On the Eve of Our Birth

A Tribute

At the stroke of midnight in 1984, the first of my peers were born.
At the stroke of midnight tonight, in 2024, the first of us will turn 40.

This feels like a bell toll in celebration of a generation that straddled analog and digital, that knew what it was like to both wander alone and use GPS to get home. We, the children of 1984, were at the cusp of change and uniquely shaped by it.

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1984 by George Orwell is a seminal work in the dystopia genre where Big Brother sees all. The protagonist nonetheless launches a quiet rebellion in the pages of a small notebook he keeps hidden.

The first two chapters are heavy with messaging regarding the state of the world. Each line can be carefully examined and teased out for meaning with relevance to today. The work is timeless in its setup of the stakes Winston takes in being a bold, hesitantly expressive person, but also his regard for the consequences which he freely accepts.

The snapshots of his life and family are lost to the wreckage of war. He could not be sure what was remembrance or conjuring and whole swaths of his experience are erased. With no reference to the time preserved, there was nothing to anchor one’s memories and so they floated off and out of your head.

We throw around the concept of Big Brother, but there are many more facets to the system than continued surveillance or even training people to believe they are being surveilled at all time even if they are not. The very core intentions of the system are to:

• make you doubt your recollection of the past

• control information and alter documentation of the past

• provide an object of scrutiny and hate to specifically train citizens to viscerally react

• convince the populous that they are predictors of the future and therefore reliable sources of information (only sources)

• indoctrinate children so that parents fear their ruthlessness and dare not oppose the system

• keep the populous hypervigilant both in detecting dissent in others and themselves (self-policing)

• control the lengths to which people can reason for themselves

It’s easy to call an institution Big Brother without having a thorough understanding of the depth to which it traps and controls citizens in every aspect of life. There is not a single entity that is entirely Big Brother, but the pillars are created every day.

Every part of the book is weighted with some facet of life that is orchestrated for the purpose of distraction. I think about it whenever big lotto jackpots swell to hundreds of millions. Someone always wins in a far off place. In 1984, there is never a winner but the promise of instant wealth not only ensure participation but get folks who are apparently no more savvy that elementary school children to develop complex theories and statistical analysis of the games.

Big Brother is not a single overlord enemy in our present society, but a collection of penetrating forces that slither into many parts of our lives. We think our conversations are being monitored when oddly specific ads come up on our phones, but really they don’t have to. Your browser history, purchases, and frequented locations all tell a story without you realizing.

While in a home goods store, I overheard a woman say, “I’m really into bamboo right now for some reason.” The truth is her inclination for bamboo housewares was probably a series of marketing decisions that put that aesthetic on store shelves. It had little to do with sustainability and more to do with securing sales. Similarly, but on a crushing scale, Big Brother is relentless in its dissemination of propaganda to control perceptions, but make people believe they are in control of those perceptions.

The 1984 baby has many faces, but I see a group who looks behind the veil. We know a con when we see one, but not just any con. We know that not everyone jailed is guilty, the biggest weapon of modern war is language, our government is just as evil as the ones we fight, and that our interests are often illusions of choice. We have just decided we’d rather have the bit of peace with an online purchase than mull over the algorithm that fed it to us in the first place.

We are also the therapy generation, learning to resolve our own traumas and spare the people around us, recognizing our habits, and repeating the words “it’s okay” over and over like a meditation. In this bleak landscape, we sometimes chose surrender because strength just means you learned to take a punch when you shouldn’t have to. Too sensitive? Maybe. But we are brave enough to express our emotions in a world that still mocks us for it.

To my 1984 babies, I’m with you. I see you. We are graying now and having to watch our cholesterol. I want to encourage you to be who you want to be, not because you can’t, but because you haven’t given yourself permission. Understand that change is a slow churn and that a little each day, week, and month, we can work to envision and realize the best parts of ourselves.

It is a new year, a new start, and you’re doing just fine. Start with one more book this month, one more mile walked, one more quiet hour with yourself, one new venture.

This year, the 40th anniversary of our birth, I’ll be doing a deep dive into some of 1984’s themes starting on April 4th. You’re welcome to read it in advance or week by week in our discussions. I hope we will come to learn some things about our world, our own silent rebellion, and the specialness in each one of us.

Happy Birthday.

Fun fact:

I learned an interesting term while writing this: coeval. It can be used as an adjective or noun meaning someone the same age as oneself. Pretty cool.

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Cover image made by author