I have come to see myself as Winston Smith. Every morning, I rebuild my civilization through the news, fed through a little screen with cameras pointing at me. On Twitter, I repost the news. I create nothing. I investigate nothing. I simply read the article, post my own propaganda in less than 140 characters and move forward. I think of myself as a progressive person, making a difference one tweet at a time.
I dream of revolution. The malaise of contemporary society and the constant stream of information inspires the most irreverent of thoughts. Yet I am compelled to do it. It feels as if I have no choice in the matter. I just do it.
Articles infuriating my concept of justice and morality leads to a projectection of violence and destruction on my psychic wall. I have discovered my inner Tyler Durden. But I will never do these things or become him.
I emphatically engage with contemporary society, spreading myself thin across the social media complex. But secretly, I think it is destroying me and You. And secretly, I want to destroy it.
I dream of love. I live alone and wake up dreaming of my Julia. But I continue to live a life based upon social constructions, not finding love. I have no room for love.
Julia works for the corporate monster despite her talents. She does secret things on the side, making tiny positive differences every day. She leaves love notes for me too.
Edward Snowden is Big Brother. He appears on a screen every day but nobody knows where he is.
Everything happened in 1984 right on time, setting the stage for 2014. Steve Jobs is lucky he got out when he did.
Most aspects of 1984 are indeed a reality today, though with different proportions. Nobody should have taken that book literally. But to size up the basic structure of society as the outcome of hyper-industrialization, the story demanded a simplistic way of converting the main themes.
You are being watched. Our social construct is founded upon war at the worst and political partisanship at the best. Data is worshipped and pursued by the masses. We believe in the resource management of our economic structure blindly.
2 replies on “I Am Winston Smith”
Actually, the President of the USA is supposed to be Big Brother. Snowden is Goldstein, the hated traitor and enemy of the party.
You make an interesting point about political blogs, esp. most comments therein. They do take on the character of a collective 2 Minutes of Hate, with evanescent Goldsteins appearing when in fact they are irrelevant to the subject being commented upon. In the latest Ukraine news blogs, that seems to be Obama, who appears in these fantasies as the ally and paymaster of Nazi thugs who led the Maidan revolution. Cheney was one, less so Bush II and Putin. Much has been made of the character of electronic communications as the culprit behind thoughtless hate commentary. That may be true to some extent. But I think we need to take a look at the 2 minutes component of the phenomenon, of the apparent need to focus our dissatisfactions on public figures, of hangings in effigy of burnings of flags, metaphorically speaking.