How like Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has our society become?

In George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the rulers of Oceania, the all-powerful Party, have three fundamental slogans: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Just how far have we, as a global society, gone along that path?

First: “War is peace.” Certainly there have been a lot of wars, whether civil or between countries, in the last twenty years or so with everyone claiming to have right on their side or to be the victim and just protecting their people from the aggressors. Think of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Add to that Northern Ireland, where despite the peace deal there are still outbreaks of sectarian violence and attacks on the police. Point proved, I think.

Second: “Freedom is slavery.” Our governments tell us we have liberty (and democracy) but what we can and cannot say in public is, at least in Britain, restricted rather a lot. Our e-mails, phone records and Web-browsing trails are easily available to the police and intelligence services (in the UK, also to local councils and many other surprisingly junior officials).

What about the electronic devices that were supposed to free us from the restrictions of fixed phone lines and the like, and so improve our lives? You only have to walk down a city street to see how many people are addicted to their smartphones. Also, we read about people, especially teenage boys, addicted to desktop, or laptop, computers.

Last, but not least: “Ignorance is strength.” In Britain at least, if you e-mail or write to a company or government organisation, often the reply will contain grammatical, spelling or punctuational mistakes. Books from the major publishers, such as Gollancz (eg, the original hardback edition of Nick Hornby’s “About a Boy”) or Penguin, have similar mistakes. In addition – or should that be “subtraction”? – the Guardian newspaper (and its sister paper The Observer) has to my certain knowledge misspelled the same simple word around five times a day seven days a week for at least the last two years. And my local newspaper recently wrote “Commuters were sat in queues” instead of “... sitting ...”.

All in all, it looks as though we’re living in a version of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, at least as defined by the Party’s slogans. Perhaps if he had lived longer (he was only in his mid-forties when he died), we could have avoided this.