1984

I will be very frank: when I finished reading “1984”, by George Orwell, I had no doubts that the philosophical questioning that he asks is very fitting today. The book needs to be understood as a fable about totalitarian power at the time when George Orwell lived. Totalitarianism, at the time this novel was written, has some subtleties that we find today. And there are not a few, no, there are many. Social networks - we will talk about them later, in the review of another book - bear many similarities to the days when Orwell wrote "1984". Who would be the “Big Brother” today? Well, I would say that algorithms these days guide our thinking to very obscure regions. I even think that we often behave like zombies with algorithms. One of the most frightening details of “1984” is that the screens can also observe the inhabitants. Social theorist Michel Foucault maintained that a central feature of modern society is the smooth control of surveillance. It informs our sensitivity, disciplining us without open force and forcing us to adhere to normative behavior. Now, we have the National Security Agency examining our phones, Google sifting through our search engines and our high-tech TVs that can watch us. Orwell knew what he was talking about. Still, surveillance is predominantly aimed at capturing us to a market. If you’re reading this on a screen, you’re probably ignoring the ads in a sidebar. How did they know that you are a 40-something bachelor? Or a woman who wants running shoes? Or a man who likes to read, as is my case?One of the issues addressed in the book is the distinction between truth (the issues and circumstances of an event) and facts (what are believed to be the issues and circumstances of an event). Then, the book explores the socio-political-ethical-moral nuances of manipulating evil, facts to control individuals. Kellyanne Conway, adviser to Donald Trump, during an interview with “Meet The Press” on January 22, 2017, defended a false statement by White House press secretary Sean Spice about the number of people who were in possession of Donald Trump , president of United States. When pressed during an interview to explain Spicer's statement, Conway claimed that Spicer's was talking about alternative facts. When asked that alternative facts are not facts, but falsehoods, she was widely criticized by journalists. The phrase was defined as an Orwellian phrase. And it was not for nothing that the book "1984" had a resounding sale, thanks to the phrase by Kellyanne Conway, on Amazon. But before talking about the book, I would like to say that my edition of Companhia das Letras comes with three gifts. Three comments from intellectuals I love: Eric Fromm, written in 1961; by Bem Pimiott, written in 1989, that is, on the date of the end of the Soviet Empire; and Thomas Pynchon, written in 2003. Of all, I must confess that I identified myself more with the latter. I will talk about it more in the end. George Orwell is the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, born in 1903, in Morthari, Bengal, India, during the period of British colonial rule. He moved to England with his mother and was educated in Henley and Sussex. As literature was not an accepted subject for boys at the time, Orwell studied master writers and began to develop his own writing style. At Eton, he came into contact with liberal and socialist ideals, and it was here that his initial political views were formed. He lived in Burma in 1922, where he served as an assistant police superintendent for five years. His dislike for British imperialism made him give up. In 1928, Orwell moved to Paris and started a series of low-wage jobs. In 1929, he moved to London, again living in what he called "very severe poverty", which made him write, in 1933, his first novel, called "Na worse in Paris and London", which was translated in Brazil . At that time, while Orwell was teaching at a small private school in Middlesex, he suffered his first pneumonia due to tuberculosis, a condition that would torment him for life and require hospitalization again in 1938, 1947 and 1950. He worked in a bookstore where he met Eileen O'Shaughnessy. He and Eileen were married in 1936, shortly before moving to Spain to write newspaper articles about the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, Orwell found what he was looking for: to fight for a true socialist state. He joined the fight against the fascist party. While fighting in Spain, Orwell was shot and later contracted tuberculosis in a Spanish hospital. He and his wife, Eileen, managed to escape Spain. The Soviet-backed party was carrying out a purge and supported the fascists to prevent the real revolution.In Thomas Pynchon's words, it was in Spain that George Orwell learned the difference between real and false antifascism. His struggle against totalitarianism and in favor of democratic socialism was what guided him. Shortly after Orwell and Eileen adopted a son in 1944, Orwell became a war correspondent for the Observer in Paris and Cologne, Germany. Tragically, Eileen died earlier that year, shortly before the publication of one of her most important novels, "The Animal Revolution". Despite his struggle against poor health, Orwell wrote, in 1948, the book "1984". He married in 1949 and died in 1950 from tuberculosis. Although these are the most famous novels of his career, his memoirs, other novels and the essential work as an essayist contribute to the body of work that makes up important publications of the 20th century. I confess to you who follow this site that I do not like to talk much about the life of the writers I recommend, as it is a way to encourage the reader's curiosity. But, in the case of George Orwell, his life was full of twists and turns worthy of a great film. Be certain of one thing: you will see many books by this great author here in this space. Shall we go to him? Welcome to “1984”. Winston Smith is a low-level member of the ruling Party in London, in the country of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even in his own home, the Party watches him through big screens. Everywhere he looks, he sees the face of the Party's apparently omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the history and language of the people. The Party was implementing an invented language called Novafala, which tries to prevent political rebellion by eliminating any possibility of rebellious thoughts, which were considered illegal. This crime of thought is, in fact, the worst of all crimes. Well, here is a parenthesis: in this digital age, we are all watched, and reason has a name, it's called security. Your cell phone can be monitored, your television knows which programs you watch. And so on. When the novel opens, Winston is frustrated by the Party's oppression and strict control, which forbids free thinking, sex and any expression of individuality. Winston doesn't like anything he lives and illegally buys a diary to write his criminal thoughts on. He also fixates on a powerful Party member named O'Brien, who he believes to be a secret member of the brotherhood - the mysterious and legendary group working to overthrow the Party. Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to meet the needs of the Party. He notices a co-worker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, looking at him, and worries that she is an informant who will report him for his crime of thought. The Party doesn't even have a name. It is simply Party, an omnipresent and absolute structure. The Party's order words were: War and peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength. In this world of contradictions, the Ministry of Truth controlled all intellectual production, from news to books, from music to newspapers. The Ministry of Peace was responsible for the wars. The Ministry of Love controlled the Police, Law and Order. The Ministry of Pujança took care of the economy. The English language was gradually being replaced by Novafala, a language in which words had contradictory meanings and abbreviations dominated. He is concerned about controlling Party history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to remember a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but that does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends the night wandering around London's poorest neighborhoods, where proletarians, or offspring, live scrawny lives, relatively free from Party monitoring. To escape Big Brother's tyranny, Winston begins to write a diary - an act considered betrayal, which could result in death. If he were captured, it would certainly be by the “Police of Ideas”, which controls all thoughts. Winston was determined to remain human in inhuman circumstances. However, big screens are placed everywhere - in his home, which was nothing more than a cubicle at his work, in the cafeteria where he eats, even in the bathroom. Nowhere is safe. During the event called “Two minutes of hatred”, Winston catches the eye of a Party member, his name is O'Brien, who he believes to be an ally. At the same time, Winston believes that a girl named Julia, who worked in the Fiction Department, was his great enemy and dreams of seeing her destroyed. Only Winston is surprised when this dark-haired girl who he believes to be a spy secretly hands him a note that says: "I love you". The two meet and there is a chemistry between the two despite the age difference. And they begin to make plans to be alone.The two make love and begin to develop loyalty against the Party and Big Brother. They find each other a room. They are really in love. They swear love and loyalty to each other and nothing can separate them. Even though they know that one day they could be caught. But even so, they swear unconditional love for each other and in the worst circumstances. At that time O’Brien appears, who they believe to be a member of the Brotherhood. But here is a parenthesis: long before meeting Julia and O'Brien, Winston was always obsessed with finding the Brotherhood. And what is the Brotherhood? The Brotherhood would be an armed resistance with the aim of overthrowing the Party, but no one was sure whether it was real or legend. With O'Brien's appearance claiming to be a member of the Confraternity, a series of questions are asked and O'Brien himself arranges for Winston to receive a copy of the book whose author was named Emmanuel Goldstein, a former ally of the Big Brother who became the great enemy. Winston picks up the book and reads with Julia dozing beside him. When they hear a noise behind a painting in the living room, they discover a television screen. The result could not be otherwise. They were arrested and separated. Winston is in the depths of the Ministry of Love, which has nothing to love. It is a kind of prison with no windows, where he sits for days at a time, and alone. It is at this time that the truth begins to appear. O'Brien arrives. At first he thinks he was caught, too, but realizes that he was there to torture him and break his spirit. The Party has always been aware of Winston's "crimes"; in fact, O'Brien has been with him for the past seven years. After months of torture, O'Brien, who aimed to change the way individuals think, plays a game of ideas called double-thinking. And what does that mean? Double-thinking means the ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs in your head and believe in both. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories need to be changed; as a result, he knows that he is manipulating reality; but thanks to the exercise of double-thinking, he is also convinced that reality is not being violated. (page 252) O'Brien spends the next few months torturing Winston to change his way of thinking - employing the concept of double-thinking. Winston believes that the human mind must be free and, in order to remain free, one must believe in objective truth, such as 2 + 2 = 4. Only O'Brien wants Winston to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Winston resists. Even the names of the four ministries that govern us exhibit a kind of boldness in the deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace takes care of war affairs; the Ministry of Truth deals with lies; the Ministry of Love practices torture; and the Ministry of Pujança deals with food shortages. These contradictions are not accidental and do not result from mere hypocrisy: they are deliberate double-thinking exercises. For only by reconciling contradictions is it possible to exercise power indefinitely. It is the only way to break the old cycle. If we want to avoid the advent of equality between men forever - if we want the Highs, as we call them, to maintain their positions forever - the prevailing mental state must, necessarily, be that of controlled insanity. ” (page 254, page 255). O'Brien takes Winston to the dreaded room 101, the most feared room of all at the Ministry of Love, the place where prisoners find their greatest fear. Winston's biggest fear is rats. A wire mask is placed on Winston's head and O'Brien threatens to open the door for the rats to stroll freely in his face and disfigure him. At that moment, Winston loses his bond with humanity when he shouts saying, "Do this to Julia!" From that moment on he is a changed man. Sitting in a cafe watching the screens, he sees Julia again. She too had changed, looking older and less attractive. She admits that she also betrayed him. In the end, the sad conclusion: Winston comes to love Big Brother. The big question is: what can we learn from George Orwell? Well, the West has appropriated "The Animal Revolution" (a book I haven't read yet, but will be the next one after that) and "1984" to criticize Soviet communism, and in that George Orwell was relentless. But let it be clear that he also criticizes the West. At the famous conference in Tehran held by the USA, the USSR and England discussed the new geography of the world, that is, who would stay with what. American and Soviet imperialism were present, since China was still in a revolutionary process.Today the notion of truth is committed to fake news, to this new digital environment in which we live. The Internet is a wonderful laboratory where information collides with reality. Rumors, lies and truths are manipulated by ideologies. The use of technology is used to spy, as was clear when Edward Snowden, a former American intelligence agent, leaked information about how the United States spies on information in an extremely sophisticated way. We can say that “1984” is not that far away. We are slowly experiencing the whole process. George Orwell was a French student of Aldous Huxley, who, in a letter congratulating him for the work, said: “In the next generation, I believe that world leaders will find that child conditioning and narcopnosis are more effective, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the craving for power can be completely satisfied by suggesting that people loving their servitude like flogging and kicking them in obedience ”. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/30/aldous-huxley-was-george-orwells- The question that remains is: which of the “prophecies” (Aldous Huxley and George Orwell) is more correct? I think Orwell's intention is only to make a fable, not an apocalyptic prediction. I will go ahead with the following: you will not be the same after reading George Orwel's “1984”, a dystopian fable that is simply brilliant. A book that deserves a place of HONOR on your bookshelf.🖤📚Note: ☆☆☆☆☆| Title: 1984| ISBN: 978-8535914849 | Year: 1st edition (21 July 2009) | Specifics: 416 pages | Editor: Companhia das Letras| Genre: Dystopia, fiction| Finishing: Common Cover| Measurements: 21 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm|Cutting: Unpainted Eric Arthur Blair (Motihari, British India, 25 June 1903 - Camden, London, United Kingdom, 21 January 1950), best known by the pseudonym George Orwell, was an English writer, journalist and political essayist, born in British India . His work is marked by a perceptive and good-natured intelligence, a deep awareness of social injustices, an intense opposition to totalitarianism and a passion for the clarity of writing. Pointed out as sympathetic to the anarchist proposal, the writer defends self-management or autonomy. His hostility to Stalinism and the experience of Soviet socialism, a regime that Orwell denounced in his satirical novel The Animal Revolution, (translated in Brazil also as A Fazenda dos Animais, starting in the editions of 2020) proved to be a constant feature in his constructions.Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, both popular and political, continues today. Several neologisms created by him, as well as the term Orwellian - a word used to define any authoritarian or totalitarian social practice - are already part of the popular vernacular.🖤📚 Buy on Amazon (1984 - George Orwell)