It was late at night after a long day of work. I collapsed on the sofa and opened this book, thinking I would read just a few pages before falling asleep. My phone screen kept flashing. Someone tagged me in the work group chat. Another sensational headline popped up in the news feed. Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe, not because I was tired, but because my head was filled with other people’s voices.
Right then, I thought of the world George Orwell wrote about. The comparison felt unsettling.
The way you scroll through your phone every day is no different from Winston writing his secret diary.
There’s an ordinary man named Winston in the book, just like you and me. All he wants is to keep a little bit of his own true thoughts. He secretly buys a blank notebook and hides it in a crack in the wall to write his diary, because the telescreens on every wall are always listening. You might think he’s overly cautious, but think about it. When you post something slightly edgy on your Moments, don’t you hesitate for three seconds too? Don’t you have a chat history you wouldn’t want your coworkers, your family, or “the system” to see?
The girl Winston meets, Julia, is even more direct. She says she doesn’t care about any ideology. She just wants to have good sex in a comfortable bed, drink real wine, and wear pretty underwear. Those desires alone could make someone a target in that world.
The anxiety of living under constant information overload feels surprisingly close to Orwell’s world.
What Orwell does best isn’t scaring you. It’s letting you actually smell the rust and the stale bread of that world while you read. Gray buildings everywhere. Roads that never get fixed. Fake coffee rationed with coupons. But the worst part isn’t the poverty. It’s never knowing which coworker is an informant. It’s not even knowing whether the war you’re fighting today means yesterday’s enemy has suddenly become today’s ally.
He invented a word called “Newspeak.” Every year they remove a batch of words, because the fewer words you have, the fewer thoughts you can have. Have you noticed how online buzzwords are starting to feel like secret codes these days? If you don’t know certain abbreviations or certain memes, it’s like you’re not even allowed to speak. That’s not right. But who’s making the rules about what’s “right” and “wrong”? After reading this book, you’ll naturally pause for two extra seconds every time you click “Agree to the User Agreement.”
More than a dystopian novel, it remains a useful lens for understanding modern life.
I know you’re busy. Too busy to think about these “abstract” things. But it’s precisely because you’re so busy that you’ve almost forgotten who you are that you need to read it. Not to seem intellectual. For yourself.
Next time you’re on the subway after work, numbly scrolling through the same short videos over and over, you can ask yourself this: If that thought running through my head right now could be seen by someone on the other side of a screen, would I still dare to think it?
1984 won’t turn you into an angry person. It will turn you into a clear-minded person. Clear-minded enough to tell the difference between what you truly want and what other people have made you think you want.
Don’t wait until you’re completely overwhelmed before picking it up. Try it tonight. Even just twenty pages. You’ll find that late night on the sofa, the one where you collapsed after work, was actually the first step toward becoming more aware of the forces shaping your attention.
