Jean-Jacques Rousseau must be weeping in his grave. The Frenchman once fantasized that man is born free and that the Social Contract was a sublime pact to safeguard popular sovereignty. How utterly amusing. Rousseau forgot that in the hands of the power-hungry, the people are merely statistical cattle needing only to be fed sweet promises to remain docile.

It was George Orwell, through his masterpiece 1984, who truly held the mirror to our faces. He was not writing fiction but rather drafting an operational manual for modern oligarchs. Fiction was merely the cover.

While Rousseau viewed humanity as the pure Noble Savage, our rulers subscribe to a far more pragmatic anthropology where man is flawed and ignorant. Therefore, man must be molded.

Today’s power has outgrown the dark-age method of burning books. Instead, they simply employ a modernized version of Newspeak. Why bother using the phrase Price Hike when we can smoothly pivot to Adjustment? Why say Eviction when Spatial Realignment sounds so much more aesthetically pleasing to an investor's ear?

This is the miracle of our political lexicon. Words function to conceal reality rather than to clarify it. We are being coerced into becoming masters of Doublethink, capable of genuinely believing that we are practicing democracy even as monumental decisions are brokered in dark rooms by a handful of elites whose names never change.

Orwell noted that the Proles would remain complacent as long as they had beer, gambling, and cheap entertainment. In Indonesia, we possess a much more sophisticated variant in the form of social assistance handouts and viral gimmicks.

We are living witnesses to the politics of Bread and Circuses. While suffocating policies are ratified under the cover of midnight, the public is spoon-fed the dramatic theater of celebrity politicians on TikTok or hollow, substance-free debates. We busily squabble over who is the most Indonesian while our natural wealth is stripped bare by those sitting atop the pyramid of the local Ingsoc.

The elites know this truth all too well because a populace that is both fed and entertained will easily forget the clauses of the law. For them, our ignorance is the primary fuel for political stability. Ignorance is Strength.

He who controls the present controls the past.

Do not be surprised if our historical narratives constantly shift. The hero of today is the villain of tomorrow morning, depending entirely on who holds the official stamp of authority. We are being subjected to a forced collective amnesia. Without an honest historical memory, we lose the yardstick of comparison. We will continue to feel just fine because we are blind to the true freedom we once possessed.

Ultimately, the end goal of power is power itself, and public welfare is merely a footnote. They wish to drive us to the point where we will willingly declare that two plus two equals five, provided it drops from the mouth of Big Brother.

If you find this piece overly cynical, perhaps you have spent far too long inhaling the fumes of Doublethink. The only freedom left to us today is the freedom to remain sane inside a system that demands our madness.

So, have you loved Big Brother today?

Book Review Reference

This essay serves as a commentary on the following work

• Title: 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

• Author: George Orwell

• Year of Publication: 1949

• Genre: Dystopian and Political Fiction

Journalist; Hafizha Ar-rahmah

Editor: Aissah Nindy Putri Krisdianto