Almost Orwellian

Some books lose their relevance with time. 1984 did not. It aged differently. The world Orwell imagined was based on the politics of his own era, fascism, Stalinism, war, surveillance. And yet, it is hard to shake the feeling that his outline still lingers somewhere beneath the surface of the present. Not in an obvious way though. We don’t live in Oceania. There is no Big Brother on the wall. But parts of that world feel disturbingly close, in what we are slowly becoming accustomed to.

Publicity photo on the set of the CBS anthology television series Studio One. This was a presentation of George Orwell's 1984.

Orwell’s idea of surveillance was heavy-handed. Constant monitoring, screens that watched as much as they showed, the sense that you were never really alone. That’s not how it looks today. Surveillance now is quieter. It is not imposed, rather it’s accepted and volunteered for. Devices track everything from steps to speech to sleep. Apps watch us with a precision Orwell could not have imagined, and we carry them around in our pockets, unlock them with our faces, and thank them when they work quickly. It’s not the threat of punishment that keeps us in line. The threat of some sort of punishment does not keep us in line; it’s the smoothness of the system, the feeling that this just how things work now.

The part people sometimes miss is that Orwell was not merely warning about the loss of freedom. He was showing how it can disappear without protest or dissent. How people can start to participate in their own containment. That is what 1984 captured so well, the slow but gradual internalisation of control. You do not need to be told what to think if you have already started censoring yourself. You do not need telescreens when people are constantly documenting their own lives, managing their image, trimming down what they say based on what will or will not land well.

Even language evolves. In 1984, Newspeak was about shrinking the space and the medium through which people could think. Cut down the vocabulary, and eventually, the complexity of thought follows. We do not have Newspeak, but we do have an online culture where certain words or tones get flagged, and people eventually start using the safest version of themselves to avoid trouble. Something that began as sensitivity turns quietly, into conformity. The things that could be said out shrinks because no one wants to be the one to say it. It does not have to be banned if people themselves refuse speak out.

And then the truth too, starts feeling shakier. In the novel, the Party literally rewrites history. Today, it is a bit different, and messier. Facts are not always erased. They are now buried, flooded, and spun. We do not get one lie, we get hundreds of versions of the truth, all shouting at once. The effect though, is similar. The clarity and the legitimacy of information vanishes. The past becomes less solid. People start picking the version of events that suits them best. And when that happens long enough, it is not just that we disagree, instead it is that we are not even arguing about the same thing anymore.

Orwell’s world also had a designated villain, Goldstein. A figure to blame, to hate, to unite against. Modern politics still leans on that structure. Now it is not always one person; sometimes it’s a group, sometimes it’s a vague threat, a shadowy sort of presence, that the state uses to justify more security, more control, and more silence. When people are afraid, they are easier to manage and rule. They accept limits. They police each other. You do not need force when fear will do the work for you.

The thing that the most worrying is how ordinary it all starts to feel. There is no moment where things clearly cross a line. There is just a slow build-up of new habits. A thousand small adjustments. Platforms tighten. Institutions reword things. People get quieter. And then one day, something that used to feel obvious, like saying what you mean, or disagreeing out loud, starts feeling a tad bit difficult. Or maybe not even worth it.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

That is what Orwell got right. The shift does not have to be violent, loud, and revolutionary. It can feel like nothing at all. That is the real danger. Not that someone takes your voice away, but that you begin to forget how to actually use it.

We do not live in a dystopia. There is still space to speak, to think, to push back. But that space does not stay open on its own. It needs people to notice when it’s getting smaller. It needs a kind of quiet resistance, refusing to treat confusion as clarity, refusing to universalise and standardise language to fit into narrow scripts, refusing to pretend everything is fine just because nothing is on fire, yet.

Freedom will not disappear in one blow. We will lose one freedom after other, gradually, day by day, until it becomes easier and safer to stay quiet than asking questions to the state and to the authorities. That is what 1984 leaves us with, not a definite warning of what is coming or what may come, but a way to notice what might already be happening.