Honsberger

George Orwell's 1984 Comparisons to the World Today
 * Similarities with America || Similarities with Other Countries ||
 * 1. Google Over Me || 1. Google Over Me ||
 * 2. FBI Surveillance || 2. Eyes in the Sky (UK) ||
 * 3. Child Spies || 3. Texting is Newspeak ||
 * 4. Their Hate is Our Riot || 4. Living in Britain ||
 * 5. Never Ending War || 5. North Korea Lies ||
 * 6. Texting is Newspeak || 6. North Korean Sweatshops ||
 * 7. Hand Writing Is Gone || 7. North Korean Electricity ||
 * 8. Press Lies || 8. Cuba Food Rationing ||
 * 9.Removal of Second Amendment || 9. Internet Censorship in China ||
 * 10. Martial Law || 10. Russia's Mind Controlling ||

Similarities With America

1. Google Over Me In recent news, it has been reported that Google can tell what sites you visit and even locate where you are at almost anytime. Not only can google tell what sites you visit but they can also recommend sites to you as well. This is relative to the book "1984" because telescreens and the secret police could note where you were or what you were doing or where you have been at almost any point in time. 2. FBI Surveillance The FBI can legally tap phones and hack into your email and read and listen to conversations that you and your friends have. They can hack into your personal life like this without your consent. The reason for this is the Patriot Act. This is America, the land of the FREE! So why are the rights and privacy that we have been given being suddenly stripped? In Oceania, the telescreens and secret police acted as the FBI. They snuck around and watched or listened to everyones life as well. 3. Child Spies In the book "1984", children were taught that their parents could not show them love and affection; if their parents were to do so, the children had to turn them in. In our society, we teach children to do that too. Obviously not to the extent of ratting out their parents, but when it comes to their peers, it's a whole new ball game. If your child is playing with their brother, sister, cousin, or whomever, and the person your child is playing with does something wrong, they are told to tell on them. We do that so we can teach the child that has done the wrong doing how to be good, but we're also pretty much telling our children to be traders just like the kids of Oceania. 4. Their Hate is Our Riot In "1984" there is the Two Minute Hate. We pretty much do the exact samething, it's called protesting. It's really big in DC, New York, California, really any big city. Protesting happens all the time and it can happen anywhere. Protesting is basically getting out your frustration and trying to get what you want, and you usually do it in front of cameras and people that matter, like the owners of the companies. The only difference between the Two Minutes Hate and protesting in America is that the Two Minute Hate is held in secret. In America, we are lucky enough to be able to protest our feelings when and where we want. Luckely this is not Oceania, yet anyway. 5. Never Ending War Both America and Oceania seem to always have a bone to pick with someone about something, In Oceania the party either has a bone to pick with their citizens not loving big brother, or with another country, if you can call them a country. America has fought in so many wars and battles, some of them, not even ours. We like to put our nose where it doesn't belong a lot of the time. Both the book and reality have that in common. 6. Texting is Newspeak "LOL Kim, I'll BRB!"-- An example of newspeak. This is because real words are becoming obsolete with our current times. In the book, newspeak dictionaries were written to avoid the use of words the party didn't want the citizens to know about. This relates to America's texting because we are changing and shortening our vocabulary by a lot. If we countinue to head down this path, who knows who long it will be before the entire English language is butchered and soon obsolete. 7. Handwriting is Gone In Oceania, Winston said that writing was basically obsolete, except for short notes. Writing had been taken over by these big things that sit on a desk, and people use them for writing instead. Well, look at us now. This is pretty much true. Even in our English class, we don't write. "It's a paperless class" - Tim Laird. We as a society don't really use a pen and paper anymore. It's all about technology. We use computers, phones, tablets, iPods in order to get things done. Orwell was right about a lot of aspects in this book and especially this one. 8. Press Lies We all know that just because the internet says it, doesn't mean it's true. Just because the National Inquire says it, doesn't mean it's true. The press lies and falsifies a lot of information that gets back to us. The people of Oceania went through the same thing, and Winston was a part of it. Winston worked at the Ministry of Truth where he would change information and even delete people out of their society. The party also kept a lot of stuff from their citizens. Now America experiences the same thing, just about. We don't really have things that are kept from us (that we know of) but the media does lie and do make things out to be way worse than what they are. 9. Removal of Second Amendment With all of the gun issues currently going on in our society, our president would like to allocate the removal of our right to bare arms. He wants to give background checks and a public list of all the people that own guns. Putting that out there would basically betray everything that is trusted in our system. Not that I agree with the gun violence, but I don't think our rights are something that should be tampered with. It's crazy to think that our country was found on freedom, but we apparently can't be free enough to go buy a gun even if it were going to be used for hunting. What if a stupid kid has a record becasue he did something stupid as a kid that perminantly went on his record and then after he grew up he cleaned up and then couldn't buy a gun for protection or even hunting. In Oceania, the people couldn't be free to do anything. They couldn't own a diary or 10. Martial Law Beings as President Obama didn't get his way with the gun rights act, he wants to call Marshal Law. Calling Marshal Law would give him jurisdiction to pretty much do whatever he would like about the gun laws and about whatever he wants really. The reason this is relevant is because the party in "1984" controlled everything as well, and look how Oceania turned out. If our president were to have complete control, we would lose all of our freedoms at some point, just like the people of Oceania.

Similarities with Other Countries

1. Google Over Me

Like I previously just discussed above, Google now has the power to watch over their users every move. While I already discussed this, I'm repeating myself in showing how common this is. How common it is for "big brother" to watch over you anywhere at all. Google is a telescreen, a secret spy and they watch over everyone. Google watches over the sites you visit and how often you visit them. Google looks at your email and other personal information, that's pretty much illegal and it's pretty big brotherish. 2. Eyes in the Sky (UK)

Recently in Europe, crime cameras have been installed throughout the streets. While this is a public area and technically wouldn't be illegal except for the fact that these cameras are not just looking for crime. These cameras have been installed to dig deeper inside the personal lives of the civilians of Europe. The cameras are so high tech that they can zoom in on a text from the street. That just shows that not even a personal text message is private. In the book, even Winstons diary was not private. He thought it was, just like the citizens of Europe thought their text messages were private. The government was secretly looking over their shoulders and looking through their personal lives. 3. Texting is Newspeak Like I previously talked about, words are becoming obsolete. Words are being replaced with acronyms such as "LOL, BRB, GTFO, GTL, DTF, and G2G." Soon dictionaries and languages won't even matter and whole words may or may not be existent Just like in the book, most words were left out or even just given a different meaning. Texting is world wide, and so are the use of acronyms, so this is not just America's problem. 4. Living in Britain The cost of living has risen at last 25% and makes the essentials, or even what people see as essentials, hard to come by. In the book the price of certain items, like razors, were raised so high that people didn't buy them much and just went without shaving. In Britain, jobs are boring, and low paid. Nobody likes working there, and I can't say that I would disagree. In the book, people were not exactly given the best working wages for the jobs that they did and they couldn't afford a lot of things, which is simaler to Britain. 5. North Korea Lying to their Citizens North Korea has been keeping things from their public. They (the Koreans) have limited internet time and they even censor a lot of things. Not only that, but the North Korean leader Kim Jung- Un also tells his followers things that aren't true just to get the people on his side. This is relevant because Oceanians were lied to by their leaders as well. Big Brother basically just censored out the lives of the people in Oceania. They lied to them/ kept things from them with newspeak and even the wars that were going on between Eurasia and Eastasia. From my understanding, North Korea is basically doing the same thing to a different extent. 6. North Korean Sweatshops In North Korea, Koreans are sent to a sweatshop in a little town outside of Russia. There, the people work in poor working conditions, low wages, and an all around rough life. Woman and children are valued workers in this part of the society. The Koreans are threatened with their families lives in order to stay there. By this I mean that if the Koreans run away from the sweatshop, their family will be murdered. The people of Korea that get sent to work in these sweatshops are not given the chance to choose a job, and neither were the people of Oceania, which is the common bond in this example. 7. North Korea's Electricity In Oceania, the people were living deprived lives. They had curfews and strict rules they had to abide by, so do the people of North Korea. It's crazy to think of how relative a book from so long ago is to our current time, but it is so true. The more and more I write, the more and more I establish a common ground. While Oceanians had a curfew, so does North Korea, kind of. They don't have so much of a curfew as a specific time that their lights go out. When the lights go out, the people of North Korea know that they should be inside, so there kind of is a curfew. In a way, it's kind of like there is a bed time too. When the lights are automatically shut off, at the same time every night, it's kind of like saying, okay go to bed, see you in the mornig. No matter if the government is trying to conserve energy or not, people should be able to choose when they go inside, and when their lights get turned out for the night. 8. Cuba's Food Rationing Those poor people. They hardly get food. In Oregon, Ohio there is a thing called Food For Thought. There, there is a pantry which lets people go in and shop, but their food is rationed. They have a limit on what they can have and how much of it they can have. Right now in Cuba, it's the same thing. They are rationing the food of their people to conserve it, but I don't find that fair. I think if people are that offended by this though, they should just grow their own food. It would make more sense and then they could eat what they want and however much of it they wanted. In Oceania, they people had rations of everything. Certain things were hard to come by and it's the same thing in Cuba. In Oceania the party limited razor blades and that made it hard to come by, just like the food in Cuba. 9. Internet Censorship in China Currently in China, the government is censoring the websites that their citizens can go on. It's the only way to ensure they won't look up things they shouldn't or be influenced by things that the Chineese government doesn't want them to now about. Does this sound farmiliar? I think so! In Oceania, the newspeak dictionaries were made with new words so that the public wouldn't know certain words, like rebel or revolt. It's relativly the same thing to an extent. The only difference is that the Chineese government doesn't want the public to know what is going on worldly, kind of like North Korea. 10. Russia's Mind Controlling Have you seen the movie "The Manchurian Candidate?" If you have then you have a concept of mind controlling. In Russia, mind controlling is their specialty. So far they are just experimenting, but it's getting to be more serious. We aren't viewing this as a trheat right now, but one day it could be pretty bad. The way that they work their mind conrtolling, is they send their subject to a circular room with a chair similar to a dentist chair and the room has no windows. After their subject arrives, they begin an electro-shock theropy type ordeal. This is similar to "1984" because in the book the party brainwashes the Oceanians to believe that big brother is the best and that they are all mighty. At the end of the book, O'Brian also tortured Winston in the same type of room and in the same kind of way.

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