George Orwell’s “1984” Reflecting the Realities of Life in 21st Century

”Are living in 1984?” - this question can be asked by the readers of the 1984 book by George Orwell. To be more accurate, we should ask, if we live in totalitarian system. Unfortunately, the answer might be really concerned for many people. Despite of fact that we live in twenty-first century, we live in times where country fully controls society and tries to oversee all aspects of public and private life as much as possible. It just looks a bit different, nowadays. In some kind, George Orwell's novel reflects on contemporary society. Even though, we do not have "Big Brother" nowadays, we can feel,insecure and not completely safe, becasuse of our government, this all big corporations, the latest technologies, lies and falsifications that surround us on each side. Authorities only give us a sense that we can decide about our fate, even if we can vote, we cannot be sure if we have an impact on what will happen to us.

Thanks to Winston Smith the readers can observe how humanity gives up to surveillance techniques practiced on the nations and its consequences. The best tools of suppressing individualism were newspaper and telescreens. In our time is similar, television, newspapers often become our only source of knowledge that we have and which government wants us to have. We belive in everything what is said on TV or in newspeaks, without much thought. The media control our knowledge and often present exactly what we want to see and hear so that we do not go beyond the crowd and show our individuality. Another presence of totalitarianism in our world might be our simple mobile phone - we put some informations online and they (government or people who wants to have something on you) can find a lot of facts about us, which we are not even aware. They know our localization, where we move, where we like to spend time. In some way we can call it - spying on citizens. Nowadays, communications is not private, ourdate is collected through many diffrent sources and using simple instant messaging like: messenger, viber, what's up, is no longer safe. Furthermore, we are witnessing what is happening around us, there are more and more illegal war conflicts because of economic reasons. One of the best examples is Russia, which strongly interferes in the life of Ukraine.

The worst is debility and insecurity. What that small country is for a huge and strong Russia? No one can be sure what will happen to him, no one knows where the enemy is and which country will be attacked. Even if, it is not like in novel "1984" where the totalitarian system reigned, in some way it is the same situation currently. People are not allowed to be free, even simple advertesment might have impact on us. Government wants to keep society in check, going outside the crowd is not safe. Nevertheless, there is need to acts like this to no let others quench yourself. The methods and idea of this movement changed throughout the years but the main concept is the same.