Pretty dang tired | Opinion

Just as it’s become part of the culture that every person whose ideas we oppose is a Nazi, or in extreme (and nonsensical) circumstances, “literally Hitler,” it’s also become de rigueur to bring up George Orwell’s “1984” in political discourse.

Orwell’s novel, first published in 1949, is a brilliant work, chilling in what it points to in us that makes us realize that we all have within us the possibility of playing a role in its narrative becoming reality.

“1984” has also become, in my opinion, something of a Rorschach test. If you lean toward conservatism, the story reeks of the potential excesses of socialism or communism. If you’re on the left, it’s a cautionary tale about fascism or the dangers of the right.

As I’ve seen the book used (and often misquoted and abused) in recent years, I’ve seen it shoehorned into every possible stripe of politics. Orwell, himself, leaned left, from my understanding, but, like his work, was in his life and since his death painted as being involved with a wide spectrum of political factions.

For those who haven’t read “1984,” it’s an easy-to-read, yet complicated, work that tells the story of Winston Smith, a cog in a totalitarian state who, through a series of incidents and situations, comes to question both the state and his role in it.

Smith’s job in the novel is as an employee of the “Ministry of Truth” and he constantly rewrites historical records to fit the narrative of “The Party,” which espouses “Ingsoc” (English socialism).

I think even as I read the book as a child, and then as I’ve grown into my job as a journalist, among the ideas that has stuck with me is the means of control expressed in seemingly mundane details of daily life. In the story, “The Party” maintains control through several means, including the aforementioned constant changes in “history,” propaganda and weaponized stoking of anger in the populace against their perceived enemies.

At a pivotal point in the book, Orwell’s Smith describes the essential foundation of the soul-crushing totalitarian state in which he exists. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” Smith tells the reader “It was their final, most essential command.”

Here, in my opinion, is my big takeaway from “1984.” In my viewpoint, the central narrative driver of the story is that “The Party” and its “Ingsoc” are tools intended to transform man from human to machine, only capable of reacting to new input constantly.

Unmoored from any objective truth other than that controlled by the state, the people in Orwell’s dystopian England cannot grasp anything resembling truth because confusion, suspicion and fear rule.

The iron fist is reserved for limited cases because it’s not needed, most people are sufficiently distracted by the minutiae of the life implanted by “The Party” that they don’t commit rational thought. They don’t have time. We see as Smith awakens from this government-imposed sleepwalking state a newfound understanding of the importance of humanity.

I think of this often when I see people seizing control of the narrative (or “spinning”) the events happening in our nation and world to further their political aims.

Smith awakens, and at the risk of spoiling it for you, is ultimately placed back into his prior state of “thought death,” ultimately coming to love Big Brother and the all-encompassing state.

There’s much hand-wringing these days over the idea that those on both the left and right are leading us on a crash course to a totalitarian state, and that may not be untrue, but the nature of what’s happening may not be quite so black and white.

The totalitarian state in “1984” doesn’t necessarily rule by fear. Instead, it seems to me that one of its most effective tools of control is not distraction, but exhaustion.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty tired. Maybe we all need to seek out some calmer shores for a bit of a break instead of standing in wave after wave of information that makes it difficult for us to catch our breath.

Catch a breath.