01/07/2026
A couple things stood out to me in the first two sections of chapter one. The first thing that grabbed me was the Telescreens, but specifically that they could be turned down but never turned off. This feels eerily close to our modern smart phones, smart fridges, etc...
Another thing that I noticed was that how Goldstein was seemigly powerful enough to always escape capture and always undermine the absolute authoity of BB, yet at the same time was portrayed as a sheep, an animal; something less than human." Authoritarianism always needs an enemy. I actually see a lot of similarities in how Goldstein is described so far and Satan from the bible. Goldstein was a party member who betrayed BB, and who lives on spreading "evil."
I've been thinking a lot about how threats to power only come when the majority unites, and how division and isolation can be manufactured. I see it in our world today and I feel as if we live in a reality not too disimilar to 1984, just more cleverly hidden. What gives me hope so far though is that a small notebook and a pen was viewed as a threat, & this blog is a digital analogue to that.
01/08/2026
I didn't get to read as much today but section 3 was very focused on the past and how lies & altered realities can erase our history & our own memories. The part that stood out to me the most was when Winston realized that sadness, tradgedy, emotion, were all things of the past. The world hasn't just changed, people have changed. Their minds have been fettered and limited so long, that to imagine it any different seems surreal. That is scary to me because we see that happening through time. Google maps tanked spatial awareness. The internet negatively impacted our memory as a species. Even now I look back at stories like the Odyssey and wonder how anyone could have remembered that story well enough to orate it.
The scariest thing is, I feel like even if a history book was found that exposed all of BB's lies, people would just deny it by their own volition. How much do we already see that happening now?