In 1984, George Orwell depicts a totalitarian society which immiserates and degrades its citizens. And yet many of the people seem to be okay with it. The society keeps itself together, in part, through its "Ministry of Love", which tortures and breaks down people until they come to love the status quo as it is.
The irony is that the narrative many people tell of their lives is of a kind of positive Ministry of Love, which converts them from being bad or unrealistic people through perhaps painful means.
How do you know which it was? A humbling which "you needed"? Or the operation of an evil world order? The status quo keeps itself the status quo somehow. Purely by chance something must tend to come to make it hard for it to be otherwise than it is, if nothing intentional comes.
Maybe you know by comparing your mind, and society, against some kind of reference point which stays the same after your breakdown. In 1984, it seems that perhaps the depicted society is so far gone that you can't even have that reference point. But our society is not so bad yet. Yet, if we do not choose to look at the reference point, it's functionally the same as if we didn't have one available.
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