Auckland Deep Thinkers Sunday Lunch Book Club: "1984"

Let's get together once a month to discuss a book that has relevance in today's world.

A new venue and a new style for the new season. For the first event of 2026 - we'll be having a picnic. So, bring your own food, drinks and chairs, and let's meet up by the bandstand in the Auckland Domain. (You can of course purchase refreshments from the Wintergarden Cafe nearby.) Feel free to bring guests, children and grandchildren.

This month's book is George Orwell’s 1984 (published 1949), which remains one of the most discussed novels of the 20th century because it functions as both a dystopian warning and a remarkably prescient political analysis. Here are the major discussion points it consistently raises:

1. Totalitarianism and the Mechanics of Power

• How absolute power is maintained not just through violence but through control of truth itself (“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”).
• The fusion of state, military, police, media, and economy into a single oppressive apparatus.

2. Surveillance and the Death of Privacy

• Telescreens, hidden microphones, and the slogan “Big Brother is watching you” prefigure modern mass surveillance (CCTV, NSA programs, social media tracking, facial recognition).
• The psychological effect of knowing you are (or might be) watched 24/7.

3. Language as a Tool of Thought Control (“Newspeak”)

• Deliberate reduction of vocabulary to make certain thoughts literally impossible (“If there is no word for freedom, how can you want it?”).
• Modern parallels: political correctness, corporate euphemism, internet slang wars, deliberate redefinition of words.

4. The Manipulation and Erasure of Truth

• “Doublethink”: holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both.
• Constant rewriting of history (Ministry of Truth altering newspapers, photos, records).
• “Reality control” and the creation of official lies that become unquestionable.

5. The Destruction of the Individual

• The annihilation of private life, love, sexuality, family loyalty, and personal memory.
• Winston’s ultimate betrayal of Julia under torture (“Do it to Julia!”) as the final victory of the Party over the human spirit.

6. Propaganda and Perpetual War

• War as a tool to consume surplus production, keep the population in fear, and justify repression.
• The fluidity of enemies (Eastasia and Eurasia switch places overnight and no one notices).

7. The Corruption of Revolution

• How revolutionary ideals (Ingsoc began as socialism) inevitably turn into new forms of tyranny.
• The pigs becoming the farmers: revolutions devouring their own children.

8. Technology as an Instrument of Oppression

• Technology not as liberator but as the ultimate enabler of total control (contrast with earlier utopian views of technology).

9. The Fragility of Objective Reality

• If everyone can be made to believe 2+2=5, what remains of truth, science, or resistance?
• Prefigures today’s debates about “post-truth,” fake news, alternative facts, and gaslighting.

10. Censorship and Self-Censorship

• The chilling effect of thoughtcrime and the internalization of the Party line even in one’s own mind (Winston’s diary as an act of rebellion).

11. Class Society in Disguise

• Despite the rhetoric of equality, the Inner Party lives in luxury while Proles and Outer Party members are kept in misery—an indictment of supposedly egalitarian regimes.

12. The Role of Sadism and Power for Its Own Sake

• O’Brien’s speech: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… Power is not a means; it is an end.”
• Pure power-worship as the ultimate human motivation.

These themes explain why 1984 is constantly invoked in debates about government overreach, tech-company data collection, cancel culture, state propaganda, authoritarian populism, and the erosion of shared truth. Few books have aged into relevance as relentlessly as this one.

Could We Make Orwell Fiction Again!

CUSTOMS:
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