• Telescreen monitors every motion, sound, facial expression, awake or asleep
• Memory hole devours all scraps of paper allowing nowhere for written texts, furthermore records, to be written on
• Anti-Sex League defiles the humanly joy of making love and builds hysteria from within
• Newspeak limits the scope of thoughts able to be conceptualized and makes incomprehensible bodies of historical text written in a different language if they were to survive
• Atomic bomb, achieving planet-scale means of destruction, renders unnecessary further development of technology and prevents balance of nations from being disturbed
• A regimented society kills empirical habit of thought, the foundation of scientific progress
• Thought police precludes opposition from materializing with the aid of an absent judicial system giving power with no bounds
• War creates urgency and promotes fear over rationality
• Cross-spying cultivates distrust among public and family consequently causing one to be paranoid about their behavior
• Records Department rewrites all text and history preventing direct passage of information across generations without bypassing the Party
• Passage of time terminates the last standing carriers of knowledge into the past solidifying the Party as the sole channel of historical context
• Oppression being the pure objective of the ruling system leaves no stage for the pursuit of happiness

George Orwell sets the stage with meticulous devices thereby proposing a near perfect background for how such a ridiculous system can go on perpetually. During the read, many times did I find potential loopholes that could disrupt the undesirable yet intricately balanced state only to find more absurdities ensuring its intactness. If we could call that state an abyss too deep, a quicksand too sticky or a stalemate in the journey of humanity’s advancement, could we possibly lock ourselves in too badly so as to never be able to salvage ourselves? Or, would there always be a restoring mechanism guiding ourselves back to a state of freedom and happiness? 

Legacy technology, legacy minds. Change does not happen abruptly. Take the calculator. It emerged like a savior, got refined and precise, then got obsolete. There would have been a phase where calculator devices were kept in homes even when phones and home computers started appearing. Just in case. Then they would be sent to the benches of our minds, followed by a full exit and just like its conceptual counterpart, the device would be collecting dust in some drawer as well followed by getting thrown away the next time the family is moving. Deprecation and abandonment do not happen overnight, but it happens.

From an offspring to parent and those in repetition, dictate that ape-like animals were our ancestors. However the deduction alone does not qualify homo-sapiens to our emotional attachment as we have for our grandparents. Our empathy rarely transcends three generations up or down. No one in our generation is overjoyed by the discovery of fire. We take it for granted. Therein lies the gist. New generation will only care so much about tradition, and will accept present Earth and its state as endowment and use it to pursue their desires. Death is a human’s tragedy, but a blessing to humanity’s progression. Death is the death to old minds.

A person that does not die and an ethos that does not perish alike are like a modern military’s armory that still allocates a portion to primeval spears or medieval bows. To say the arsenal would be heavily weighted towards modern weaponry in its composition is an understatement. Primeval spears would composite not near-zero, but zero portion of a modern soldier’s arms. As much as such armory is improbable, and the immortal human impossible (for now at least), an ethos once existed is sure to perish.

Reasons 1 through 5 are my opinion to why and how humanity can recover from however deep an insanity, eventually. Although, I acknowledge that a misstep into such an abyss would cost invaluable time with similarly detrimental consequences as the perpetual stalemate of progression.

1. Party’s new leaders of the later generation may have new ideas about how to run the system. The tradition of why the system needs to be in place could have long been forgotten. Phone batteries were replaceable. Then manufacturers began taking away the feature for the premium look. Now younger generations who have never experienced the earlier days come up with the idea of replaceable batteries again.

2. Party’s new leaders of the later generation may find the system boring. There will be people who want things to change just for the sake of fun. Governing the public that has been made too ignorant will yield decreasing excitement of ruling. Like a bully would lose interest if the victim lacks response.

3. Diminishing intelligence will eventually necessitate those inadequate to understand the system to enter the upper ranks. The society as a whole will become ignorant and dull, but someone will have to fill the place. With their inability to comprehend, they will not be able to outsmart new forces that are smarter.

4. Humans as an organism desire for longevity and reproduction. Before this instinct can be carved out, accumulated desire from the ruling class will create an opening. Through that disturbance in the seemingly everlasting balance, sanity will protrude.

5. Cosmic, planetary catastrophe. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Earth actually were flat. We travelled to all corners of universe and figured out the solutions to all matter. No more scientific improvement and no scientific mind. I think this world may well be the one in 1984. I believe the incomprehensible, infinite universe and life threatening, belittling gargantuan forces act as a compass for humanity to navigate with, a common enemy to consolidate our efforts, and an anchor that serves as a firm reference point for common sense, sanity and logic.