A Child of 1984

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

- "Nineteen-eighty-four" by George Orwell

Before reading Orwell's novel, being born in 1984 held no special meaning. It was a year like any other; my mother lived in the capital of Communist China, my father was patrolling the borders a crow's flight away from Siberia (if crows could be convinced to fly through freezing snow flurries), and some geeks in the world were getting excited over a fallen star (elegantly named Allan Hills 84001) that would later provide evidence for life on Mars.

All it all, life wasn't exciting for a small person growing up on a supply of Winter Cabbage* and rice. My father returned home, my elder cousins provided sibling-like care, and I spent much of my time reading and drawing. Even my mother's move to Australia when I turned four was a barely remembered slight on my otherwise unremarkable childhood.

A year later, I had my first taste of the excitement my world had to offer, in the form of a massacre. 

It was 1989, and my eldest cousin was in university, with the second eldest soon to follow. I remember it being a tense spring and summer, with arguments and rows dominating the family landscape between my elder cousins and the family matriarch - my grandmother. I now know what my cousins wanted to stand up for, and what my grandmother feared (and came true, the wisdom of elders is sometimes underestimated), but what I remember from that time is very different, more innocent, and perhaps more terrifying.

There was gunfire that night, and my cousins remained under family-imposed house-arrest. We played cards by candlelight, and our grandmother told us to sit on low chairs and away from the windows. We were inundated by neighbours the next day, 'uncles' and 'aunts' from downstairs coming up to visit the elder residents and seek comfort and gossip. Shells and bullets were provided "for the children to play with", these occupied us for hours.

And I see the faces from that childhood past being mirrored in the news of today. With the riots in England, the Arab Spring movement, even in the climate and Carbon Tax debate, the same faces are shown time and again in the media. The same anonymous masses whose worries are used to fuel fear campaigns, or dismissed as selfish and ignorant. It is no wonder that the Newspeak and doublethink of Orwell's "1984" is now rampant and is the voice we have come to rely on.

What is not heard is the hope for true peace, freedom and strength. Not the ideals, not the slogans, but the wish for a peaceful life, the freedom to have such a life, and the strength to maintain it. That is all the 'little people' (vast majority of us, as much as we hate to think of ourselves as 'commoners') hope for, and being denied with lies, and/or condescension.

The fault does not entirely lie with one party or the other. While those with an agenda sway opinions with lies and falsehoods, the other side does no better in its condescension and inability to identify with those that don't understand or accept science. It is no surprise that people turn to 'news' that agrees with their deepest fears, and believe science to be all 'theory' and therefore able to be dispensed with when convenience dictates. They receive nothing but ridicule and complicated statistics from the other side.

We're fast losing the middle ground. There is little breathing space left for people to step back, reason out arguments, and sit on the fence a mite longer. If you're not in support of free-market, neo-liberal ideals, then you're a 'commie tree hugger', if you don't have an alarmist attitude about social welfare, refugees and mining, then you're a 'greedy fascist bigot'. Lets not even go into the climate issue (note, I don't call this a debate, more on that at a later date).

Taking the riots as an example. We hear two very opposing views on the media, because controversy is always good for ratings. Even if the 'sides' are misrepresentative of sentiments by a broader audience, by the time the program has gone to air, a chunk of the 'middle' will have been swayed.

During one ABC interview, a young black woman with piercings and eccentric clothing is shown as a supporter for the riots. She espouses the same sort of views as many others, that the riots are indication of the class division problems that plague Britain, but then says "good on them" when questioned about those rioting. The interviewer is quick to catch on to this and the tone of the interview shifts. Her views are no longer relevant as a reasonable argument because she is in support of those rioting, and in the last day, the media's tone has shifted just as much, as if to distance themselves from looters.

David Cameron's speech addressed many problems and hid just as many, and the media was again quick to bring in 'consultants' in related fields (like sociology) who dodge any hint that the riots and looting was motivated by anything but greed, fanned by the evils of social networking. As the Birmingham professor spoke, we were treated to footage of burning buildings, upset shopkeepers, and finger-waving youths.

There are stark contrasts at work here, and it is only through hard examination do we see the true faces of the day. The families who are concerned about their businesses, the families who are disillusioned by the police protecting shopping districts instead of their neighbourhoods, the families who shout out support for the looters as they go by, only one thing links them. They are families, they are people. Their worry is personal, while those that hijack their voices speak in generalisations. 

Some of them are the crème de la crème of society, and believe the 'hooligans' should be jailed and punished, and taught about their views on 'entitlement'. Some of them live in the 'sinks', and compare the looting to 'banker's bonuses' and the sense of 'entitlement' of the upper crust. Some are those caught in the middle, whose homes and businesses have been damaged, who want retribution and responsibility taken up so this would not happen again.

Yet no single answer exists to events like the riots in Britain, or the Arab Spring movement, or why millions are starving in the horn of Africa, or why we still debate climate science. An avalanche is not caused by a single snowflake, a catalyst causes no reaction if there was nothing there to react to it. We can't keep blaming those that don't agree with us, because the problem lies within. We forget that other people are people, we forget that all anyone longs for is true peace, freedom and strength. We ourselves build the slogans that delude us, make walls of prejudice that protect us from new ideas, select to see the evidence we want to see. We're so good at lying that we're not immune to our own lies.

We are the children playing by candlelight, the aunts and uncles that gather to seek comfort, the grandmothers that have seen this before. The people are not its politicians, its media, or its scientists, and should not serve as their pawns. Fields that should work together to remove fear and confusion from those anonymous faces have instead betrayed them, using them as an army of numbers in statistics, quantifying them under flags of ideology, manipulating them and the numbers as if the two are synonymous. As if we are numbers.

Humans have become resources, and in this world, those who understand numbers and those who don't have had their views perverted and twisted, counted towards something that is meaningless, while measurable data is ignored in favour of mass sentiment. Even science has turned to the game of people by numbers, and the 'debates' rage on, making science a thing of democracy and emotion rather than reason. And in this changed landscape of language, we languish in ignorance, blissful in our knowledge that 'our will' is being carried out, reassured by the banner of freedom that unites us.

It is easier to be one of the faces, to not bear the responsibility for anything, to think only of what is in our own interests (and these extend to family). There is little time or inclination in our busy lives to read or listen to everything before we make a decision. So we trust. We trust that those we elected to lead us would do what is best by us. We trust those we watch would review the evidence for us. We trust anyone with a 'Dr' in his title would know science. We trust what is easier to believe. We trust what requires us to change the least. And by our trust, we engineer the tides of anonymous, worried faces, confused and disillusioned, waiting to be reassured, waiting for comfort and the blissful knowledge that all will be all right again.

There can be no middle ground, we can no longer see ourselves as people with varying views based on individual issues and evidence presented. The left and right have become trains, buying a ticket on one carriage means you're sitting in for the whole journey, and not buying a ticket at all means you're left in the dust of apathy. Everything is linked, 'majority rule' is the only resolution for any issue, swaying the masses is now the key to power, and trust is the new faith.

We are all children of 1984. And "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength".

*Winter Cabbage: In the old days, back before Beijing had supermarkets, vegetables were hard to come by in Winter. Chinese cabbages were bought by the dozens or more and lined up neatly around the corridors of the apartments (in truth, where ever they could fit), and would be the vegetable supply for a whole winter. Pickled cabbage and sauerkraut was a mealtime staple.