Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It's not 1984.
"1984" implies all-powerful, all-controlling governments that watch our every move and want to dominate, frighten and cow us strictly to maintain their own power.
Everyone should know by now that the government is also too full of "me, me, ME" to worry one whit about what the public is doing... nor are they bothered to watch us, nor are they even remotely well-enough organized to orchestrate elaborate psychological agendas designed to make us feel frightened and oppressed. |
That's actually always been the case. There are two factors at work.
First, bureaucracies exist for the care and feeding of the bureaucrats who work in them. The public they nominally serve comes second.
Second, you have the issue of how you define success. In a private, for profit business, you win by having more revenue and higher profits this year than last year. In a bureaucracy, you win by having plausible reasons to request a bigger budget and more staff next allocation period. There are occasional attempts to "make government more efficient" by bringing ion successful private business executives to run departments, but those private business guys got the nod because they were winners. They very quickly figure out the rules of the new game and start winning there, too. Unfortunately, "winning" consists of doing all the things they were brought in to change...
Quote:
There is no "Big Brother" watching you. Nobody's watching you... if you think they are, you're just overly paranoid. (I know, because I was for many years, until I wised up and got over it.) "1984" is a Bogeyman.
The people to be concerned about are the ones standing right next to you.
|
Yep. I'm in occasional contact with the "tin foil hat" crowd elsewhere, who are firmly convinced that Microsoft is in league with the NSA, and has left back doors in Windows so the government can snoop on their computers.
All I can saw is "You
wish you were important enough that anyone could be
bothered to do that to you. While there are intelligence agency types who do that, there aren't that many of them, and the ones that do exist all have for more important things to do with their time."
Classical paranoia is a defense mechanism. What the paranoid is
really afraid of, on a level they can't even admit to themselves, is that they don't matter and no one cares about them. If you can buy into a paranoid fantasy, hey! You're important! You
matter! Someone cares enough about you to take the trouble to try to get you.
Personally, I'm
not important. Save to family and a few close friends, I
don't matter. No one in power
cares what I think or do. And you know what? I
like that status. Anonymity provides far greater freedom of movement.
______
Dennis