The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.
Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. --Daniel Hintzsche
freedom
The name Newspeak is the name George Orwell gave the language, which the rulers in his dystopian novel 1984, had created. The intention with it was to control thinking, to make some ideas impossible to think, including concepts such as good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly. In this connection they used concepts such as old-thinking and new-thinking.
Today, after having passed 1984, we live in a so-called postmodernistic dystopia, where eternal values such as goodness, truth and beauty fall more and more away - and where we have been invaded by the ideology of relativism, which rulers, in creeping ways, use the same phrases as the rulers in Orwell´s novel, as if they had used it as inspiration.
How does relativism show itself? It shows in an ingenious way, which no ideology have shown before - and therefore we don´t recognize it. Through schools, folk high schools, continuing education and business communities - have management theories, coaching and personality developing courses, brainwashed most people to consider conceptions such as good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly, as something we have created ourselves, and which therefore don´t exist objective seen. Therefore it is rejected as premodern superstition, as an expression of old-thinking. All ideas are equal true, and therefore everything is allowed, often by using the concept of Freedom of Expression as a justification, and often by forgetting/excluding that Freedom of Expression is an ethical concept.
Through this we have reached the highest level of postmodern development for better or for worse. The same fully individualized core of personality, which makes us able to step out of the past´s fixed and subconscious attachment, has itself become our main interest, center for our identity in a degree, that almost all our awareness are directed inwards in a global seen exceptional narcissism.
Individually we have created a large scale self-image, which in a quite high degree is based on assumptions/ideas. This self-image we almost continuously defend, by filtrating the impressions we receive from the world. We want to be in peace with our self-images, and quite convenient we have created a cultural pluralism (=culture relativism), which forbid actual value judgment. I have my truth, and you have yours. Respect! Self-accept! I am Okay, you're Okay! It all run together in a fear of hierarchies, where it's political incorrect to claim that something is higher than something else. “You judge”, is the same as “you condemn.”
Relativism has in this way succeeded in creating an illusion of, that it is a kind of sacrilege (intolerance/thought-crime/old-thinking) wanting to utter yourself about, what is good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly, at the same time as the rulers (the relativists) does this themselves in all possible quibbling ways, under cover of concepts such as tolerance, new-thinking or Freedom of Expression.
That relativism is an ideology shows itself in, that it is a closed system, which is shared by a large group of people. Such a closed system has especially two distinctive characters: 1) It allows no imaginable circumstance to talk against the ideology. 2) It refuses all critique by analysing the motives in the critique in concepts, which is collected from the ideology itself.
Relativism has in this way also succeeded in getting philosophy psychologized/spoiled. I have many times myself been surprised over, in what degree I am being attacked for my articles - attacks which apparently only directs itself against this, that I, with starting point in the wisdomtraditions, express the necessity of remembering the philosophical aspects of the spiritual work (the realization-work and the ethical practice). This is an absolutely necessity today, because the consequences of relativism will be the counter balancing of the ego-unfolding.
If you observe the built-in energylaws of life, then the collective ego-unfolding is an expression of energy, which has swung out in it´s one extremity. With necessity the energy will swing over in the opposite extreme. And this won't happen in a quiet way, when you consider the enormous momentum that is in the actual extreme, and it will happen quite simply: through pollution of the environment, through diseases (aids, cancer and else) through warfare, terror, crises, inner mass psychotic collapses, and through natural disasters
This is what we very probably will have to face, because the rejection of the realization-work and the ethical practice is exactly what is needed for an ideology to keep it´s citizens in ignorance, and through ignorance to use them as means for reaching it´s goals; that is: using them in ways that don´t have to take ethics into consideration.These things together was exactly what George Orwell in his novel mirrored, and therefore warned us about.