It would be funny if not cruel!
We sit and watch ourselves being played! Humans created memory holes, and by serving them, we sustain them. As Winston recognized, he was part of the system that didn't value human life. Despite his belief that he is resisting because he is aware of the deceit on the part of "Big Brother", he, nonetheless, participates in the destruction of all that is good about humanity.
And now, in the US, the absurdity has spread. Everyone is the enemy, subject to talking about memory holes and Big Brother as if these human-creations were untouchable. In the US today, we are becoming fodder for the oligarchs. Greed drew "entrepreneurs" to the business of buying and selling human beings. Value is placed on the gold rather than profits while the value of human life is worthless. And what's changed from those days of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and now? For the survivors and even the beneficiaries are guaranteed a lifetime of servitude in order to further feed the greed of a few billionaires.
We did this! By that I mean, Americans. Particularly those more obsessed with race and that exchange for gold and free labor. The obsession with white supremacy and violence destroys the fabric of this society. We are tearing ourselves apart. We are allowing ourselves to be torn apart.
A month or two ago, at my senior complex, another member of the managerial staff, completing the yearly updates on residents, asked if I considered the writing I do a "hobby"? Should she list that writing under "hobby"?
Discredit the writing, discredit the black experience and history of resistance?
My work is, must be, a "hobby" because a capitalist society educates in the way it matters to the wealthy in a capitalist society. No money, no real writing! Writing in opposition to the status quo is discredited, so that the possibility of resisting by writing travels down the memory hole into oblivion. This leads me to wonder about the tradition of African American literature in the US. Who will dare to write while black-- in the tradition of Harriet Jacobs, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison? And who will dare to publish these writers? And the history of America? What will become of it?
Americans are far from free people. Bound to watching telescreens, we teach each other to cling to a dehumanizing system that deprives us of life. We continue, each day, doing the same thing as if we are getting somewhere. Getting ahead! Getting ahead of what? And what will our children inherit?
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