1984: totalitarianism

1984, George Orwell Totalitarianism is a word that has many definitions that are true to their own time and their own society. One of the most common definitions used world wide is very complex, but very understandable when you are done reading the book 1984 by George Orwell. Totalitarianism is a system of government and ideology in which all social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural and spiritual activities are subordinated to the purpose of the rules of the rulers of a state. Several important features distinguish totalitarianism, a form of autocracy peculiar to the 20th century, from suck order forms as despotism, absolutism, and tyranny. In the older forms of totalitarianism, people could work and live on their own as long as they didn’t try to enter the political state of the society in any way. In the newer forms of totalitarianism, the people of the society are dependent on other people that are higher then them in every thing they do in everyday life. In Oceania, the world or society in the book 1984, the life of the state was very different from everything that we are used to in everyday life in this time. In Oceania the state life was all by a man that they called ” Big Brother” that everyone worked for, lived for, and did all of their everyday things just to make him happy. The sate would say just what and when they could do. In the form of the society, the people really didn’t get to live in any true type of society. They weren’t a loud to talk to others about what was Knight 2 really on their minds, they couldn’t thing about the past or what is really the history, and they couldn’t have any kind of love life or sexual activity with anyone. In the form of daily life, the people had to go to work and do whatever the ” Big Brother” said they had to do. In many instances they had to go around and change the newspapers so that the true history of the world wouldn’t be revealed to anyone but the top people of the society. No personal life was a loud to take place. The thought police had to know and did know everything that the people did or even thought of doing. Oceania compares to the totalitarian state of the 20th century very well. They have several thins in common. For many of the societies the main goal of the government was to get the people to forget the past, and for all normal people to be known as equal. They have their jobs mapped out for them, and they will do, without any problems, whatever their boss says, and they will just try to get the normal people to forget about what life could be like instead of what life is really like. If Maoism would have become full blown in the first half of the 20th century, I really believe that it would have been very comparable to the society of Oceania. For example, Mao tried to get rid of all traces of history by having his Red Guard Group go around and destroy all books, unless they went outside the town of Oceania. If anyone went outside the town and tried to get anything from the past they would be punished. No one in the society of Oceania could talk bad of the ” Big Brother” or else they would be put to death or punished very harshly. In Mao’s time, he gave authors one time to Knight 3 write anything they wanted to, with the promise of no punishment, and if he found out that anyone wrote anything bad about him, he had them put to death. When looking at the differences in Maoism and Oceania, I think it is not the right thing to do. In my eyes, I really think that the society of Mao would have turned into the exact society of Oceania if only Mao would have had the time to perfect his society. This makes me very happy that Mao never had the time to develop his society based around the book 1984, Wich appears to be proven but its not that Mao had read, and I believe he had tried to base his entire society around his book.