My thoughts

[nikon Sevast]

i read '1984' when i was at school. this was over ten years ago. at the time i wasn't really into books and reading was quite unpleasant for me. i didn't read the whole book. i never could get into the cold environment of school. so i was very disconnected from the very much expected norm. we also had to read brave new world, i did the same to this book. i guess my mind just wasn't prepared for these psychological labyrinths at the time. possibly something encoded within me, some form of protection perhaps. i just had no interest in what they were selling. as difficult as teaching must be and the effort that most teachers go to, i still felt something was missing. it's now that i'm beginning to realise that that something wasn't just in the teachers or the other students, which i so often believed, but was/is more in me. <br><br>so i hit my early twenties and begin to mix with some uni crowds even though i'm not at uni and i kinda begin to feel that i'm a little inadequate in the brain department, which i possibly felt all along at school but just never wanted to confront. i start doing a radio show, tape it almost weekly and begin to become more aware of what i sound like. i didn't like it. i wanted to sound like the others. i begin to make adjustments, i start to read, my drug experimentations move on from marijuana to more hallucinogenic extremes. my innocense begins to diminish, the young 'me' now wants to venture into more of these forking paths. i want to know more. i want to control more. i want for my experience to be like that which everyone else seems to be experiencing. i thurst, i crave and i hunger. my desires are beginning to take a firm hold.<br><br>i suppose at this stage people are wondering what the hell all this has to do with '1984'. <br><br>we're all so precious about our privacy about our rights and freedoms. we're concerned if someone has the capacity to spy on us or can see us with out us knowing. it's mostly a concern when we've stepped out of line, apart from that, well, who really cares! right? what does someone elses war, sickness, poverty, fame, wealth etc etc have to do with me?<br><br>if i'm paranoid, sick, suffering from anxiety, depressed, watch to much t.v.,am addicted to sport, fashion, politics, etc and of course balance it out with a sudden burst of the happy bug and then act upon the countless 'pop ups' that continiously enter my head then i make the best consumer for this economy. i'm ideal for 'them' my so called individuality is merely a condition that 'they' helped create with all my blessing, conscious or unconscious. and if i'm not an individual of some sort, independant and free, then i must be obsessively bored to know who i really am...?<br><br>i really shouldn't have watched so much t.v when i was a kid, maybe i would have read all of Huxleys 'Brave New World' and perhaps the same for '1984'.<br><br>it's quite ironic really as Ray mentioned above, that Orwell to an extent copied Zamyatin. would be interesting to find out whether Orwell actually did base his '1984' after being motivated by 'We'. <br><br>one other very frustrating thing about my school days was that i was a football fanatic, that is the 'football' which most of the world is familiar with. here in australia the football they play is primarily a sport in which hands and fists are used the most. so i've had to settle for another name which is given to my beloved sport. here in the land of Oz it's called soccer. i'm beginning to realise that 2+2 is no longer 4. <br><br>'1984' existed before Orwell, before books, before intellectualism. all the empires of the past were guilty of using control, force, spying and whatever else to get there own way. i'm sure we have all been guilty at some point in time of wanting something to be the way we want it to be. '1984' is in all of us. we can't change others but we can definitely make an effort to change ourselves.