Born in George Orwell’s ‘1984’: how should this feel?

Response


Although I was born in 1976 I always wondered how it would feel to be born in 1984 while born in 1948. Have you ever pondered on how it was back in the time of the Cold War when the West was scared of the communists? Recently I have read the book ‘1984’ again after I originally read it when I was 16 years old.  Well actually I didn’t read it this time, but bought the audiobook and listened to it when driving in my car from Antwerp, Belgium to Nice in France where I nowadays live. To cut a long story short, in 1948 they were afraid that the doomsday would come in 1984, at least that is the story that George Orwell made of it based on the thoughts of people in that period.

 

Funny thing, but I was born in communist Russia, to be exactly I was born in Leningrad, now and before the communist rule better known as Saint Petersburg. And while growing up in Russia it all seemed quite normal, you knew that the police were strict and there were many rules to abide by, but I didn’t see my country as evil. Actually, I was quite proud of the USSR as for example we beat the Americans in the Space Race as Yuri Gagarin, was the first human to travel to space, we the Soviet Union excelled in sports, mathematics (my father still holds his PhD from Karl Marx University on his living room wall), and everything.

The only thing I really missed was the access to pop music, the free love period – all the love that I later found in music have compensated when my family moved to Paris as there are many Russians in France already. But one of the things that I have done in France (the only country when you can truly say love as l’amour), for which I am now proud to be a French citizen (but quietly I also am still a Russian in my blood) is the discovery of internet dating or rencontre gratuit as we call it here in French, which means ‘free dating’. Since I started with dating on the internet, then I realized this is something back in ‘1984’ they did not know and could not experience. I personally think that this possibility in life makes our lives richer and more beautiful, wouldn’t you say? To conclude, for me the possibility to meet people online via the internet with online dating is something I really treasure in my heart and makes for me now in this digital era the most important difference between ‘1984’ and the new era.

 

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