Thoughts from here and there…Who is in control of information?
Here we are at the end of January 2025. Our country is in turmoil. Our world relations are being challenged. We have an administration that is willing to use force to compel compliance with the Presidents desires. This can be observed in the pressure to conform in California and in Colombia.
All I can think of is what Wiston observed in Orwell’s 1984.
“Winston is an editor in the Records Department at the governmental office Ministry of Truth, where he actively revises historical records to make the past conform to whatever Ingsoc wants it to be. One day he wakes up and thinks,
“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past…”
“The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.” (Retrieved from: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-does-that-quote-mean-archaeology-172300)
Who controls the present controls the past and the future. This may lead to a high level of discontent and depression.
It may be helpful to consider “The Nine Requisites for Contented Living, as written by the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
They are well-worth contemplating.
1. Health enough to make work a pleasure.
2. Wealth enough to support your needs.
3. Strength enough to battle difficulties and
overcome them.
4. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake
them.
5. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
6. Charity enough to see some good in your
neighbor.
7. Love enough to move you to be useful and
helpful to others.
8. Faith enough to make real the things of God.
9. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning
the future.