2084 The Reawakening
Entry 3 & 4
In 2084 all is peace and harmony. Dissent is a forgotten relic of the past. But can new ideas and individual thought be permanently suppressed? Should they be?
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[Link to the beginning: Entires 1 & 2]
Narration of Entires 3 & 4 here. Or scroll down for text.
Was Geroge Orwell right?
“Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such Liberty.”
Richard Lovelace (To Althea, From Prison)—1642
“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky— ca 1860
“I know why the caged bird sings.”
Paul Laurence Dunbar (Sympathy)—1899
“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.”
The Eagles (Hotel California)—1977
“I understand better now than when I first read that poem. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make.’ The real prison is in our mind. We can escape. No matter how physically constrained we are, we can escape the ultimate prison, our own minds.”
Anonymous—2084
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2084 The Reawakening
Entry Three
It’s been a while since my last entry. I had no choice but to charge the old man, with a recommendation of Cancellation. I tried to express my condolences, but I couldn’t be direct. People would suspect that I am sympathetic to him, which would be contrary to The System. But I got my point across to him. And the odd thing is, he seemed entirely at peace. People are anxious about mere Reeducation, yet the old man seemed entirely at peace with going to Cancellation! He was headed to the courtroom for whatever would follow. In Cancellation cases, the Cancellation Court is entirely closed. Even the prosecutor is prohibited. The evidence and the reports are in the court’s hands, they don’t need us to press the case.
In spite of knowing better, I shook the old man’s hand and wished him well as he was led out of my office.
He smiled. “I’ve never been more at peace with myself. They have my body, but my mind is my own.”
That old man stays with me in my memory. I try to reconcile his views with the views I know I’m supposed to hold. They clash. They clash, and I can’t convince myself that he is wrong and that The System is right. I can’t seem to find the answer in the present, so I look to the past. I’ve been spending more and more time with these old books. With no library, I just find what books I can, wherever I can, mostly in the District. It’s hard to pursue any particular subject, given that I find the books randomly. But I am learning more about our past. I read a passage a month or two ago that said something like “Stone walls and iron bars don’t make a prison.” That seemed odd to me, but now, with the old man, I think I understand. What would I do to preserve the freedom of my mind? Preserve? Do I even have freedom of my mind? My beliefs, are they mine? Where do they come from? My beliefs are nearly identical to everyone else’s. Are they truth? Or are they merely the collective result of the process of The System?
Something happens, when you begin to question. You pay more attention. You notice things. You consider contrary possibilities. As I went around the usual business at the Ministry, I became aware of subtle differences in the behavior of some of my Compatriots. You would not believe how subtle. A person who was not watching for them would not notice them, but they are there, if you are aware.
There was one person in particular who got my attention, and I got theirs. I’ll call him Ted. It was offhand talk at first. Little jokes that could be taken as meaningless if overheard, but meaningful to ourselves.
It was evident that Ted wanted to talk seriously to me as much as I wanted to talk to him, but it’s not so easy to do. So, we did nothing for a long time. I think it was nearly a year. But over time, with innocuous comments, we have communicated a lot to each other without anyone suspecting. At least we hope so.
We both doubt that The System works as flawlessly as they claim. We have thoughts that contradict the official Thoughts, and feel that our thoughts are better, more genuine, than the official ones. We have been able to communicate this right under the noses of the people around us. It takes only a little nuance to say things between the lines, that others do not hear.
But it all seems so stupid. We are all worried about how we might appear to others. We all clamor to conform, not stand out. To stand out is to raise suspicion. To raise suspicion never goes well.
I’ve had a thought about liberty. I realize now that liberty is not the same as freedom. Liberty is something that governments give and take away. Freedom is in the mind. It is in the heart. It cannot be taken from us by governments, if we will not give it up.
The old man and his unlicensed flowerpots brought this all into focus. If I am found out, if The System finds me expressing my own thoughts, even here on this laptop in private, I could lose my liberty for life. But I am finally free now, and always will be, regardless. You don’t know how it feels, until you have experienced it! No Influencer has the power to displace my thoughts and imagination with their own. The Central Planning Committee controls my body, but not my mind.
It took some looking, but I found that poem I had been thinking of, about stone walls not making a prison. It’s by a man named Richard Lovelace, who lived centuries ago. The last stanza says:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
The strange thing is that, from what I can tell about Richard Lovelace, I disagree with him about much of what he thought. But the poem still speaks to me, in my situation, centuries later. Richard Lovelace and I are different, and separated by centuries, yet we have this poem in common.
When you have lived a certain way, when everyone you know has done the same, when your leaders watch over you and incessantly impress upon you a certain way of thinking, you are bound to come to believe that it is the only way of thinking. It’s comfortable believing that, but I’m seeing that it’s not true. I’d rather know uncomfortable truth.
We are all scared. We are afraid of anything that disrupts our uncontested sense of tranquility. I think I get it, now. That is why we are all afraid to hear a contrary opinion, a questioning of Official Thoughts. We can’t handle it. We can’t handle the confusion. We would have to make choices, endlessly sorting out conflicting ideas. I am coming to cherish that. But others fear that freedom. They enclose themselves in the comfort and security of accepted beliefs. They are so afraid of, and feel so threatened by unique thoughts, that they will arrest and prosecute people for having them.
I think, even, that people fear their own selves, their own tendency to question. For Riley to accept even the slightest questioning of The System, from me or from anyone, would make them feel weak, penetrable. I see now, tolerance of other ideas is strength, not weakness. Riley cannot tolerate other ideas, because their own are so weak.
I understand better now than when I first read that poem. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make.’ The real prison is in our mind. We can escape. No matter how physically constrained we are, we can escape the ultimate prison, our own minds.
Entry Four
Now there are three of us! That third person, I’ll call Mary, got the hang of our communication. They could be spying, but I don’t think so. I keep a healthy suspicion to look for signs of phony support, but I see nothing but genuineness. A person can fake just about anything, but it’s difficult to fake genuineness. My time as an Investigator, and now a Prosecutor, has taught me to be discerning in that regard. Having said this, I realize how many other Prosecutors just do their job. Convictions, compliance, are their goals. They don’t care how genuine anyone is. There is no genuineness in themselves.
This conspiracy of three makes me much more aware. I’m more aware of facial expressions, of looks. Little hand gestures mean more than you realize. The Thought Leaders make everything about words. But the meaning of those words is often ill-defined, and there is no nuance. Shades of meaning are lost to them
I can say the correct words, but communicate something quite different from what the words say. I’ve found that, with just a little nuance, I can say, “The Thought Leaders did exceptionally well this time”, and my compatriots know I am saying they screwed up. It also helps that those around us would never even consider the possibility of the Thought Leaders screwing up, or of anyone suggesting such a thing. So a statement dripping with sarcasm gets right past them.
Still, what now? In my heart, I know I can’t let it stay like this. As I get older, I want to know more, comprehend more, meet people with different ideas. Discuss them openly. I have thoughts now, that I should do something. But what? It invigorates me to not just go along, yet I can’t speak out. We can’t speak out.
Frankly, I’m angry. Perhaps it’s not for me to decide, but I am deciding. We must change this; change the way it’s been for so long. I don’t want the violence, even wars, that there were when people could disagree. But I can’t accept the way it is.
If there were a larger number of us, we could make up a believable reason to meet by ourselves. The Thought Police presume that there aren’t enough people to form a group of conspirators or that they could keep the secret among themselves. So they primarily only watch out for two or three people meeting privately, saying inappropriate things, and nip their conspiracies in the bud. For all I know, they’re right. But, right here in this one office, there’s three of us. And there are a lot of offices. And there may be more of us, right here in this office. The trick is to find a way to connect with whoever else there is, without raising suspicion. It’s a tough choice; accept what I have now, which isn’t all that bad, or attempt much more, and possibly lose it all. Lose it all? Lose my liberty, only
I’ve had this crazy thought: What if finding these heretics was my job? Crazy thought!!! But what if, in an effort to quell dissent, I was the agent for purging the dissenters? That’s not so very different from what I do now. After all, I am a Prosecutor.
But what I do now concerns isolated incidences. What if there were a conspiracy? Then there would have to be a concerted effort to weed them out before they could become pervasive. They used to have a Bureau of Subversion Control that did exactly that. And they had special courts specifically to arrest and convict anyone who was guilty of collusion. I didn’t have to go find this information, they taught it to us in school. One of the main points of our Educational System is to teach the success of the Thought System in overcoming the radicals and extremists. It had succeeded so long ago, that it is just boring history now, not a vivid reality.
But what if there was a resurgence of conspirators?! What if a need was found to reestablish inquiries into that resurgence? What if I lead it? It is absurd on the face of it, but why not? If I could lead an agency assigned to find these ‘heretics’, I could seek them out with impunity! Clearly the downside is, how would I make allies of these people, rather than prisoners? And what good would it all do, anyway? In the end, am I chasing a foolish possibility that could yield nothing? Or, worse than nothing?
It comes down to this. I have nothing to lose. My life is not terrible. I am not suffering, at least not physically. I have the life that all the Middle Class enjoys, and you could not want more. That is, unless you want to live a life of freedom without being arrested and assigned to Reeducation.
That’s a funny term, “Reeducation”. Admit that having your own thoughts is a crime. Promise to never do it again, and you might get off with little punishment. I remember vaguely about something that happened many years ago, in which people were imprisoned for committing seditious conspiracy. They had done nothing physically; they had only talked about it. I used to accept that as being proper; not anymore.
No, nothing to lose. But what can I hope to gain? All these questions. All this thinking. Frankly, I find it exhilarating. If nothing at all comes of it, if I end up in Reeducation, it’s all worth it. The freedom to think. I will never give that up, no matter what they do.
But wait! The old man refused Reeducation. I had no choice but to have him Cancelled. Am I prepared for that in my own case? I really don’t know. There’s one way to find out.
So, think I must. How can I get the Central Planning Committee to reinstate the Bureau of Subversion Control? How can I get them to put me at the head of it? How can I control the situation to the extent of finding the people I’m looking for, organizing them, and achieving something useful, without being found out for what I am?
Every bit of that is absurd! But it excites me in a way that I have never been excited. What if I could talk almost directly, in public, to the people I was seeking, but not be found out? Very absurd!
But advertisers do much the same. They sell products based not so much on the merits of the product, but on how a person perceives themself in using that product. That’s how they sell cars. They don’t advertise the car’s features, they promote how good you’ll feel about yourself if you buy one.
I remember an advertising expression that I found in an old book, “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” What if I could sell the sizzle to the Central Planning Committee, while having them pay no attention to the steak? Get them to concern themselves only with the perception that the System isn’t in full control, and leave out facts and specifics. The Thought Leaders do essentially the same thing themselves. They get buy-in from the populace by selling them the idea of peace and happiness. But what is the product, really? I see now, that to achieve this sense of peace and harmony, the Thought Leaders have enforced conformity, a little at a time, and erased any sense of individuality. And the people don’t even realize it has happened.
I want to reverse that. I think of my Bestie. Would Riley ever be willing to question the Thought Leaders, and develop independent thoughts? Or consider MY thoughts? I’m going to try to find out. Most of what I used to believe, the trust in The System, is now suspect. I can’t keep this within me and just live with it. It’s eating me up. I can’t go back, but I’m not sure of the way forward. I want to have an airtight plan, but I doubt that is possible.
Still, I am developing a plan. I have come to see that The System is capricious, that it acts just for the sake of appearing significant, with little regard for effectiveness or fairness. The System exists to maintain control, not administer justice. If I could control, or at least influence, who it is that gets reported for sedition, could I not manipulate The System in ways of my own choosing? No, I can’t plan this precisely, but if I can keep enough control of the situation, and if others aren’t watching too critically, I think I might be able to locate more compatriots, all under the nose of The System!
I am going to test The System, make it respond to me instead of me respond to it. My compatriots and I have alluded to this idea previously, but have not yet acted on it.
That will now change. I’ve made my two compartiots understand that they should express concern to me about a seditious person they know, and to ask what they should do about it. That is something we can address in the open. We even involved some of the others in the office, who are only too willing to weigh in on how to approach such a serious matter.
I formed an ad hoc meeting in the conference room. We had been there to discuss performance reviews, but as the meeting was beginning to break up, I mentioned, off the record, that Ted had an issue with someone in data assessment.
That caught people’s attention. What did he know?
“That’s the thing,“ said Ted. “I can’t be sure. But they’ve made some strange statements. Maybe they were having a bad day, but I heard them say that The System wasn’t adequately meeting needs, and that the Thought Leaders didn’t care as much as people think they do. And once when I walked into their office unexpectedly, they were on the phone, and it seemed that they quickly changed the tone of the conversation when they saw me. I think they had been discussing something subversive.”
“Well, who are we talking about?” asked Cindy.
“I’d rather not say. They seem suspicious. I sense seditionist sentiment, but I can’t know for sure. I wouldn’t want to implicate an innocent person.”
“Certainly not,“ Larry responded. “But we can’t just do nothing. That’s how these things get out of hand.”
“Damn right”, added Marchon. “Nip these things in the bud. Whoever you’re talking about, we’d be doing them a favor, stopping them before it goes any farther.”
Cindy agreed. “We can’t afford to let things slide. Subversion, by its nature, happens right under our noses, under the noses of those who aren’t vigilant. We can’t let this pass.”
I had been only an observer. Ted had made an innocuous statement, yet people were already eager to find this alleged subversive and bring them to justice. I would have liked for even one person to caution about jumping to conclusions. It didn’t happen.
Still, the opportunity was ripe. I offered, “Perhaps the person should be monitored more closely to see if they reveal themselves in any way.”
There was immediate acceptance of the idea. But what would monitoring consist of? Who would do it?
“I’m the senior member of this group, so maybe I should see to this,“ I said. “I can go to Lorna to get authorization.”
“That’s probably best,” said Karen. The others seemed satisfied also.
I had no idea what ‘authorization’ I would be seeking, and nobody asked. But I went to Lorna and told her of our conversation in the conference room. She wanted to know what individual we were talking about. I had had the plain good sense to not bring Ted with me. I didn’t know who Ted was suspicious of, I told her. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, but with me as the authorized investigator, he would tell me without reservation.
So, I became the authorized investigator. Lorna deputized me, a perfunctory procedure for Prosecutors, giving me police power to make arrests.
Now, all we needed was a suspect! We need someone that we can accuse of participating in a conspiracy and who people would believe was actually guilty. It needed to be someone that people didn’t particularly like and wouldn’t defend. It would have to be someone that would not be believed, when they denied the accusations. I wanted to see if The System protected an innocent person from spurious accusations.
We had some good choices for a ‘suspect’. But then I had an inspiration. Rather than choose a ‘suspect’ ourselves, let the others do it. So, we told our office mates that while we couldn’t reveal the identity of the suspect at this time, we were watching them closely, and they would be the first to know, when the time came. I suspected that, over time, the group would determine a ‘suspect’ on their own, even when there was no suspect.
I wanted to discover that I was wrong, but I wasn’t. There was too much insecurity, too much fragility in their psyche. The finger-pointing commenced immediately. I could see that evidence was irrelevant. The social leaders of the group, over a little time, developed a mythology concerning one person, and then ‘discovered’ and ‘recalled’ damning evidence and statements attributed to her. Some of the others bought in, having their own ‘recollections’ and ‘damning evidence’. Others simply stayed out of the way as this developed.