How will my grandchildren fare in a “1984” world? (By which
I mean anybody’s grandchildren, really.) It’s not going to be easy for
them. They’ve grown up in a world where human rights have been held up as a
practical ideal, and individual rights have been respected above the collective
rights of communities.
Now human and individual rights are fading away – dismissed
as a faddish fancy whose time has come and gone. The very nations that rushed
to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of the
Second World War have baulked at submitting themselves to the Nuremberg
Principles. Britain is a prize example: signing international human-rights
treaties galore, but waging wars of aggression and occupation for commercial
gain.
“1984” (the book by Orwell) described what we call a totalitarian
society. But “totalitarian” is not absolutely total; there are always
loopholes. Despite comprehensive domestic spying programs – even with
electronic chips implanted in every limb – there will still be groups of
individuals beyond the reach of Big Brother’s servants. The powerless will be
of little concern to the ruling classes. Who cares what they think?
During our grand adventure in the ‘60s, and rank amateurs as
we were, Linda and I managed to by-pass restrictions of one sort or another in
several supposedly totalitarian nations. My blog-post Russian Roulette
in January 2012 told of safe-enough exchange-control dodges in the USSR, and Checkpoint
Charlie the month before reported our quasi-authorised crossing of the
Berlin Wall. Ross did similar things, in his turn. We were all foreigners, but
even so…
There usually is a way, for those who fly beneath the radar.
So what we have to do, when or before the time comes, is teach our girls how to
do it. Their parents were both hippies, to whom it is a natural way to live.
Maybe hippies will be the models for everybody, when the time comes.
The society outlined in “1984”comprised a three-tier system
of the rulers, their civil-servants, and the proletarians. The servants were
monitored closely, but the proles – drugged, peaceful, incorrigible – were largely
unwatched. (They didn’t feature in the book’s plot, so readers are left to
imagine their worthless lives. I imagine them as living carefree lives
beneath the radar as long as they didn’t get ideas above their worthless station.
They were also cannon-fodder in the perpetual wars, but I imagine plenty of
draft-dodging occurred.)
If for a moment we can pretend that the fictional story is actual
history, we can remind ourselves that although history of any kind
repeats itself, it never repeats exactly. The Western World’s current
rulers may indeed be using the book as a basic “how-to” guide, but they are
adding new stuff of their own as they go along. It will be enough for our grandchildren
to learn the broad principles, not the details.
The culmination may occur as many as ten years from today.
Perpetual war is already in place. The security-state creeps forward with every
anti-terrorist drill. The lockdown by 6,000 paramilitary police of a million
residents in inner-city Boston following the 2013 explosions was a wake-up
call that failed to wake many of us. A collapse of paper currencies following the
mother of all false-flag attacks would usher in the real deal – the freezing
and confiscation of savings, enforced by martial law.
Hmmm. Maybe. But probably not everywhere. The internet is
full of “preppers” – people preparing to flee to isolated communities when the
SHTF and when TEOTWAWKI arrives. (If you didn’t know already: those sets of
letters stand for “Shit Hits The Fan” and “The End Of The World As We Know It.)
I respect their diligent preparations, and they may have identified the best
escape route. But I think they’re mistaken.
IMHO (that one you surely must know!) the most effective
escape will come from the mind. Being mentally prepared will be a lot more
important than being physically prepared. When chased by a bear in the woods,
you don’t have to be able to out-run the bear. You just have to be able to run
faster than the person you’re with.
I’ve always doubted that the meek would inherit the earth:
but the stoners might do, in a SHTF situation.
