocabulary of the average person in our culture is shrinking. I will site hip-hop as a main example (and culprit). For years I have been hearing the same words come out of people’s mouths when they want to convey a message. It is always stated the same way no matter who says it, which may seem fine, but it eliminates the practice of thinking. How many times have you heard people respond to a “how’s it going?” with a “keeping it real” or something like that. Simple meaningless words such as “f k” and “dude” have become ambient in the dialect of a lot of people. Many of them are intelligent, but they do not seem to be because they take their language from simple common sources. This may all seem well, but at the end of the day, when people spit out sayings rather than formulate their own unique sentences, then they have eliminated the need for a lot of words, and have compressed entire sentences into one word. Look at the phrase “you know what im saying?” I hear it 10 times a day, exactly the same way. These 5 words have all but joined together to make one word. I know people whose entire language was derived from their music catalog. The problem is that these people’s language and thinking skills will atrophy, and they will be stuck uttering pointless catch phrases for the rest of their lives.
The second problem is that of behavioral modification and the all seeing eyes that have been placed everywhere. We live in a surveillance age, more so than any that have come before us. If you live in a city, it is not unreasonable to believe that you are being photographed 3000 times a day. Now most of this is just store security footage that will never be looked at unless there is a problem, but this can change. With biometric technology and the always growing resource of processing power, the possibility of total surveillance is becoming more and more likely. Most of us now carry low jack, microphones and cameras with us 24 hours a day in the form of a cell phone, and we pay handsomely for the privilege. Will a time come, when this technology turns on us, and puts us in a state of complete surveillance? When I browse the internet, I can safely assume that someone is interested in what pages I look at. It might just be Google or Yahoo who want the info purely for market research, but then again, it is just as likely the NSA. How hard would it be for a governing body to turn that around on me. They already have a complete psychological profile on me from my debit and store club cards, which can tell them everything about me from my shopping habits down to what advertisements work on me. I don’t want to come off as paranoid, but can we really be free when our behavior is continually monitored? Look at Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. People are dutifully putting every detail of their day on line for all to see. This is voluntary now, but that can change over night.
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