IGNORANCE IS POWER: this means that if people, the population aren’t aware of what the government’s purposes in the things they do, the better off the people are. Also the better and more affective the governments control over the population will be. “There have been three types of people in the world, the high, the middle and the low. They have been subdivided in many ways; they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have had varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered” (pg.184). Emmanuel Goldstein wrote this in the theory and practice of oligarchical collection. In our society today we also have the three types of people relating to this quote. In the book there is the inner, outer party and the proles. They do what the government says; go by what they are told to do. In our society we have the upper, middle and lower class. No matter what class you are in, you know as much as any other person in the population about the government does. WAR IS PEACE: this means that in order to achieve peace you need to be at war. There is more peace within a nation that is at war with an outside enemy. War is the only way and continuing way to receive peace. Nations at war begin to feel more together and more loyal towards the government. Also so that the stability of the country stays. Countries start making allies to achieve more and gain more resources from war. In the book 1984 there were three major powers, Eurasia, eastasia and oceania. Two of the three were all allied against the third.
“In one combination or another, these three super states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years…it is warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference.”(pg.186)
Society relates to “war is peace” and the quote because still today a lot of nations are fighting over “peace”. Thousands of troops are in Iraq fighting over terror and peace now. When the twin towers occurred for a few weeks our nation became more patriotic. Some people think that there is no point in sending the troops to fight, just simply no reason for war but the government wants it.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Means when people have all the freedom they want, to think and do it might affect against the government. If someone doesn’t like what the government is doing then they can get others to oppose against the government. So by limiting freedom and giving people a different view of it allows the government to have more control over what the people do. That is exactly what the government is trying to do in the book 1984.
“…he [Winston] knew now that for seven years the thought police had watched him like a beetle under a magnifying glass. There was no physical act, no word spoken aloud, that they had not noticed, no train of thought that they have not been able to infer…yhey had played sound tracks of him, shown him photographs..”(page 276)
Everyone including Winston has been watched by the government. In the book nobody has any privacy and freedom is limited. People can only have sex in order to reproduce not for pleasure. In our society freedom is slavery occurs in various ways. For example when inmates get out of jail they become restricted to freedom that others may have. They lose certain privileges that we have in our natural rights like to vote. It becomes harder to get a job and the crime is stuck with the felon their whole life. Another example would be the government can tap into a person’s phone anytime of the day and listen into a conversation. Also if someone says something threatening it can lead to them going to jail.