Finished 1984 yesterday nite....
Damn good book I tell you!!
Written by George Orwell in 1949, the post war period in which the Americans were consolidating their world power, the Soviets were tightening their grip of Communism in East European Countries, the unification of China by the Communist, and the decline of the British and French Empire. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, he illustrated a frightening prophecy of the world's politics in the future....
The time is 1984. There are only 3 great powers left in the world. Eurasia is formed as the Soviets conquered the whole of Europe and part of Manchuria and Mongolia. Eastasia is the bulk formed by China, Japan down to the Indonesian Archipelago, India and the Middle East. The setting of the story, Oceania, is formed as the Americans swallowed up the British Isles, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the whole of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
Ingsoc, the shortform of English Socialism, is the ideology that governed the whole of Oceania in a way none of us can imagine. Like Eastasia and Eurasia, the hierarchy system of Oceania goes like this:
At the apex of the pyramid is the Big Brother, an omnipotent figure who is being worshipped like a god. Just below the Big Brother is the Thought Police (I'll tell you their responsibilities later), the Inner Party and the Outer Party whose members are closely scrutinised by the Thought Police, and lastly the bulk of the population who are thought to be inferior, the proles.
There are 4 Ministries in Oceania. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Plenty that never provides enough for the population, the Ministry of Truth that concoct lies and twist history. Yesterday Oceania could be in war with Eurasia, and Eastasia is their ally. Today Oceania is in war with Eastasia, and throughout history Oceania is ALWAYS in war with Eastasia. The most horrifying of all ministries, is the tall, windowless building in which the Ministry of Love is based. It is the home of the Thought Police, where countless tortures will be held there just to torture any rebels until they are being brainwashed by twisted facts which they are being forced to accept, and confess for crimes that they have never committed.
The slogans of Ingsoc goes like this:
SLAVERY IS FREEDOM
WAR IS PEACE
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Paradoxical isn't it? That's what Ingsoc wants to incoporate into the peoples' mind. Doublethink is the word to describe it. The ability to twist facts, alter history, generate confusion and suspicion are delibrately done to keep the people in a semi-insane state so that they will not have the ability to rebel and overthrow the leaders.
Private thoughts are not allowed, because any disatisfaction towards the Big Brother can mean a possible threat towards rebellion and is deemed undesirable. All the members of the Inner and Outer Party are being closely monitored by the Thought Police, and undesirable thoughts can be detected by any twitching in the person's face, the expression of the person, or when the person talks in his sleep. They will (including the intellectuals whom the Thought Police perceive as a threat), sooner or later, be caught by the Thought Police and get vapourised (all documents pertaining to the person will be vanished and forgotten forever). Thoughtcrime, as they called it in Newspeak, is indeed a crime.
Children will no longer bring joy to the parents.... They will be there because it is the duty of the parents to keep the population in status quo. The children will be trained to be loyal to the Big Brother, show hatred towards any rebellious thoughts, an most importantly, to spy on their parents and provide valuable information to the Thought Police.
Newspeak, the language of the Oceanic people, is an alteration of the Oldspeak, the language we are speaking. The Party has been working continuously with new versions of the Newspeak dictionary, with fewer and fewer words in each new version. Superb, excellent, bad, terrible will be wiped out by the year 2050. Instead, it will become doubleplus good, plusgood, ungood, plusungood, and so on. The main objective of newer versions of Newspeak is to restrict the thought of people with words and make them lose the ability to think.
So, what will be the Newspeak version of "Fruchee's blog is very good to read." ?
Answer is "Fruchee's blog is plusgood readwise."
Oh, I forgot.... Private thoughts are not allowed!! Hoping for Eurasia and Eastasia to overthrow big Brother? It's useless, because they have similar ruling body, except under different names. So there is no way you can run away from it. Furthermore, they want the war to be perpetual because war and economy are codependent.
Horrifying, yet interesting, isn't it? | 
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