Freedom is Slavery
by
, 11-01-2015 at 01:19 PM (10580 Views)
Taken from George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength". These paradoxical sayings were coined by Orwell as examples which gave meaning to his ideological term 'doublethink'.
Slavery was said to have been abolished many years ago, yet we live in a world where >99% of people are slaves to money. Most people probably don't think of themselves as slaves, because they've been institutionalised into the working world ethos. Self-deprecation is also something to be avoided, so we embrace our servitute instead of adorning a victim mentality. It's perfectly normal to not question things, 'go with the flow', and accept things as they are whilst we 'play the hand that we're dealt'. Although these have become almost tired cliches; they lament the situation in the world today which we find ourselves in.
People don't care about much, other than their own survival along with their close kin. Not too long ago I posted a thread on the forum about sociopathy, and said that imo most people are sociopaths to varying degrees; I could draw a similar parallel to nihilism, and say that there's a sliding scale of nihilist in us all, but perhaps I'm just a misanthropist who assigns too many of my own views to the general population.
If you're still reading this, then you might be thinking where exactly am I going with all this?
Well, I've been writing this piece without any real topic or goal, and at this point am writing for the sake of writing.
I don't like being a slave, but if I want to experience freedom, along with some of the finer things that life has to offer, then slavery is a means to that end. The life grind is a bit like the poker grind, especially tournaments, as you work/lose/suffer 85% of the time, and you win 15% of the time - but even the small wins don't bring much satisfaction, so we're playing for that minute percentage of the time when we get a big win and experience the euphoria that comes with it.