1984 Arrives Late

Our educations system is great at teaching how to make a living. It appears to be a dismal failure at teaching us how to live. Our schools are failing to teach morality. They wash their hands of any responsibility to do so by saying that it is something that should be taught in the home. The result is that we are turning out educated barbarians, whose goals in life are to get as much as they can for themselves. They then go forth with this education to pillage society,stepping on any opposition.

Without definite principles of morality to guide our actions we stumble around in life as in darkness. Right and wrong is fluid, based upon time and place becoming a matter if individual interpretation. The vacuum created by the lack of definite moral principles is sucking the life out of our society. With nothing to hold it together it will weaken and disperse into violent anarchy. To prevent this governments are forced to legislate morality and institute an Orwellian society.

Yes, Orwell's 1984 society has arrived late but it has arrived. It as though he looked down into our time of technological advancements and saw that it would eventually be used by governments to control it's citizens. In the name of protection authorities can now track our movements with locators in our phones, listen to our conversations, and know our up to the minute financial transactions. Already there are plans in place, in the name of convenience, to embed chips on our person to act like credit cards. Once they are in place I am sure that they will also be used as locators.

Then there is the change in the language. In his book 1984, Orwell called it "newspeak". Tax increases have become revenue enhancements, war becomes a conflict, etc. etc. In Orwell's book the government is a dark force controlling almost every aspect of it's citizen's life, something that is rapidly approaching with the passing of every law and regulation and the implementation of new surveillance technologies.

Do we need this kind of protection? In the absence of definite moral code to guide our actions I fear that the answer may very well be yes.