Contemporary political discourse often refers to George Orwell's 1984 as an example of how government interference violates our rights as individuals while we remain complacent in the face of these violations. For example, falsification of facts in news articles consistently goes unnoticed because we accept the information as truth if it comes from a medium that claims objectivity. We connect appearance to content. While we can connect these concerns to Orwell's novel, a deeper reading of the novel brings out much more troubling issues that extend beyond the scope of politics by questioning our intellectual ability to determine the "truth." One aspect of this future Orwellian society is the practice of reviewing written documents in order to eliminate inconsistencies in leaders' statements and actions. Original written documents employ the same forgeries as revised ones, making it impossible to determine whether a recorded event actually occurred. Furthermore, newspapers, propaganda pamphlets, and the Newspeak dictionary are the only forms of literature that exist in this totalitarian society. Winston discovers that the only way to resist this violation of rights is through memory. However, without physical evidence to verify this memory, he has difficulty connecting it to his version of the truth. While “truth” has a fixed, unshakable, and indestructible epistemological meaning, the contents of our heads are capricious and unstable. People are unable to detect lies not simply because they are complacent, but because they lack the tools to do so. The Orwellian government, therefore, does much more than spread lies. It makes the search for the truth impossible. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Presence of the Pneumatic Tube in 1984 verifies the importance of written material as a representation of truth, or at least "truth" as defined by the Inner Party. Writing is a method of structuring the story and presenting it to the world. If no intrinsic value could be found in written material – if in fact everyone was capable of composing history from a series of memories – then the destruction of this material would not be necessary. Winston's attempt to relocate the past through memory is doomed to fail. The practice of reviewing and destroying written documents complicates the process of intellectual inquiry. Academic research as we currently define it is based on empirical evidence. A scholar must refer to previously existing written documents to establish credibility. If people cannot physically locate these documents, they will not trust the scholar as a purveyor of truth. Winston's failure to provide physical evidence for his moments of revelation undermines his confidence in his ability to locate the truth: "That was all, and it was already uncertain whether it had happened... There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that could mean something or other." nothing: fragments of overheard conversations, faint scribbles on toilet walls… It was all conjecture: he had most likely imagined it all” (Orwell 18-19). All of these moments are examples of information that could easily be misinterpreted: “tears,” “scribbles,” “rumors.” Winston's trials force him to make hypotheses, which by their very nature have an antithetical relationship with "truth" as we define it. Since we receive “history” as a written chronology that we can trace back through the centuries, Winston has no ability to construct history because his memoriesthey only reveal disconnected events. Throughout the novel, Winston's moments of hope—a twinkle in O'Brien's eye, the quote from three revolutionaries in a bar—appear in flashes that disappear before he has a chance to analyze them. The Party's slogan "WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY/IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH", the names of the Ministries (Truth, Peace, Love and Abundance) and the fact that "psychocrime" is a punishable crime provides proof that the Orwellian society places value on philosophical concepts just as our society does. People often mistakenly conceive of “philosophy” as a set of fixed values ​​that reveal absolute facts about human nature, as Winston does in this passage: “It is impossible to found a civilization. about fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never last…There is something in the universe – I don't know, a spirit, a principle – that you will never get over” (Orwell 221-222). is that philosophy is not an autonomous entity that exists outside of man's relationship with his environment but, like everything else in this totalitarian society, is constructed by those in power O'Brien clarifies the latter notion: “We control life, Winston, at all its levels… We create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable” (Orwell 222). The values ​​that constitute human nature do not develop biologically but are contained in the form of declarations and written material that those in power pass down to us. Therefore, Winston is naive in believing that people will be unhappy living in a world of hatred and oppression because these people do not know about alternative governments. The lack of an accurate historical database results in a paralyzing isolationism that accompanies the search for truth. References to other sources in an academic text create a comforting sense of shared affirmation. The borrowed intellectual, one who has no ideas to refer to other than his own, risks being labeled a heretic. The stages of Winston's progression from rebellion to conformity also indicate a progression from alienation to acceptance. These opposing values ​​can be seen by comparing Winston's trepidation, as he writes in his diary, with his victory in this passage: “There had been a moment... of luminous certainty, when every new suggestion from O'Brien had filled a piece of emptiness and become absolute truth, when two and two could have made three as easily as five, if that had been necessary” (Orwell 213). Winston rejects an idea he previously considered common sense (two plus two equals four) not out of fear but out of a desire to share an idea with another person. The Party's possession of all intellectual material allows them to control minds because Orwell's society, like ours, promotes the idea that the contents of one's head are useless unless others affirm this content as truth. It is tempting to characterize the lower classes in a totalitarian government as mindless drones. Yet Outer Party members do not robotically recite Inner Party philosophy; they invest themselves in this philosophy emotionally and intellectually. Syme's face becomes “animated,” his eyes “dreamy,” as he talks about Newspeak: “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words… Take 'good,' for example. If you have a word like "good", what need is there of a word like "bad"?... Eventually the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words, in fact by a single word. Don't you see the beauty of it, Winston?" (Orwell 46). Syme refers to the Newspeak Dictionary in the same way that contemporary philosophers refer to the writings of Socrates and Aristotle when presenting.