Hypocrisy for All, it’s an Orwellian world.

Hypocrisy for All, it’s an Orwellian world.

So my Master’s degree has eaten most of my free time and free brain cells, but while doing research for said degree I was able to read an award winning Graphic Novel entitled Watchmen. I’m sure most people reading this comic will be familiar with the title, if not go read it. Anyway the story got me thinking about a very old work I wrote while I was in Junior College, back during my formative years, the odd thing is that work has even more credence in today’s current political and social climate. The actual work itself is rather sophomoric and pedantic in the arguments it uses so I wont subject my few readers to its less than graceful prose. However that wont stop me from discussing it here again. What brought about this rant was an article a long while ago about a young girl who was expelled from her school for a dream sequence story she wrote in her private journal in which she ‘kills’ a few of her fellow class mates and then wakes up still in class. The girl in question was an honors student, a member of several clubs including the school’s literary club and newspaper staff. Yet when a teacher confiscated the journal because the girl was writing in it after finishing her work sooner than some of the other students, instead of complimenting the girl for her dedication to academic pursuits such as writing, she sends the poor child to the principle, who then expels her. That expulsion was eventually overruled and she returned to class, but that belabors the point that she was in fact expelled for her writing, in a private journal, after she had finished her class work. This one occurrence seems to be a symptom of a larger disease amongst our society, that of ‘political correctness’ and over sensitivity. When the masses begin to dictate how one must think, act, and generally live ones life we enter a dark and Orwellian society where ‘Big Brother’ and other over arching groups begin to micro-manage society on a level that just isn’t conducive to life. This causes all sorts of problems, which any well-read person can notice in society around us today. This young lady was expelled from school for a work of fiction, she never acted on anything she had never even acted out enough to get detention much less be expelled, but because her thoughts violated some unfathomable sense of right and wrong she was punished for it. Socrates once violated the tenants of his society and drank Hemlock because of it. Should we therefore sentence Stephen King to death because he writes about serial killers, possessed cars, and other horrific things? Should Tom Clancy be labeled a terrorist because he writes books about them? Should Tom Cruise be arrested because he once played a pimp in a movie? No. None of these people broke any laws, all they did was to think, or create things that discussed these societal horrors. In the end if we begin to crush creative thinking because it offends some one then our society is doomed to some Orwellian dark age where ‘Big Brother’ controls what we say do or even think. I fear that day, more than I fear any war, or ‘terrorist’ act, because when that day comes, freedom itself has died.