Dear Orwell, I have received your letter
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My dear Orwell, I have received your letter, but I think it is out of date.
Dearest Orwell, I have received your letter numbered 1984, but I think that because of the situation in which I am, it arrives with a slight delay on August 17, 2020. I have read it carefully, even if I find something to complain about. I think the society you prepared me for is a far cry from the one I live in today. The telescreen is not at all compulsory, we fight to buy it.
But above all, it’s the people’s apathy that contrasts with your letter. In your society, they were forced, by systematic clubbing, to do what the system wanted them to do. Today, it is almost the same thing, denouncement is rewarded, hatred and mediocrity are cardinal virtues. Your letter’s system was so corrupted that a healthy system was impossible to imagine. We are in the same thing where honesty, sincerity, naivety are considered flaws, to be combated by all the ferocity of prison and physical mutilation.
You write to me that your letter dates from 1949, but that it is intended for your children and grandchildren in 1984. However, if you can write to me again, I would like to explain to you a situation that has happened. to some of your grandchildren in 2020. I think you will understand, because in 1949, you had a polio epidemic with a certain ardor of panic. I don’t know why you didn’t mention it in your letter, maybe you couldn’t understand the implications of a sick society, using imaginary-exaggerated diseases, to wield greater power.
I tell you that in 2020, we have a little flu. She could be naughty, but much less than the one you knew in the year of your letter. In the space of a few months, the world has gone nuts. The Newspeak gave way to the HateSpeak, the contempt of governments towards their peoples was expressed without any shame and with sadistic delight of a psychopath who would torture a frightened young girl, locked up for months in a pit in front of someone who dances naked.
Your letter warned me to beware of the Ministry of Truth, Information, Telecommunications, Home Affairs, but it said nothing about the necessary distrust of white coats. Real pimples on the leg which have acquired an inordinate power, but which resonate with an ignorance as filthy as it is corrupt. First, they locked up the whole world, then they imposed on us how to wash, how to dress, how to walk and how to breathe.
The telescreen you were talking about is present, but they have miniaturized it and applied a varnish so that it will be nice looking while holding in our pocket. The miniature telescreen keeps an eye on us all the time, rarely turns off and when it does, keeps everything in mind. It’s not that we are forbidden to turn it off, but that we don’t want it, the blue light of warnings and juicy offers has been there. It records the number of our steps, the beating of our hearts, it tells us how to smile, how to grimace, how to cry.
The white coats, to fight against the epidemic, force us to give them this telescreen, so that they can examine us, probe us in all directions, sneering under cloak, like enraged polecats, of our vicissitudes and the depths lustful and dark of our souls. But it gets worse, Orwell, now they want to store our DNA indefinitely. Unfortunately dear Orwell, you died before this stuff was discovered, because I think you would have included it in your letter. DNA, which you might call a Weapon of Harmful Domination, is a part in our body that is impossible to change, tamper with and hide. We leave it everywhere, when we sweat in the face of the fierce cries of white coats, when we spit on them, when we spill their blood when they spill ours.
Due to a little flu, they want to store our DNA in huge magic cabinets, which are connected with magic cables, which allow all the snickers in cloak to see who we really are. Selling our deep structure, like grams of minced meat, like a butcher who has found the most succulent meat in the world and who knows everyone will come and buy it. Worse still, they don’t ask us for anything, no consent, because what I forgot to tell you is that with this DNA, we can know all the diseases that you have had, those that you have and those that you will have.
This wealth of information, they got their hands on it because of this epidemic, there’s nothing we can do. The magical closets are barricaded by cerberus in black robes in horizons too far away for our little hands. And when some lucky ones manage to get their hands on it, the Cerberus use a right authored by their tyrannical pimps to prevent us from using, using our signature as proof of a pact that is much worse than the one with the devil.
Your letter has given me the means to combat telescreens and Newspeak, but it is ineffective against the imprisonment of our deep structure. Because you can change your name, address, physical appearance, gender, but your DNA is eternally the same until the end of time. They got us, Orwell, they found something of us to jail that cannot be escaped. Your letter taught me things, but I wish I had lived in the society you describe, it was not that bad.
Your letter arrived late, I know, but I got another letter at the same time from a certain Huxley. Maybe he will teach me something to fight this tyranny that has only just begun.
