1984

When I read Orwell's 1984, what scared me most wasn't the surveillance state, wasn't the secret police, wasn't the propaganda campaigns, wasn't even the torture sequences and psychological breakdowns, though those were all certainly still frightening.

No, for me, it was "new-speak," the new Party approved dialect of simplified English. It was frightening because the Party understood that our capacity to think does not exceed our ability to speak--we literally cannot conceptualize something unless we can somehow find a word for it. Case in point: the first time I met an Afton I thought it was the most bizarre name ever; I've met a dozen Aftons since. The name didn't magically appear one day; I was simply unaware of its possibility until I was taught it, then I became aware of it everywhere.

Thus in an overly-simplified English dialect, devoid of all references to right and wrong (the Party simply called it "good" and "no good," not "bad," in new-speak), or even the ability to signify injustice, oppression, contradiction or paradox, one would not even know how to oppose the powers that be. You'd have a docile population unable to conceive of any opposing viewpoint.

It's bad enough to be impotent against the Party; it's nightmarish to not even be able to conceptualize one's oppression. It's enough for me to rail against TV, tweets, bumper-stickers, billboards, badly-spelt message-board posts, News Pundit bullet-points and Twilight as more than mere dumb-fun ways to waste time; these are threats to our very freedoms, they are tools of our oppression. Difficult literature is not merely past-times of the intellectually idle; these are revolts against the Party.

Well, I guess I have no excuse now for avoiding reading Finnegans Wake for class now. *sigh*