Blog #52 (Sophomores 2020)
Samantha Mekhael
Period 9
6/10/2020
Aim: How are the readers of 1984 warned about the power of manipulation?
Do Now:
Winston thinks, “They could not alter your feelings; for that matter, you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to.” Think about and discuss the nature of feelings and emotions.
Can you alter your own feelings by force of will? Why/Why Not? Can someone else alter another person’s innermost feelings?
Per our class discussion, many believed that propaganda was the main source of confusion among what people perceive to be their own memories. While one can alter their own emotions through a change of air/perspective; ie: optimistic life-view; cup half empty/full, it becomes harder to control your emotions when someone else is in the head chair, conflicting what they want you to believe against what your previously conceived reality is. When the truth & fiction blur together, it’s hard to truly know what to think. Feeling is an output of what you’re putting into your head; thus, having control of your emotions is merely a culmination of having control of what you expose yourself to. When you don’t have authority over what you subject yourself to, you don’t have authority over your emotions.
One who has control of their brain’s input may look at this & think, “Join the War for Peace?” That is an oxymoron, & is clearly propaganda. However, the more your brain is conditioned to believe what “they” are telling you, the more you feel a numbness surrounding ideas that are clearly ridiculous, such as a war in the name of peace, the more “they” can control your brain further. Controlling your emotions is merely an effect of controlling what goes into your head.
I think this Crash Course successfully explains the concepts of control of subconscious & retaining individuality under the confines of totalitarian government, as pertaining to 1984 as a whole.
TEAM WORK
After a discussion of the Do Now, we considered the novel’s events in creating 3 questions about the novel. For instance:
How do the Thought Police know about your committing thoughtcrime?
The class determined that “punishment of thoughtcrime” was a trick used by the government to make sure you didn’t commit thoughtcrime, which is a circular argument in actuality. We thought that there was no way for the Thought Police to listen in on your thoughts, so they acted as a scare tactic to make sure you don’t freely question the government. Obscuring it’s subjects' reality, so as to not allow them questioning of authority acts as a very strong analogy for the regime of the IngSoc.
Does Big Brother really exist in the novel?
The class believed that, because Big Brother is never seen for the duration of the novel, he is simply a fragment of implementing control. He never really exists, but acts merely as mitigation, making sure that the government has a “head” to lead it, and to act in propaganda posters as an “all seeing eye,” almost akin to Uncle Sam in his representative nature.
GROUP WORK
During this time, we had to evaluate the characters of Julia and Winston and record characteristics unique to each, then record characteristics that are
shared.
The class discussed its answers post- group time & had similar answers in terms of their independence, questioning of the government, lust, & their almost incentives to quickly disobey the government, even subconsciously. Unique to them, however, we discussed Julia & Winston’s age difference, 26 & 39 years old, respectively, & the fact that Winston seemed to be more afraid of the government than Julia. He didn’t know how many others government questioners there were, & was surprised to find out how many disobeyed the government in sexual acts. Julia however, is less paranoid, having a primary perspective on just how many men had disobeyed the government.
This analysis I found goes into further detail on the similarities & differences between Julia & Winston:
QUICK WRITE
Record what you did last Friday morning.
Mrs. Peterson wanted to test our memories, or what we thought were our memories. One may think, “Friday morning, I most likely had breakfast, like every other morning.” While that may be true, but are you confident in what you had? It was difficult to pinpoint the details. This was a strong analogy for the weakness in people’s perception in 1984. Sure you can remember you ate breakfast, but if you can’t remember what you ate, someone else can “remember” for you. This “blind spot” can be filled by what an authoritative figure wants you to think. If your mom, whom you trust, told you that you, in fact, had waffles for breakfast on Friday, you would believe her, because you have reason not to, being that you truly think that she has your best interest in mind. This can be connected to the “mind control” used by authorities in 1984. People learn to look up to & revere Big Brother. There’s no reason to think your “big brother” is lying, so when records are edited/destroyed, & his subjects are lied to about provisions & substance, there’s really no evidence to support thinking any other way than how Big Brother wants you to think.
WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION
Why was there such difficulty recording what happened?
The nuances of everyday life are often overlooked, being the redundant nature of them. As a result, we don’t think that the details are important, as life will just repeat itself.
Why is it so easy to forget what transpired, even though only a couple of days had passed?
“Last Friday” will happen thousands of more times in our lives. We can’t remember every important detail of every day, so why bother with the unimportant ones?
How can forgetting leave people vulnerable?
As previously mentioned, the act of forgetting leaves a blind spot. Anyone we trust, or are told to trust can fill the blind spot with something untrue, & because of their authority, we are taught to blindly follow them, even if it means we can be put into danger.
Here is the Wikipedia page on Memory Holes, the little blind spots that we seek to fill, & which can often be altered to someone else’s advantage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole
Reflection:
My friends & I lingered over the idea of subconscious mind control on a FaceTime call post-class. Stella connected the ideas prevalent in 1984 to a quote by Carl Segan:
“The characters in 1984 had no choice but to submit to authority. Even their questioning of everything had minimal effect, because their submission got so bad to where nothing private could be written, & records can be altered & destroyed. Once you get to that point, proving wrongdoing is almost impossible, because ideas & statistics are being fed into one ear & out the other. Feelings of fear are an overarching motif throughout 1984. The masses are afraid to think, write, & speak, & are even afraid, in their slumber, to be taken off & eliminated by their government. Living in constant fear of even having the wrong facial expression can lead to your death. These fears are a product of suppressing free speech & thought; suppressions that could have hypothetically been eliminated had more people “questioned everything” in the early stages of manipulation. Instead, the subjects of IngSoc blindly follow those who guide them, because even broken promises can be edited to make it look like they were fulfilled; they couldn’t prove otherwise. This raises the question:
“Could this happen to us?”
I believe so. My friends & I discussed “little instances” of propaganda throughout our everyday lives. In 2020, there have been so many moments of history in the making, & we choose to rely on the media for an accurate representation of what is going on in the world. Putting such trust into an outlet, even a minor one like the news, is comparable to what the characters of 1984 dealt with, but on an obviously smaller scale. While we can say that the media is insignificant in comparison to being fooled by your entire system. One thing can lead to another, & before you know it, records are being edited to suggest false security.
Food for thought: article comparisons between both Trump & Obama’s America to 1984. This is significant in that it shows how many people, even those from different sides of the political spectrum, believe we are tumbling into the spiral of manipulation that George Orwell warns us about.
My Thoughts:
My emotions have been on a roller coaster the entirety of quarantine, as it seems that there’s been bad news after bad news. Working from home has been slightly more stressful than I expected it to be, being that I have to study to make up for the barrier created when learning outside of a school environment. Being in your house constantly makes for a relaxed environment, which gives way for possible procrastination.
The online English lessons have still been engaging, as ELA is mostly reading & conferring with classmates through long discussions. I feel that my class has been particularly efficient in communicating the effect of manipulation in 1984 & its connection to our daily lives, which makes for very interesting classtime debates. We seem to naturally “question everything,” as high school students, which is exactly what 1984 tells us to do.
In terms of that has been going on recently in the media, an APWH project in which we had to take a written journal entry of our lives in quarantine prompted me to create my own blog as a medium for my journal entries: www.sammekhael.wixsite.com/sammekhael
In it, I go into detail of my feelings on different days, & question different reports from the media on events. I truly believe that I subconsciously used ideas that are prevalent throughout 1984 to document my day to day life & the “history in the making” that we are currently a part of.
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