Contemporary political discourse often refers to George Orwell's 1984 as an example of how government interference undermines our rights as individuals as we remain complacent in the face of these violations. For example, falsification of facts in news articles constantly goes unnoticed because we accept the information as truth if it comes from a media outlet that claims to be objective. We link appearance to content. While we can relate these concerns to Orwell's novel, a closer reading of the novel brings to light far more troubling issues that go beyond the scope of politics by questioning our intellectual capacity to determine "truth." One aspect of this future Orwellian society is the practice of reviewing written documents to eliminate inconsistencies in executive statements and actions. Original written records employ the same falsifications as revised records, making it impossible to determine whether a recorded event actually occurred. Furthermore, the newspaper, propaganda brochures and the Newspeak dictionary are the only forms of literature existing in this totalitarian society. Winston discovers that the only way to resist this violation of rights is through memory. However, without physical evidence to verify this memory, he struggles to connect it to his version of the truth. While “truth” carries a fixed, unshakable, and indestructible epistemological meaning, the contents of our heads are capricious and unstable. People are unable to detect lies, not only because they are complacent, but also because they lack the tools to do so. The Orwellian government therefore does much more than spread lies. This makes it impossible to find the truth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay The presence of the pneumatic tube in 1984 confirms the importance of written material as a representation of truth, or at least of “truth” as defined by the Inner Feast. Writing is a method of structuring history and presenting it to the world. If written material had no inherent value – if in fact everyone was capable of composing history from a chain of memories – then the destruction of that material would be pointless. Winston's attempt to relocate the past through memory is doomed to failure. The practice of revising and destroying written materials complicates the process of intellectual inquiry. Scientific research as we currently define it is based on empirical evidence. A researcher must refer to already written and existing documents in order to establish credibility. If people cannot physically locate these documents, they will not trust the researcher as a provider of truth. Winston's inability to provide physical evidence of his moments of revelation undermines his confidence in his ability to locate the truth: "That was all, and he already didn't know if it had happened...There was no no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that could mean anything or anything. nothing: scraps of overheard conversations, light scribbles on the toilet walls... They were only guesses: most likely, he had imagined it all” (Orwell 18-19). All of these moments are examples of information that could easily be misinterpreted: “snippets,” “scribbles,” “rumors.” Winston's testimony requires him to formulate hypotheses which, by their very nature, have an antithetical relationshipwith “truth” as we define it. Because we receive "history" as a written timeline that we can trace back through the centuries, Winston does not have the ability to construct history because his memories only reveal disconnected events. Throughout the novel, Winston's moments of hope—a gleam in O'Brien's eye, a quote from three revolutionaries in a café—appear in flashes that disappear before he has a chance to process them. The Party's slogan "WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH", the names of the ministries (Truth, Peace, Love and Many), and the fact that "thought crime" is a crime punishable prove that Orwellian society values ​​philosophical concepts, just like our society. People often mistakenly conceive of "philosophy" as a set of fixed values ​​that reveal absolute facts about human nature, as Winston does in this passage: "It is impossible to found a civilization on fear, hatred and cruelty. It would never last…There is something in the universe – I don’t know, a spirit, a principle – that you will never conquer” (Orwell 221-222). What Winston fails to understand is that philosophy is not an autonomous entity that exists outside of man's relationship with his environment but that, like everything else in this totalitarian society, it is built by those in power. O'Brien makes this last notion clear: “We control life, Winston, at all its levels… We create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable” (Orwell 222). The values ​​that constitute human nature do not develop biologically but are summarized in the form of statements and written documents that those in power pass on to us. Therefore, Winston is naive in believing that people will be unhappy living in a world of hatred and oppression because they have no knowledge of alternative governments. The lack of an accurate historical database results in a paralyzing isolationism that accompanies the quest for truth. References to other sources in a scientific text create a comforting sense of shared affirmation. The borrowed intellectual – the one who has no other ideas to refer to than his own – risks being qualified as a heretic. The stages of Winston's progression from rebellion to conformity also indicate a progression from alienation to acceptance. These opposing values ​​can be seen by comparing Winston's concern as he writes in his diary with his victory in this passage: "There had been a moment... of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien had filled a patch of emptiness and become an absolute truth, when two and two could have made three as easily as five, if that was what was needed” (Orwell 213). Winston rejects an idea he previously considered common sense (two plus two makes four), not out of fear but out of a desire to share an idea with another person. The Party's ownership of all intellectual material allows it to control minds because Orwell's society, like ours, promotes the idea that the contents of a person's head are useless unless others affirm it as the truth. It’s tempting to dismiss the lower classes in a totalitarian government as mindless drones. Yet members of the Outer Party do not automatically recite the philosophy of the Inner Party; they become emotionally and intellectually invested in this philosophy. Syme's face becomes "animated," his eyes "dreamy," as he speaks of Newspeak: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words... Take 'good,' for example. If you have a word like “.