3 ways in which 1984 keeps getting more and more relevant for modern society

Its parallels to our modern work culture is eye-opening

“It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince people they have been fooled”

Mark Twain

I picked up the dystopian novel 1984, by George Orwell, again recently. I’d read it in my teenage years and its political implications had been lost on me back then as I trudged through the book, finding it hard to get through.

When I picked it up again a few weeks ago, I tore through it, my mind making connections with the real world that astounded me. The book was written in 1948, over 70 years ago, yet the parallels with modern life is eery.

A lot of obvious similarities can be found between the novel and fascist and communist totalitarian regimes of the 20th century which have been much talked about, but there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn even to the supposedly ‘free’ western civilization of today.

Here’s 3 things that have brought me straight back to modern reality as I read that book.

1. All about busy work :

Orwell’s description of of his main character, Winston, and his relationship to his work, could very well have been written to describe the modern white collar professional :

“Winston’s working week was 60 hours, Julia’s even longer and their free days varied according to the pressure of work and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free.”

Through clever use of language, Orwell points out that one of the most effective ways of control is to bury people in work and distractions so they have no time to think for themselves and see through the ways they’re being controlled and manipulated.

John Maynard Keynes, a British economist, predicted back in the early 1900s that the workweek would be drastically shortened to about 15 hours as technological progress would ensure people’s material needs were met and they would be left with more time to indulge in activities of their own choosing.

That prediction certainly didn’t pan out. Instead, things seem to have gone in the complete opposite direction.

2. On bullshit jobs :

David Graeber, an anthropologist, wrote an essay in 2013 called ‘On the phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’. The essay was so popular that the website on which it appeared crashed. He subsequently curated hundreds of testimonials of ‘bullshit jobs’ and turned it into a book in 2018.

In the essay, he laments that John Maynard Keyne’s utopia of a 15 hour workweek didn’t happen but was instead replaced by ‘bullshit jobs’, positions that are utterly pointless and devoid of meaning but where people doing those jobs were left having to convince themselves that their jobs matter in a society where we’ve been programmed to associate work with self-worth.

George Orwell didn’t coin the phrase ‘bullshit jobs’, but he was already very accurately describing it as he explained the work culture of 1984 :

“Very likely as many as a dozen people were now working away on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth”.

Winston on his job :

“Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a real lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up in your head”.

Winston on his colleague :

“He knew that in the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in, day out simply at tracking down and deleting from the press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed”.

Winston understood perfectly well that his job was just one tiny cog in the wheels of the complex propaganda machine of the Party, yet he still valued his work as his whole identity was tied to it.

“Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was his work. Most of it was tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem”

3. Mass Surveillance :

Perhaps the easiest parallel that can be drawn between 1984 and the current situation is how modern technology has enabled mass surveillance to an even greater extent than that which exists in the dystopian world of 1984.

We’re already aware of the surveillance that is possible through our phones — it can track information like our geographical location, what we consume, what our preferences are. But all this surveillance technology has the potential to go much further.

Yuval Noah Harari, the historian, author and philosopher, talks about ‘over the skin’ surveillance (where you go, what you buy, what you watch) versus ‘under the skin surveillance’ (where your internal states such as your body temperature, blood pressure etc. can be tracked) that could lead to hacking your body and brain to know what you’re feeling.

In 1984, Winston had achieved mastery over his facial expressions so that the telescreens, those giant screens used to monitor each and everyone to detect signs of dissidence, couldn’t pick up on his emotions whenever a piece of propaganda was aired.

Modern technology will easily be able to detect someone’s emotional state through, say, an increased heart rate, and be able to to track — even far better than you yourself — what your feelings and preferences are before you’re even aware of them — and package that in such a way as to sell that data to the highest bidder. Today the ones coveting personal data are mostly private corporations looking for profit. Tomorrow it could well be a totalitarian regime that would make Ingsoc, 1984’s ruling party, look moderate in comparison.

Some of the fictional writings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are looking more and more prophetic in the light of current events.

The authors of those writings stressed on the importance of self awareness and personal and collective empowerment if humanity were to avoid going down a dystopian path.

Albert Camus :

“… if freedom is regressing today throughout such a large part of the world, this is probably because the devices for enslavement have never been so cynically chosen or so effective, but also because her real defenders, through fatigue, through despair, or through a false idea of strategy and efficiency, have turned away from her”.

George Orwell :

“The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on you”.

In summary, time to wake up, people.