You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Stalin’s Law
Meet Dreamer. He is gentle, smart and he likes to dream, − it’s all in the name, as they say. In fact, it’s his passion for dreaming that landed him in the Orwellian Canada. Big Brother deems dreaming dangerous not only because it is difficult to control but also because it’s only one step away from thinking. And thinking is like toothpaste: once it is out of the tube, it is impossible to get it back in…
In the Orwellian Canada everybody is a guinea pig − just like Dreamer − because everybody serves as a subject for experiments and tests carried out by Big Brother to perfect his tools of thought and reality control.
Of course, nobody wants to be a guinea pig. The problem is that one becomes a guinea pig unwittingly. This happens when one crosses an invisible line and winds up behind the tall invisible wall that separates the Orwellian Canada from the rest of the world. Usually one winds up behind the wall for thoughtcrime. By the way, thought is invisible, too.
This invisibility makes it hard to figure out when exactly you crossed the line and joined Dreamer in the Orwellian Canada. Here are some tips that will help you make this determination and develop a course of action:
- You are there when you realize that you do not have the freedom to say that two plus two make four.
- You are there when you develop a new fear that you never had before, − a fear of reprisals.
- You are there when you discover that those whom you considered to be your friends quietly disappeared from your life.
- You are there when you notice that you often regret your speech and never regret your silence.
- You are there when you conclude that the only way you can get along is to go along.
- You are there if you look around and see a desert.
- Finally, you are there if you realize that you have nowhere else to go.
Once you have determined that you are in the Orwellian Canada you have a choice. You can stop doing what you have been doing and what brought you there in the first place, or you can continue doing it.
The first option is an easy one if you are not a person of principles and beliefs. If you are, you face the second option that is dangerous. Big Brother shares this axiom that is attributed to Al Capone: “You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” Unlike Al Capone Big Brother does not need a gun. He has plenty of other instruments that do the job equally well. You can read about some of them here.
… He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding!
O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
THE END
1949
Part III, Chapter VI, Nineteen-Eighty Four
OUR ORWELLIAN CANADA 