Reflection on 1984

1984 – George Orwell

XX century can be called the most slaughterous age in the human history with the two World Wars one coming after the other, conflicts that took place during the “calm” period of Cold War and the other little and bigger wars that brought the art of killing the people to such scale, that in a single hour whole humanity may be annihilated. However, these wars were not the most scaring events of the century, as they were rooted in even more dangerous phenomenon that become considerable in the XX century, the totalitarianism. With the rise and fall of Hitler and Nazi Germany it become obvious that the country ruled by the single person may have quite unstable international politics, as one man's mind may change quickly. The victory of United Nations over the Nazi's, the danger still existed and it's source was USSR. This gave the name Cold War to the second half of the century, with the Western world fearing “Red Alert”. Even though, the Cold War created an incredible amount of weapon that still is used widely in local conflicts in African countries as well as in terrorist attacks on USA, Europe, Russia and other states, the most terrible effect of totalitarianism was not unstable world. The effect it had on people was much more destructive, as it broke the will of not a group of people like in prisons, but of whole nations. Totalitarianism ceased the progress of peoples' social thinking, and put the borders on what one can think about. In every totalitarian state there were people who opposed against such suppression of humans' rights to think and act freely, but these were the minority that could not change the situation and was destroyed or converted to the supporters of such a system. The system survived and kept spreading it's influence over peoples' minds, creating obedient “zombies” by the mean of the fierce propaganda. Although, open opposition to totalitarian governments were suppressed, there still were people who did not accepted regimes...