speakwrite

One thing I’ve heard come up recently again and again is a quote from 1984:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”

There is no doubt that this rings true based on recent events, though this quote and the context it is being shared in gives me pause.

The problem is that with the right camera angle, creative cuts, selective footage, and so on, it is possible to show alternative stories. It is also is possible that in the age of AI, footage can be created to support the false claims being made to justify the spilling of blood. And worse, the bot farms are so quick to jump onto these things to magnify the false claims.

Combine these elements and you can reasonably have someone who sees such a selective or fabricated video, they hear the false claims from governmental institutions, and social media comments seemingly support the narrative. Suddenly, to this person, the lies might make sense. Indeed, they may even think they are trusting their eyes and ears.

The problem with this quote is that it is being used in the context of trusting eyes and ears of videos shared online. While I think so far enough videos have been recorded from multiple viewpoints that they are in alignment, I am concerned that this will not always be the case. In the future trusting our eyes and ears must be firsthand experiences. If we’re talking about secondhand experiences, like videos, then there needs to be provenance to help sort legitimate videos from AI generated content or intentionally dishonest content.

In 1984, Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth was falsifying history and rewriting reality. His job involved receiving documents that needed to be corrected with a Party-approved version, creating the falsified version, and then destroying the original documents. In the context of the quote, 1984 was already involving falsified information that couldn’t be trusted. The “evidence of your eyes and ears” was intended to mean firsthand experiences.

The Party was asking people to deny their own direct memories and observations, and using this quote in context of a medium that can be fabricated creates a vulnerability to the falsification Winston himself performed.

It’s a dangerous road though, if someone only trusts firsthand experiences then it is easy for them to say from the comfort of their home that none of these horrific events are actually occurring unless they get outside and experience them. Importantly, the tragic events are also only being done in resistance cities even though statistically there are not as many immigrants in those cities as there are in Party cities. Meaning that if we were to rely on firsthand experiences, Party members will never see it because they are intentionally being excluded for the time being. They will only get the Party approved messages brought to them through the airwaves and the buried cables that connect us.

This is why using the quote in the current context creates a paradox:

• If people are told to trust what they see in context of videos, then those videos can and will eventually be fabricated. We have already seen state-sponsored lies labeling people as domestic terrorists to transform murders into state-sponsored executions.
• Conversely, relying on firsthand experience is also problematic because of the geographic divide between the cities the Party is antagonizing–seemingly with the goal of declaring Martial Law. If we rely on only firsthand experience then things will continue to get a lot worse before they ever hope of getting better because many people won’t have had a chance to gain their own direct memories and observations.

It’s also worth noting that Winston was fully aware he was creating propaganda but he did it anyway. We have to accept that there will be people out there knowing full well the lies they create and propagate. How do we reach them when they already know the truth?

One thing is certain though, I am genuinely terrified. Not of my fellow citizens, but of my government.