Who are we listening to?
Virginia Robin
Reformed lawyer sharing dignified ways to solve problems. Know yourself and your intrinsic value in the process. Creator of The Reflective Resolution Model | 3 x Author | Artist | TEDx'er
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU?is a phrase that appears only twice in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four,?yet the power of the phrase still resonates.?
Though I only just read?Nineteen Eighty-Four, its message imprinted on me long ago.
The book first appeared in my reality in 1983 funnily enough, but I didn’t read it then for two reasons: first, it wasn’t on my year 12 reading list as it had been in previous years; and second, it was the year I slipped into a depression.
At 16 years old, I was barely functioning and held absolutely no interest in life. I mention this only because if I’d had the inclination to read a negatively slanted, albeit fictional prophecy, I dare say it would not have been ideal therapy for me.
I don’t tend to read books for the sole reason they’re deemed important. I read from a sense of compulsion - it?asks?me to read it. And?Nineteen Eighty-Four?did - while on a recent trip to the USA.?
It was not the most comforting read.?
For those of you that haven’t read the book, it portrays a dystopian world where the totalitarian Party, led by Big Brother, controls every aspect of life, suppressing freedom of thought, individuality, and truths. Through surveillance and psychological manipulation, the Party enforces absolute loyalty, showing how physical and coercive controls can erode personal freedom and concepts of self.
It took me into some dark, familiar feeling, places. While layered, I nevertheless found that dark tone monotonous. The compulsion for me to continue reading it, however, was this: I felt ‘the problem’ reflected our current reality at some level, and wondered whether Orwell offered me a satisfyingly happy ending.?
Perceptions of reality
In the fictional State of Oceania, Orwell sought to create and perpetuate just one ‘collective and immortal’ mind - the Party. Here, the individual mind is irrelevant, being deemed erroneous and perishable. A citizen’s sense of self, eroded. Authenticity and autonomy are lost, where you’re only allowed to listen to the one mind.
Quite possibly the subject of debate, and my motivation for writing this article, in 2024 it could be said that we exist in two interconnected realities: a personal reality, shaped by our individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences arising via an awareness of our self; and a collective reality, defined by various societal systems, cultures and expectations.?
These two realms constantly influence each other, with personal perceptions and choices creating our collective reality, and societal dynamics, in turn, influencing our individual perceptions and choices.
Perhaps we could call this our two minds? … where one listens to the other?
A real slice of 1984
Orwell forecast what we might consider a bleak outlook for 1984. For fun, I reflected on what 1984 looked like through my 17-year-old eyes.?
My life felt decidedly stifling, yet on the collective level society seemed freer. A complex relationship to describe. Was my personal darkness influencing what I was perceiving ‘out there’ as being better?
Perhaps.
Another tricky interplay - in 1983 when Australia won the America’s Cup, our Prime Minister, embodying the cheeky Aussie larrikin spirit, cautioned those employers who fired workers over absenteeism the day following the win would be labeled ‘bums.’?
While meant in fun, a freedom for the employee was not so much for the employer.?
Control can take subtler forms.
2024
Who are we collectively in 2024? Who have we listened to for the past forty years?
At first blush life, we might consider life to be better. We have had unparalleled technological advances to make our lives easier; we are more globally connected; and we have procured greater awareness of our ‘human rights’ or humanity.?
Consumerism, however, remains a theme. We want?stuff?to fulfill our desires. We have goals to achieve so that we measure up to, or please, the collective mind.
In many ways it appears we are becoming more distracted from ourselves - from our own minds. Perhaps this is a sense of covert mind control manipulating us to conform to the collective idea of ‘the greater good’ - whatever that means.?
Maybe we are still in fear of being called ‘bums’ forty years on.
Having worked in law for around 25 years, my experience is we are becoming more overtly authoritarian as a collective - evident in the increase of written and unwritten rules.?
We are in love with our Orwellian ‘telescreens’ that are watching … and listening. The difference being we voluntarily engage. We may not be ‘vaporized’ for non-conformity, but in today’s speak we risk being ‘cancelled’ - effectively the same as becoming an Orwellian ‘non-person’ in a public sense.?
The vibe on the street
The collective idea is an abstract one in that there are many collective forms, so I’m going general here.?
I find traveling is a great opportunity to feel the human ‘vibe’. It was obvious to me on my most recent trip that people generally seemed unhappier than I had experienced in the past. My smiles weren’t as readily reciprocated. It was as if I was meeting an unspoken: ‘What is there to be happy about?’
Politics featured in general discussions where the overall vibe was one of concern. This was not limited to the USA; Australians I met in transit appeared jaded too.?
The common denominator was concern over who would be representing their voices. Some felt it wouldn’t matter, as they no longer knew who they could trust; no-one is listening.
Who do we want to listen to us?
People want a voice. They feel that they aren’t being heard.?
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Here in Australia our First Nations’ people sought a Voice in the Australian Parliament, and via a referendum, the Australian collective said ‘no’.?
I’m an Australian. I said ‘yes’ - just to illustrate the complex nature of the two realities we live in.?
When the majority says ‘no’, but I say ‘yes’, what does that mean? Am I, and others like me, being suppressed?
Freud believed that having someone listen to your suppressed thoughts had the potential heal.[1]
It seems that what we are seeking in our governments, and society, is for someone to hear us. Social media platforms thrive on this inner desire.
In?Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother was not only watching you, but listening too. Not for the purpose of healing as we understand it, but to heal or ‘correct’ free-thinkers. Children were listening. They were recruited as Spies to report ‘thought criminals’ - an elegant self-regulating and self-perpetuating system – sound familiar??
The power of the collective
As a collective, I feel we are becoming ‘Big Brother-esque’. We, as individuals, create social rules and set out to enforce them against each other. We want others to conform with our own minds. Gather enough individual minds and you have a powerful idea - where nonconformity feels alienating.?
Remember how cigarette smoking once was ‘cool’? I fell for that one - my participation perpetuating the power of a collective idea of what was considered an acceptable norm.
The individual mind matters
Despite my sense of foreboding, we have not yet become Orwellian cookies.?
They, the collective, cannot truly control our sense of self, because?They,?are essentially?us?- if we buy in.?
It’s evident that each of us sees life in a unique way - our minds being individually shaped by our experiences.
What if we begin by first embracing this idea?
Self-expression isn’t something that we have to fight for, despite what the collective mind suggests. Who you are and what you prefer, your individuality, can never truly be removed - or validated for that matter - by anyone ‘out there’.
Next, let’s ask ourselves, as individuals, what do we really want from our lives and more importantly WHY do we want it?
Dig deep, and I believe that fundamentally we all want love.?Love?is a loaded word for many, so I will use something more palatable:?happiness.?
It’s here I’ll say that?Nineteen Eighty-Four?ended on a purportedly loving note, but I feel the jury might be out on whether it was a happy one for our protagonist, Winston.?
I won’t otherwise spoil it for you.?
That said, given authenticity and autonomy are precursors to finding our happy place,[2]?we might ask ourselves what this means for us individually.
From my experience self-inquiry is the inroad to change, if we take the time to gently listen to ourselves.?
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[1] See eg, Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (1895).?Studies on Hysteria.?Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 2.
[2] See eg, Sheldon, K. M., & Hilpert, J. C., 2012, “The balanced measure of psychological needs (BMPN) scale: An alternative domain general measure of need satisfaction,” Motivation and Emotion, 36(4), 439-451; Sheldon, K. M., 2009, “Providing the scientific backbone for positive psychology: A multi-level conception of human thriving,” Psychological Topics, 18(2), 267-284)
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