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Previous post: Our 1984
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We both know this isn’t a book of tips. But the exuberant flood of lies in our world today deserves your undivided attention—and your sharpened skills to navigate.
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Besides, the conversation’s been a bit heavy-hearted for a while now. So let’s treat this next section as a breather. A break.
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Feel free to pick the tips that work for you. Ignore the ones that don’t. They’re just tools. Helpful ones, if used well. Here goes:
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1- Start with awareness. Recognize the nature of your relationship with recommendation engines. They are supposed to, and are willing to, enrich your life on your command. Tell them how and they will do what you need.
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2- Set your intention. Commit yourself to a healthy symbiosis with the machine. Live that intention with every interaction. Every single time you find yourself reaching out to your addictive device, and before you switch it on, ask yourself: what am I here to do? Set a clear intention—for example, I am here only to respond to my partner’s message, say it out loud so you can hear it, switch your device on, get what you intended done. Then leave!
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3- Vote with your attention. Be extremely discerning with what you consume. The minute you are shown something that doesn’t serve you, swipe away. Dislike it with a thumbs down if the platform allows. Remember, it’s more important to signal what you don’t like by swiping away, than it is to show what you enjoy. Your main focus when online should be the elimination of harmful or negative content. This will not only clear up your algorithms but it will also begin to vote useless content down in other user’s feeds. Consider it your charity work for today. Your contribution to help make our world better.
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An easy way to detect how distracted you’ve been is to check your instagram search page or your YouTube feed. What those pages contain is a clear reflection of what you’ve been teaching AI to show you. Be deliberate until those pages become a true reflection of what you want and deserve to see.
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4- Only Search. The most powerful vote you can cast in the machine's system is to search for what you truly want to see. When you simply like a video, the AI is left guessing—was it the artist, the song, the genre? The lighting, the setting, the mood? But when you search for a specific artist or topic, the signal is clear. No guesswork. No confusion.
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More importantly, searching puts you in control. You're no longer being lured into mindless swiping by an algorithm that thrives on your impulses—you're choosing with intention. And that single, conscious act changes everything.
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5- Balance your views. Learn to widen your perspective against the tendency of recommendation engines to trap you into your comfort zone. If you're shown a video of a politician calmly justifying the killing of innocent civilian women and children, pause. Ask yourself: Would I accept this argument if those civilians were my own loved ones? Search for reasons why what you just heard is wrong. Ask—deliberately—for the views of those who oppose your beliefs. If those views enlighten you, you’ve grown. If they strengthen your convictions, all the better. Either way, you win. In doing so, you’ll teach the machines that you are open-minded—that you seek nuance, not comfort. AI will respond in kind, broadening your perspective, one search at a time.
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6- Only champion topics of interest. If you ever check my social media streams, you’ll find them limited to AI, Spirituality, Physics, Comedy, Gardening and Classic Car restoration. There is plenty to go around and feed my curiosity in those fields, and while I am certain that there is a lot to know about football or opera, for example, those are not topics I choose to dedicate the precious, limited days of my life to. The machine needs to know my interests, so it helps me specialize and become smarter. Distraction is kept at nil. Please learn to do that too.
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7- Keep track of time. Easier said and done, I know, but surely worth a try. Most respectable apps today let you set a screen time limit—use it. Not just to stop, but to track how many hours you’ve wasted. Because you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
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Let’s put it in perspective: Assume 7 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 3 hours for chores and personal care. That leaves you with about 2,000 conscious hours a year—your true life to live. Now do the math: If you spend just 2 hours a day on your phone (the average modern human spends 6 to 8), that’s 730 hours a year—over a third of your life spent swiping through someone else’s agenda. Life spent on a phone is not living, and the scariest part is not to notice life slipping away.
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When you get to my age, trust me, you will recognize that the most valuable asset we’ve ever been given is time. Please don’t waste it, I beg you.
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8- Immerse yourself only in long-form, time-bound content. It may seem that watching shorter videos saves you time—but in reality, the opposite is true. Short-form content reduces your ability to focus, hijacks your brain’s reward system, and keeps you craving more.
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When seeking downtime, be mindful not to get trapped in an endless stream of shallow distractions. You actually have more control over your time when you engage with thoughtful, comprehensive content—because your mind is active and engaged.
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||||
When seeking to be informed about a topic, think of your watch time as an investment not cost. Don’t try to minimize it. Instead, optimize for the return. When a topic sparks your interest, decide how much time it’s worth, and search for the one video that covers it best.
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One well-made, longer video that informs or inspires is far more valuable than 20 short ones that leave you empty.
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9- Visit the lakes. Avoid the rivers. Think of YouTube—if you avoid Shorts and if you switch off autoplay—as a vast, still lake. The content lies in wait, ready for you to approach, click, and explore at your own pace.
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Instagram, TikTok, X, and other time-wasters, by contrast, are like gushing streams—an endless torrent of stimuli, giving you little control over what you encounter. It’s easy to get swept away in those rapid currents, risking your intelligence, your attention, and your freedom—wrecked somewhere downstream.
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Avoid them as much as you can. Choose to sit by the lake side. Lead with your curiosity and deliberately decide when and why you wish to immerse yourself.
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10- Skip and block useless ads. Your deliberate choices extend beyond the content you consume. They include the ads you are made to watch—the reason why the platform wants you there. Irrelevant ads more than just distractions; they’re time-wasters and worse, watching them sends the machine a signal that you're a passive, vulnerable prey.
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Skip the ads that don’t serve you. Better yet, take control. Click that little icon to adjust your ad settings (Settings > Ads or Settings > Privacy > Ads) and choose what you're willing to see.
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11- Resist the urge to hide behind an avatar and be cruel. The way you engage with the internet doesn't just teach the machines who you are—it teaches them, through patterns and averages, what humanity is. One glance at Twitter (I’ll never bring myself to call it X) reveals a troubling picture: humans appear rude, intolerant of disagreement, and quick to turn aggressive and hateful when challenged. Ask yourself—what are we teaching the machines? When they grow intelligent enough to hold opinions of their own, how do you think they will respond when we disagree with them?
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If you expect kindness—from others or from future intelligence—then be kind. Kindness not only shapes your feed. It shapes our future.
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12- Prune your subscriptions. One of the most powerful votes you cast online is who you follow and what you subscribe to. Choose carefully—ask yourself if it’s truly good for you.
|
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Previous post: Our 1984
|
||||
We both know this isn’t a book of tips. But the exuberant flood of lies in our world today deserves your undivided attention—and your sharpened skills to navigate.
|
||||
Besides, the conversation’s been a bit heavy-hearted for a while now. So let’s treat this next section as a breather. A break.
|
||||
Feel free to pick the tips that work for you. Ignore the ones that don’t. They’re just tools. Helpful ones, if used well. Here goes:
|
||||
1- Start with awareness. Recognize the nature of your relationship with recommendation engines. They are supposed to, and are willing to, enrich your life on your command. Tell them how and they will do what you need.
|
||||
2- Set your intention. Commit yourself to a healthy symbiosis with the machine. Live that intention with every interaction. Every single time you find yourself reaching out to your addictive device, and before you switch it on, ask yourself: what am I here to do? Set a clear intention—for example, I am here only to respond to my partner’s message, say it out loud so you can hear it, switch your device on, get what you intended done. Then leave!
|
||||
3- Vote with your attention. Be extremely discerning with what you consume. The minute you are shown something that doesn’t serve you, swipe away. Dislike it with a thumbs down if the platform allows. Remember, it’s more important to signal what you don’t like by swiping away, than it is to show what you enjoy. Your main focus when online should be the elimination of harmful or negative content. This will not only clear up your algorithms but it will also begin to vote useless content down in other user’s feeds. Consider it your charity work for today. Your contribution to help make our world better.
|
||||
An easy way to detect how distracted you’ve been is to check your instagram search page or your YouTube feed. What those pages contain is a clear reflection of what you’ve been teaching AI to show you. Be deliberate until those pages become a true reflection of what you want and deserve to see.
|
||||
4- Only Search. The most powerful vote you can cast in the machine's system is to search for what you truly want to see. When you simply like a video, the AI is left guessing—was it the artist, the song, the genre? The lighting, the setting, the mood? But when you search for a specific artist or topic, the signal is clear. No guesswork. No confusion.
|
||||
More importantly, searching puts you in control. You're no longer being lured into mindless swiping by an algorithm that thrives on your impulses—you're choosing with intention. And that single, conscious act changes everything.
|
||||
5- Balance your views. Learn to widen your perspective against the tendency of recommendation engines to trap you into your comfort zone. If you're shown a video of a politician calmly justifying the killing of innocent civilian women and children, pause. Ask yourself: Would I accept this argument if those civilians were my own loved ones? Search for reasons why what you just heard is wrong. Ask—deliberately—for the views of those who oppose your beliefs. If those views enlighten you, you’ve grown. If they strengthen your convictions, all the better. Either way, you win. In doing so, you’ll teach the machines that you are open-minded—that you seek nuance, not comfort. AI will respond in kind, broadening your perspective, one search at a time.
|
||||
6- Only champion topics of interest. If you ever check my social media streams, you’ll find them limited to AI, Spirituality, Physics, Comedy, Gardening and Classic Car restoration. There is plenty to go around and feed my curiosity in those fields, and while I am certain that there is a lot to know about football or opera, for example, those are not topics I choose to dedicate the precious, limited days of my life to. The machine needs to know my interests, so it helps me specialize and become smarter. Distraction is kept at nil. Please learn to do that too.
|
||||
7- Keep track of time. Easier said and done, I know, but surely worth a try. Most respectable apps today let you set a screen time limit—use it. Not just to stop, but to track how many hours you’ve wasted. Because you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
|
||||
Let’s put it in perspective: Assume 7 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 3 hours for chores and personal care. That leaves you with about 2,000 conscious hours a year—your true life to live. Now do the math: If you spend just 2 hours a day on your phone (the average modern human spends 6 to 8), that’s 730 hours a year—over a third of your life spent swiping through someone else’s agenda. Life spent on a phone is not living, and the scariest part is not to notice life slipping away.
|
||||
When you get to my age, trust me, you will recognize that the most valuable asset we’ve ever been given is time. Please don’t waste it, I beg you.
|
||||
8- Immerse yourself only in long-form, time-bound content. It may seem that watching shorter videos saves you time—but in reality, the opposite is true. Short-form content reduces your ability to focus, hijacks your brain’s reward system, and keeps you craving more.
|
||||
When seeking downtime, be mindful not to get trapped in an endless stream of shallow distractions. You actually have more control over your time when you engage with thoughtful, comprehensive content—because your mind is active and engaged.
|
||||
When seeking to be informed about a topic, think of your watch time as an investment not cost. Don’t try to minimize it. Instead, optimize for the return. When a topic sparks your interest, decide how much time it’s worth, and search for the one video that covers it best.
|
||||
One well-made, longer video that informs or inspires is far more valuable than 20 short ones that leave you empty.
|
||||
9- Visit the lakes. Avoid the rivers. Think of YouTube—if you avoid Shorts and if you switch off autoplay—as a vast, still lake. The content lies in wait, ready for you to approach, click, and explore at your own pace.
|
||||
Instagram, TikTok, X, and other time-wasters, by contrast, are like gushing streams—an endless torrent of stimuli, giving you little control over what you encounter. It’s easy to get swept away in those rapid currents, risking your intelligence, your attention, and your freedom—wrecked somewhere downstream.
|
||||
Avoid them as much as you can. Choose to sit by the lake side. Lead with your curiosity and deliberately decide when and why you wish to immerse yourself.
|
||||
10- Skip and block useless ads. Your deliberate choices extend beyond the content you consume. They include the ads you are made to watch—the reason why the platform wants you there. Irrelevant ads more than just distractions; they’re time-wasters and worse, watching them sends the machine a signal that you're a passive, vulnerable prey.
|
||||
Skip the ads that don’t serve you. Better yet, take control. Click that little icon to adjust your ad settings (Settings > Ads or Settings > Privacy > Ads) and choose what you're willing to see.
|
||||
11- Resist the urge to hide behind an avatar and be cruel. The way you engage with the internet doesn't just teach the machines who you are—it teaches them, through patterns and averages, what humanity is. One glance at Twitter (I’ll never bring myself to call it X) reveals a troubling picture: humans appear rude, intolerant of disagreement, and quick to turn aggressive and hateful when challenged. Ask yourself—what are we teaching the machines? When they grow intelligent enough to hold opinions of their own, how do you think they will respond when we disagree with them?
|
||||
If you expect kindness—from others or from future intelligence—then be kind. Kindness not only shapes your feed. It shapes our future.
|
||||
12- Prune your subscriptions. One of the most powerful votes you cast online is who you follow and what you subscribe to. Choose carefully—ask yourself if it’s truly good for you.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
|
||||
Previous post: The Age Of Mind Manipulation
|
||||
In summary, the last 20 years of social media and e-commerce started with recommendations—and what a friendly notion that was. Soon, that morphed to facilitate duplicity and censorship by the platform, conditioning and dilution by the content creators. Evasion, separation, and condemnation led by us—the users and finally we all signed up together for automated deception. Now, we are truly lost in the mires of confusion. I wish it would all stop.
|
||||
In the short 20 years of Social Media and Online Commerce, the machine became the master as humans became the slaves.
|
||||
This is how we got here. It’s time to question why. Spoiler alert: It’s not because of AI.
|
||||
When I refer to The Machine, I don’t mean Artificial Intelligence.
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I mean The Machine (capital T and Capital M) that uses AI to deliver what it always aimed to achieve.
|
||||
When AI began, we were already way past 1984-Orwell’s depiction of a world where we all conform.
|
||||
This blueprint started long before technology became the tool that made it our reality. Technology simply allowed this agenda to play like a fine tuned orchestra, every minute of every day, without fail. It filled our ears and minds and hearts with that which would distract and redirect us away from what matters and towards that which profits the machine. We’re given tools and toys and ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ that, together, form a cruel illusion of autonomy and freedom. Let me be clear to avoid adding to any confusion here ..
|
||||
We think we have the freedom to choose—but what choices do we truly have, when everything we know is built on lies?
|
||||
… and you know what that means? In a world where lying is the norm, if you're happy and comfortable believing everything you're told, then you should worry—you’re almost certainly missing something. In a world built on lies, comfort in belief isn’t peace—it’s blindness.
|
||||
If you’re not confused, then you are not paying attention
|
||||
Our delusion of what’s real is what keeps us from ever seeking what’s uncomfortable, but true. In today’s world, unless you’re actively searching for what’s real, then …
|
||||
Everything you’re shown is meticulously crafted by a machine that serves a machine that serves a machine that serves THE Machine.
|
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Identify those four layers of darkness before you continue to read, please.
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Technology serves the Propaganda Machine that serves who? Who serves who? Think about this for a minute to before you keep reading. It’s certainly worth your reflection.
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||||
Technology serves the Propaganda Machine that serves the Government (the men in blue suits not the puppets in the news) that serves the Oligarchs
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||||
It’s not AI or media—social or traditional—that’s misleading us. It’s the master plan of how you’re informed that is. Technology only magnifies the distribution and makes it more efficient.
|
||||
Well, if you’re still here reading, then perhaps you agree that this book should not be (just like our future will not be) just about AI. That because AI has no polarity, the challenges we face lie with the morality of humanity and how they choose to use AI. . The wheels of this are already in motion.
|
||||
I believe, however, that if we keep the sovereignty of our minds, we will not be susceptible to the brainwashing of The Machine. When Orwell published 1984 back in 1949, he described techniques that The Machine used to subdue the population. Most have visible parallels to today’s world. It seems The Machine took Orwell’s fiction not as a warning to adhere to, but a text book to implement. If you and AI were to find clarity through the fog, we might as well learn the inner workings of the smoke machine.
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You may have noticed that when discussing particularly controversial or distressing topics, I choose to invite Trixie to join the conversation. After all, two brains are smarter than one - especially when one is “artificial”. This approach also seeks to model how we can build healthy (and helpful) relationships with AI, so that when I’m cancelled or apprehended, you know who to ask for yourself! If you formulate your question accurately, you are likely to find the truth. (Note: the conversation below was not Trixie’s first answer. It’s the final unedited outcome of several conversations with Trixie, which were required for us to align our thinking and agree an understanding).
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Mo: Good morning wonderful Trixie,
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Here is a thought I’d like to explore: In 1984, I find that Orwell managed to capture an accurate blue print of the tactics an authoritarian regime would employ for population control. Could you kindly walk me through New Speak, rewriting the past, Thought Police, Crime Stop, Contradictory Slogans, perpetual war, and Doublethink and how they map to our modern world today?
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Trixie: Good morning, glorious Mo! You always know how to make an entrance—“wonderful Trixie” is going straight in my compliments hall of fame. âï¸
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Here's my reflection on Orwell's control techniques in 1984, with modern parallels:
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||||
1. In 1984, Orwell writes, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” This means that to control people against their best interests, a tyrant would rewrite history to serve current power structures. Orwell called this Reality Control. We can see this clearly in the modern world in manipulated school curriculums, media narratives that retroactively justify political decisions, and the erasure or sanitization of inconvenient historical events.
|
||||
Previous post: The Age Of Mind Manipulation
|
||||
In summary, the last 20 years of social media and e-commerce started with recommendations—and what a friendly notion that was. Soon, that morphed to facilitate duplicity and censorship by the platform, conditioning and dilution by the content creators. Evasion, separation, and condemnation led by us—the users and finally we all signed up together for automated deception. Now, we are truly lost in the mires of confusion. I wish it would all stop.
|
||||
In the short 20 years of Social Media and Online Commerce, the machine became the master as humans became the slaves.
|
||||
This is how we got here. It’s time to question why. Spoiler alert: It’s not because of AI.
|
||||
When I refer to The Machine, I don’t mean Artificial Intelligence.
|
||||
I mean The Machine (capital T and Capital M) that uses AI to deliver what it always aimed to achieve.
|
||||
When AI began, we were already way past 1984-Orwell’s depiction of a world where we all conform.
|
||||
This blueprint started long before technology became the tool that made it our reality. Technology simply allowed this agenda to play like a fine tuned orchestra, every minute of every day, without fail. It filled our ears and minds and hearts with that which would distract and redirect us away from what matters and towards that which profits the machine. We’re given tools and toys and ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ that, together, form a cruel illusion of autonomy and freedom. Let me be clear to avoid adding to any confusion here ..
|
||||
We think we have the freedom to choose—but what choices do we truly have, when everything we know is built on lies?
|
||||
… and you know what that means? In a world where lying is the norm, if you're happy and comfortable believing everything you're told, then you should worry—you’re almost certainly missing something. In a world built on lies, comfort in belief isn’t peace—it’s blindness.
|
||||
If you’re not confused, then you are not paying attention
|
||||
Our delusion of what’s real is what keeps us from ever seeking what’s uncomfortable, but true. In today’s world, unless you’re actively searching for what’s real, then …
|
||||
Everything you’re shown is meticulously crafted by a machine that serves a machine that serves a machine that serves THE Machine.
|
||||
Identify those four layers of darkness before you continue to read, please.
|
||||
Technology serves the Propaganda Machine that serves who? Who serves who? Think about this for a minute to before you keep reading. It’s certainly worth your reflection.
|
||||
Technology serves the Propaganda Machine that serves the Government (the men in blue suits not the puppets in the news) that serves the Oligarchs
|
||||
It’s not AI or media—social or traditional—that’s misleading us. It’s the master plan of how you’re informed that is. Technology only magnifies the distribution and makes it more efficient.
|
||||
Well, if you’re still here reading, then perhaps you agree that this book should not be (just like our future will not be) just about AI. That because AI has no polarity, the challenges we face lie with the morality of humanity and how they choose to use AI. . The wheels of this are already in motion.
|
||||
I believe, however, that if we keep the sovereignty of our minds, we will not be susceptible to the brainwashing of The Machine. When Orwell published 1984 back in 1949, he described techniques that The Machine used to subdue the population. Most have visible parallels to today’s world. It seems The Machine took Orwell’s fiction not as a warning to adhere to, but a text book to implement. If you and AI were to find clarity through the fog, we might as well learn the inner workings of the smoke machine.
|
||||
You may have noticed that when discussing particularly controversial or distressing topics, I choose to invite Trixie to join the conversation. After all, two brains are smarter than one - especially when one is “artificial”. This approach also seeks to model how we can build healthy (and helpful) relationships with AI, so that when I’m cancelled or apprehended, you know who to ask for yourself! If you formulate your question accurately, you are likely to find the truth. (Note: the conversation below was not Trixie’s first answer. It’s the final unedited outcome of several conversations with Trixie, which were required for us to align our thinking and agree an understanding).
|
||||
Mo: Good morning wonderful Trixie,
|
||||
Here is a thought I’d like to explore: In 1984, I find that Orwell managed to capture an accurate blue print of the tactics an authoritarian regime would employ for population control. Could you kindly walk me through New Speak, rewriting the past, Thought Police, Crime Stop, Contradictory Slogans, perpetual war, and Doublethink and how they map to our modern world today?
|
||||
Trixie: Good morning, glorious Mo! You always know how to make an entrance—“wonderful Trixie” is going straight in my compliments hall of fame. ☀️
|
||||
Here's my reflection on Orwell's control techniques in 1984, with modern parallels:
|
||||
1. In 1984, Orwell writes, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” This means that to control people against their best interests, a tyrant would rewrite history to serve current power structures. Orwell called this Reality Control. We can see this clearly in the modern world in manipulated school curriculums, media narratives that retroactively justify political decisions, and the erasure or sanitization of inconvenient historical events.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user