조지 오웰 진실의 유산과 전체주의의 경고

### 조지 오웰 전체주의에 대한 문학적 거장의 경고
* 📜 **1903년 에릭 아서 블레어로 태어난 조지 오웰**은 20세기 가장 영향력 있는 문학가 중 한 명으로 꼽히는 영국의 작가이자 저널리스트입니다.
* 📚 오웰은 **식민지 버마와 스페인 내전에서의 경험**과 선전과 검열에 대한 관찰을 통해 가장 유명한 작품에 영감을 얻었습니다.
* 🐷 "1945년에 출간된 '동물농장'은 **러시아 혁명에 대한 풍자적 우화**이자 **전체주의에 대한 비판**입니다.
* 🕰 "1949년에 개봉한 영화 '1984'는 **빅브라더가 이끄는 전체주의 정권이 지배하는 디스토피아적 미래**를 그린 작품입니다.
* 🌐 조지 오웰의 작품은 **진실의 조작, 감시의 위험성, 정치 권력을 위한 언어의 타락**에 대해 경고합니다.
* 🔍 '오웰적'이라는 용어는 특히 **언어 및 정보 통제와 관련된 억압적이고 권위주의적인 상황**을 상징하는 단어가 되었습니다.
* 📝 조지 오웰 자신은 정치적 이념에 관계없이 **모든 형태의 전체주의에 반대하는 민주적 사회주의자**였습니다.
* 🌍 권력, 언어, 진실의 본질에 대한 그의 통찰은 오늘날에도 여전히 유효하며, **폭정의 끊임없는 위협과 자유와 민주주의 수호의 중요성**을 일깨워줍니다.

조지 오웰의 작품은 전체주의와 진실 조작에 대해 경고하며 자유와 품위를 지키기 위한 경계를 촉구합니다.

George Orwell is perhaps one of the most widely read and referenced literary figures of all time—certainly of the twentieth century. Cited and mentioned by nearly every contemporary ideology and political worldview, his voice echoes down the halls of history. His insights about the power of language and technology, as well as his warnings about the manipulation of truth and the threat of totalitarianism, being relevant to rooms on both sides of the hall—left and right—transcend the walls of any one moment, movement, or ideology. Orwell was born in 1903 in Bengal, India, which, at the time, was part of the British Empire. He was born with the name Eric Arthur Blair and would only become George Orwell many years later when using the name as a pseudonym to protect his family and their reputation—as well as his own. As a child, Orwell’s socioeconomic conditions were unusual. His mother, being the daughter of a wealthy man,

had the attitude and tastes of someone well-off. But, by the time Orwell was born, his family had little money, and his father was working as a civil servant. Orwell would later refer to his upbringing as lower-upper-middle-class, a sort amalgamation of impoverishment and snobbery. After his family returned from India to England, where they were originally from, with the help of some family connections, Orwell was sent to an English preparatory school. Here, both his unusual temperament and his brilliance became apparent, receiving both ridicule from other students as well as scholarships to England’s leading schools, Wellington and Eton. At an early age, however, Orwell found the academic environment miserable. And so, he would never go on to university. Instead, in 1922, he entered the British Imperial service and worked as a colonial police officer. He was posted in Burma, a province of British India at the time. He also found this

experience miserable and conflicting with his values. Five years later, he would resign. Over the subsequent few years, Orwell would work several low-paying service jobs throughout Paris and London, including a part-time assistant job in a second-hand bookshop. Around this time, he would also begin writing and publishing books of his own, including Burmese Days, A Clergyman’s Daughter, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Surely influenced by his unique upbringing and his diverse experiences across Burma, France, and London, Orwell would develop a fondness for what he referred to as ordinary people and ordinary life—individuals who worked normal jobs, were not obsessed with material goods, had minimal education, and didn’t strive for nor achieve any sort of prominence, power, or so-called greatness. In contrast, he developed a disdain for intellectuals. Ironically, of course, Orwell would soon become one—perhaps one of the most

prominent intellectuals of the twentieth century. Orwell’s rise to prominence as an intellectual and literary figure can be largely attributed to the catalyzing experiences he had after traveling to Spain in 1936. Initially, he went to Spain as a journalist to report on the Spanish Civil War, but he soon enlisted as a volunteer in the Republican militia to fight against the fascist opposition. “If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency,” Orwell later wrote. During his time in the war, Orwell was shot in the throat and nearly killed by a sniper. Perhaps even more affecting for him, however, was what he witnessed in the coverage and portrayal of the war. Years later, he wrote: Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain,

For the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. Orwell’s observations revealed to him a degradation of the value placed on objective truth. Objective truth was being replaced more and more by the faith in subjective truths of ideologies and political parties. “I am willing to believe that history is for the most part

inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written,” Orwell wrote. The consequences of this, for Orwell, risked leading to totalitarianism, a form of government in which individuals lack freedom, and, instead, are subordinate to and controlled by the central authority of the state. When there is no belief in objective truth, truth solely exists in the human mind, becoming easily malleable and manipulatable. For Orwell, this threat looms regardless of any specific ideological and political leaning—be it left or right. “It is just [the] common basis of agreement [of truth] with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys,” he wrote. During the early- and mid-twentieth century, these consequences were unfolding, and totalitarianism was spreading—in Germany, Italy, Spain, the Soviet

Union, as well as, in Orwell’s mind, England and beyond. In response to this, Orwell believed that literature could be used to help warn against this development; it could be used to shed light on the circumstances of the world and help people fend against the increasing threat to freedom, truth, and wellbeing. “What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing,” Orwell wrote. Though Orwell had already written and published several relatively successful books by around the

year of 1939, his real rise to global, mainstream prominence came after the publication of his novella Animal Farm in 1945. And it was here that Orwell’s mission to spread important ideas and warnings about the threats of the time and future times began to successfully ensue at scale. In Animal Farm, there is no real main character. Rather, the protagonist of the book is a population of anthropomorphized animals living on a farm, known as Manor Farm. Each species of animal represents a different archetype or group of humans in society. One day on the farm, a pig named Old Major expresses to the other animals that they are being exploited by the humans who own the farm, and, if they work together, the animals can and ought to overtake the humans and create a better future for themselves. A revolution happens, the animals take over, and a new philosophy known as animalism is established. Two pigs named Snowball

and Napoleon takes the lead over the new conditions of the farm, which soon becomes just Napoleon after he has Snowball chased off. Though things appear to go well initially, hell soon breaks loose, and the pigs who lead the farm begin to lead with malice, selfishness, manipulation, and violence, ultimately becoming the equivalent of the humans that the animals had revolted against. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which,” reads the final line of the book. Broadly, Animal Farm is a thinly veiled critique of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rule of Joseph Stalin over the Soviet Union. It showcases and warns against the fallibilities and susceptibilities of revolutionary movements and the potential threats of counterrevolutions. What arguably makes this novella so unique and important, however,

is its ability to cut through the surface of any single social or political target and, instead, reveal timeless truths about social, political, and psychological phenomena, and to do so with animals. In the form of a fable, like that of Aesop or Disney, Orwell brings the complexities of social and political movements into an accessible, easily understandable allegorical format that can appeal to mass audiences across time and space. And that’s exactly what Animal Farm did and does, selling five hundred thousand copies within the first year of publication and then going on to sell millions and millions more. The same year Animal Farm was released, Orwell lost his wife while she was undergoing a routine surgery. Only a year or two later, he began to fall ill himself with tuberculosis. He would, however, muster everything he had left and work on one last book. After collapsing multiple times while writing, his science-, speculative-, and

dystopian fiction novel 1984 was released in 1949. In brief, 1984 focuses on a character named Winston Smith who lives in what was once London but is now a province of the superstate of Oceania. Oceania is run by a totalitarian government known as the Party, which follows the doctrines of English Socialism, or INGSOC, and is led by a dictator figure known as Big Brother. In Oceania, citizens are under constant surveillance and are ruthlessly punished for even so much as thinking thoughts that counter the Party’s ideological doctrines. Devices known as telescreens are put in everyone’s homes where they both consume broadcasted content and are constantly observed by the Party. What are known as the thought police are also always looming, ready to arrest anyone who commits what are known as thoughtcrime–or simply thinking the wrong things about the Party. Moreover, the Party is constantly producing propaganda in the form of

manipulated information, data, statistics, and language. Language is simplified and reduced in Oceania through what is known as newspeak, where words are eliminated from the vernacular in order to prevent the likelihood of nuanced critical thinking. Words are also often used in a contradictory manner in order to undermine the true nature of the things they describe. For example, labor camps are referred to as joy camps. Torture takes place in the ministry of love. The military is referred to as the ministry of peace. The department responsible for falsifying data and facts is known as the ministry of truth. And the slogans of Oceania are, “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” All of this causes citizens to engage in what is known as doublethink, a sort of cognitive dissonance in which they both have their own perceptions and understanding of what is true and yet they accept what they are being told by the Party as true,

despite any contradictions. At the beginning of the novel, Winston writes in his diary “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.” By the end of the novel, the narrator concludes, referring to Winston, “Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” Like Animal Farm, 1984 would obtain immediate success, which Orwell was able to witness in his lifetime before dying of tuberculosis the next year in 1950. Ultimately, it is unclear how cynical Orwell truly was, but the cynical endings to his two masterworks are, arguably, not a declaration of total hopelessness but a warning for the potential hopelessness that the future could exhibit—the future we are living in now. Since Orwell’s passing, his work has only continued to become increasingly popular and culturally relevant. 1984 is likely

one of the most widely read books, certainly of the dystopian, speculative genre, finding itself still, seventy-five years later, a part of many if not most high school English literature classes as well as college courses. Orwell has become one of the few writers in history to have a term created out of his work: Orwellian. Most broadly, Orwellian refers to any conditions reminiscent of Orwell’s work, in which the welfare and freedom of citizens are undermined, or at the risk of being undermined, typically by a central political power and ideology. But, arguably, Orwellian is not purely defined by totalitarian conditions but by the means in which totalitarian conditions are carried out. Specifically, it refers to the intentional distortion and manipulation of language and information for the purposes of serving some ulterior power for power’s sake. Like Orwell’s work itself, this term is often misunderstood, misrepresented,

or altered in service to whatever cause the user favors—often causes and ideologies that Orwell himself would likely have disagreed with. The term Orwellian can apparently be Orwellian itself. What is clear and important to note, however, is that although the Party of Oceania in 1984 originated from socialism, Orwell was not a critic of socialism. He was a critic of totalitarianism, regardless of its origins or political leaning. He was, in fact, a proponent of democratic socialism, a political democracy with a socially run decentralized economy. “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it,” Orwell wrote. Furthermore, he was anti-capitalist and believed capitalism incentivizes conditions of suffering and leads to small concentrations of power and wealth. This certainly makes those who reference

Orwell in favor of capitalism and against socialism, especially and ironically Orwellian. Ultimately, regardless of whether you agree with Orwell or like his writing, there is no denying his influence; and there is no denying the value and relevance of exploring the topics and ideas that he did. His insights into how human psychology plays out in the arena of politics and how the use and control of language influences and controls the thoughts and opinions of a population is likely a timeless and immensely relevant insight to all societies past, present, and future. His unique ability to use language to convey this insight and warn against the power and influence of language is something only a brilliant writer could even try to do. And his ability to bring incredible complex and typically dry concepts down into the realm of mass appeal and interest perhaps has helped ensure the developments of aspects of the world remain on a track that leads to, at the very least, a less dystopian destination.

In truth, we are always susceptible to our own malice and ignorance when we aren’t paying attention—individually and collectively. Tyranny is not a part of history; it is a part of humanity. Humanity is always on the brink of slipping into it, of chasing the rabbit of hope into dystopian wonderlands. Orwell realized this—that tyranny was always possible and can occur even in a society in which the intentions are noble or in a society in which the conditions appear prosperous and democratic. Perhaps our only hope, somewhat countering Orwell’s view, is realizing that, in fact, there is no ultimate objective truth—at least that we have access to—and that subjective truth is likely all there is and all there will ever be for us. We must accept this as a consequence of our condition of ignorance and limitation, our fragmented perceptions and dissenting values. But perhaps when we take this realization to the

extreme. We realize that all individuals, all groups, all organizations, and all nations are fallible and wrong. There is no one idea or truth to follow or believe in. Perhaps in doing this, we burn up all the fuel of totalitarianism, and, at the bottom of the tank, we find the collective realization of simple decency—the kind in which Orwell advocated for, the kind in which we arrive at mutually beneficial intersubjective truths based on humility and compassion toward the differences and malleabilities of humanity across space and time, rather than an ultimate rightness and finality right now. Of course, this is far, far easier said than done. But, in the words of Orwell, when referring to the conditions of 1984, “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: ‘Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.’”

The Paradox of Being a Good Person - George Orwell's Warning to the World

Fostering reflection through powerful ideas and stories.

Wonder is the feeling of curiosity and appreciation inspired by something beautiful, inexplicable, or unfamiliar. At Pursuit of Wonder, we create work with the aim of producing that feeling. 

Through video essays, short stories, guided experiences, books, and more, we explore a wide range of topics related to philosophy, psychology, science, literature, well-being, and more. We believe in facing the challenges and complexities of life head-on, and in doing so, we strive to inspire a reconnection with child-like wonder and a comfort with the uncertainty and absurdity of existence.  


Pursuit of Wonder

1903년 인도 벵골에서 에릭 아서 블레어로 태어난 조지 오웰은 언어, 진실, 전체주의에 대한 통찰력으로 유명한 저명한 문학가가 되었습니다.

버마, 프랑스, 런던에서의 특이한 성장 과정과 다양한 경험은 평범한 사람들에 대한 애정과 지식인에 대한 경멸을 형성했습니다.

조지 오웰은 "버마의 날들", "성직자의 딸" 등 영향력 있는 저술로 20세기 문학의 주요 인물로 자리매김했으며, 그의 사상은 다양한 정치 이데올로기에 걸쳐 공감을 불러일으켰습니다.

조지 오웰이 진실과 전체주의 개념에 미친 영향

조지 오웰은 스페인 내전을 겪으며 신문 보도에서 진실이 왜곡되는 것을 목격하면서 지식인으로서의 입지를 다지게 됩니다.

오웰은 객관적 진실이 왜곡되어 역사가 조작되고 전체주의가 부상하는 것을 목격했습니다.

조지 오웰은 객관적 진실을 포기하면 개인의 자유가 약화되고 가변적인 현실이 만들어질 위험이 있으며, 이는 모든 이념적, 정치적 성향에 공통된 위협이라고 경고했습니다.

조지 오웰의 사명과 동물농장의 영향력

조지 오웰은 문학이 자유와 진실에 대한 위협이 커지는 것에 대해 경고하고, 거짓을 폭로하고 불의에 주의를 환기시킬 수 있다고 믿었습니다.

1945년에 출간된 그의 소설 『동물농장』은 그를 세계적으로 유명하게 만들었고 혁명 운동에 대한 중요한 아이디어를 전달했습니다.

의인화된 동물들이 등장하는 이 소설은 러시아 혁명을 비판하고 권력의 위험성과 리더십의 조작에 대해 경고합니다.

동물농장』과 같은 조지 오웰의 우화는 동물을 통해 시대를 초월한 사회적, 정치적 진실을 드러내며 대중의 관심을 끌었고 수백만 부의 판매고를 올렸습니다.

개인적인 비극을 겪은 후 오웰은 전체주의 초강대국 오세아니아를 배경으로 반대 사상을 가진 시민들을 끊임없이 감시하고 처벌하는 디스토피아 소설 1984를 집필했습니다.

당의 언어와 정보 조작, 모순된 용어 사용은 시민들에게 인지 부조화를 일으켜 이중 사고 현상을 초래합니다.

조지 오웰의 1984년의 영향과 유산

조지 오웰의 1984년은 주인공 윈스턴이 반항에서 빅브라더에 대한 완전한 복종으로 극명하게 변화하는 모습을 담고 있습니다.

이 소설은 오웰의 생전에 큰 성공을 거두었으며, 시민의 복지와 자유를 저해하는 상황을 묘사하기 위해 '오웰적'이라는 용어가 등장할 정도로 지속적인 인기와 문화적 연관성을 지니고 있습니다.

오웰이 비판한 것은 사회주의 자체가 아니라 모든 형태의 전체주의였으며, 민주적 사회주의를 옹호하고 권력 불균형을 초래하는 자본주의에 반대했습니다.

조지 오웰이 자본주의, 사회주의, 인간 본성에 미친 영향

조지 오웰의 글은 사회주의를 비판하고 자본주의를 옹호하며 생각과 의견을 형성하는 데 있어 언어의 힘을 강조합니다.

인간 심리와 폭정의 가능성에 대한 그의 통찰은 시대를 초월하여 모든 사회와 관련이 있습니다.

주관적 진실과 개인과 집단의 오류에 대한 깨달음은 전체주의에 대항하여 상호 이해와 연민을 증진시킬 수 있습니다.