At war with ourselves: 1984 and the struggle against our digital demons

You don’t need to be an agent of the Thought Police to have adopted some of the chilling modes of repression and surveillance in George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984.

You don’t need to churn out fake news stories for the Ministry of Truth, or peddle spurious economic data for the Ministry of Plenty. You don’t need to pledge allegiance to 1984’s notorious Big Brother or fawn over the ubiquitous posters depicting him.

Because if you want to see the face of Big Brother today, then you could arguably take a look in the mirror.

Ask yourself: have you ever been too quick to share a piece of misinformation just because it happened to support your preferred version of reality? How many times have you used a geolocation app or social media to engage in some sneaky low-key surveillance? Or have you ever let your feelings of indignation lure you into a hateful digital pile-on? Likewise, do you ever find yourself acting like your own Thought Police, self-censoring your real opinions? And how many times each day do you twist your own language to obscure what you really mean? (Perhaps by pivoting to low-hanging corporate jargon to deliver more user-friendly optics.)

Orwell’s 1984 is the ultimate work of fiction about humanity’s struggle against repression, censorship, surveillance and the wholesale warping of truth. It has even given us an everyday vocabulary for describing those struggles – from thoughtcrime and Big Brother, to Room 101, doublethink, reality control, Newspeak, and, of course, the adjective Orwellian itself.

But there is a moment in the novel when the protagonist, Winston Smith, identifies another struggle, one that often runs deeper than the fight against the story’s authoritarian Party – the struggle against his own self: “In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.” This internal struggle is brought vividly to life by actor Andrew Garfield, who plays Winston in a new audio adaptation of the novel from Audible. His inner conflicts, angsts and self-reproach come to the fore when Garfield adds: “In moments of fear you are at war with yourself.”

Other cast members give voice to their character’s own conflicts and contradictions. Cynthia Erivo imbues Julia with a beguiling mix of wisdom and recklessness. Andrew Scott channels seductive menace as Party official O’Brien. And Tom Hardy lends Big Brother a kind of desperate, disembodied bombast.

Of course, 1984’s infamous Room 101 literally forces people to face their own fears. The terror therein is foreshadowed by the agonising sound of Winston’s soul being broken by the sight of his own reflection in a mirror.

There is also Winston’s self-loathing about his job “rectifying” history despite his guiding belief in the sanctity of truthfulness. Likewise, while he and Julia denounce the mass orchestrated outpourings of hatred with its “hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness”, Garfield and Erivo fervently voice their characters’ own bile. And while they ridicule the credulousness of their colleagues, their voices betray their own naivety.

The performances thereby make it easier to recognise our own awed and conflicted selves. Experiencing Orwell’s tale afresh can help us appreciate our own battles against our inner Big Brothers. How have we altered our behaviours? How have we succumbed to our own worst tendencies in today’s post-truth world? How might we retain our humanity in the face of all the hatred? How to be a person capable of resisting today’s all too Orwellian scourges?

Like Winston and Julia, we might detest the anger and hatefulness we witness in others, while still getting caught up in the frenzies of rage that can break out rapidly on social media today.

Or consider the current anxiety over the language we use, the offence – real or perceived – that words can cause, along with the way our language is often compressed by the limits of social media. Is there a risk that, whether we mean to or not, we may collaborate in the creation of our own Newspeak, the artificial and denuded language with which the agents of Big Brother seek to control the population in 1984? As Winston’s colleague Syme explains over the clanking and chatter in the staff canteen: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

The structures and algorithms that influence us today function at least partly by enlisting our own worst tendencies: our tribalism and confirmation bias, our propensity to favour anecdotes over factual accuracy, our readiness to demonise those we disagree with, our need for validation, our lazy conformity. The list goes on. This is why 1984 is so much more than a prophetic warning. As well as being predictive of today’s dystopian headlines, it’s a guide for understanding how they interplay with our own lives.

Stefan Stern is the author of Fair or Foul: the Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition, published in July

Audible’s new dramatisation of George Orwell’s classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now. Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms.

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