"If Reality is Internal, Who are you and I": An essay of the ideas based in 1984 by George Orwell

Essay by LtGGetSmArTHigh School, 11th gradeA-, January 2009

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If Reality is Internal, Who are You to Me?

It is a fact that reality is all in our heads. The book "1984" perfectly displays the idea that reality, as we see it, is actually virtual. The only facts of history we can prove is what we have physically seen and stored in our memory. But even these thoughts and memories can be modified and molded if influenced by an outside opinion. If someone slightly remembers an idea from their past; an outside person, or another reality, can change the first person's reality. Creating a new reality that both agree on. Who is to say that 150 years ago a group of humans weren't brought here from another planet and their entire history made up. Then the group of humans' thoughts were embedded into their heads through torture and teaching until they actually believed it to be true. The relevance of being 150 years ago is that there is no physical evidence because no human can live that long.

Although there are documents and fossils and objects left behind, but who is to say they were not made up. We weren't there to see this happen and place it into our reality. This book puts great perspective on the minds of men; How easily they can be warped, How easy they can be changed, and how willingly they will learn and believe in something if taught in the right way. Winston eventually went against his hardcore radical hatred of Big Brother and was taught to love Big Brother, and eventually did come to love Big Brother.

"It is impossible to see reality except looking through the eyes of the Party." (Orwell 249) O'Brien is trying to teach Winston that what the government, or Big Brother, wants the Party to believe the Party will believe. This can happen because everyone is so scared of true reality that they do not even think to object or to express their memories in their head. In the book, O'Brien asked Winston who Oceania was at war with. He replied with something like we were at war with Eastasia and we were allied with Eurasia and this is the way the Party says it has always been. But Winston remembers in his own memory that it had been the opposite four years ago. Everyone must know this in the book, but no one cares who they are at war with just as long as they are at war and can feel hatred toward something. The point is that whatever reality Big Brother wants the Party to see, they will see. The few non-believers cannot back their claims up because Big Brother changes the written documented history, so the majority of the Party thinks it only happened in these lunatics' heads. They are taught from young ages to basically not think. They are erasing words from the language which limits thought and the ability to express oneself. They are taught to love and worship Big Brother, and are taught by being rewarded in being normal. The kids want to be rewarded and therefore learn and are therein brainwashed.

Society today is not so much different than the government of Big Brother. In a different perspective Big Brother is, in essence, the parents. They teach their offspring by rewarding good behavior and scolding bad behavior making it almost natural instinct for the child to be normal. When all the parents teach their children in this way and all believe in this way of raising their child, the kids are all conformed and appear uniformed. The few people that do not conform and do not get brainwashed are generally the ones who grow up in a non-traditional household. They are usually neglected, assaulted, abused, or not treated like the others. These people make up the outcasts of society and are shunned from the others. The children want to be normal and to be accepted, and therefore, conform and the pattern is done over and over again. The parents are like Big Brother in the fact that they teach the kids everything, and therefore can control what the kids think the past is and can change what the children's reality is.

"The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms." (Orwell 253) If Winston never existed in the first place, how could he die believing in a cause to give others hope? His friends and family do not have proof of his existence so, therefore, he never existed. It was all a dream. This relates back to the ancient saying, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Technically it doesn't, it makes vibrations that pass through the particles in the air. It only becomes a sound when it vibrates the particles against our ear drums which translates the vibrations into a sound in our head, our reality. But if Winston did not exist in paper, who is to say he really existed? He can die with his beliefs and hatred in Big Brother, but who cares, he didn't exist.

Who is to say that what people have learned in history class is true? How can we believe history text books when we were not physically there to see the writing of it and to agree with what was being written? It could be some fictional book written by some lunatic like Winston. The most intriguing thing of all is that when a person reads this book or maybe this essay, they think, "Wow! That is so true." Then they do not even think anything more of it and move on and forget about it. This concept is almost scary to think about. The person who reads this essay might think, wow, what is the point of life, school, religion, history, other people, or anything. It is about natural instincts like living, breathing, eating, reproducing, and finally dying.

The point of life is to leave behind a legacy that you would want remembered. But who really cares about this if it cannot be proven that it is really true. This breaks life down into a very simple thing: Reproducing and Deceasing. Things like religion, love, and personal possessions will mean nothing when we are gone, but they give a meaning to life and to keep going and to make it easier. Life is all about pleasures and doing what is pleasurable for oneself. It is crazy to think that the writer of this essay can sit here and think and say these things, then the next day go back to the conformist way and to seem to forget that reality is internal. But believe it, he strongly believes in this concept, but chooses not to think about it because it is way too confusing and above the heads of men to grasp.

Therefore, the animals and wildlife grasp this idea very easily. They live on natural instincts and their goal in life is to reproduce. They probably don't even know why. The animals are the lucky ones, because they do not have the mental capacity to think about life and the meaning of it besides reproducing and dying. The people of the Party and the people of the world today basically fit into this category. They do not even try to comprehend life. It's not their fault. They just can't express free thought in their simple brains. In the book, their one goal is to live and worship Big Brother. In life today, the people of the world want to worship their god and in all cases they do this with blind faith, with no proof of this external thing being true. They want to please their god so that they may go to heaven or nirvana or wherever. Who is to even say there is anything after the last beat of the heart?

Reality is all internal but yet external, in the fact that everything is related to something in some way. All of the people of ancient times had the same internal reality to turn it into an external reality, or a document, which was then converted back into internal reality in the heads of the students at school. Life and reality are connected, but they are still internal.