Hey Big Brother

I recently watched the film "Silver Linings Playbook," one of many David Russell masterpieces.  I will not get into a movie analysis here, but one of the songs in the film is "Hey Big Brother" by Rare Earth and it has gotten me thinking.  The song says Big Brother needs to get the people on his side, and George Orwell's dystopia 1984 shows the horror of how a totalitarian surveillance state can utterly manipulate and destroy the psyche of people until they are on Big Brother's side.  While here in America, we may not be under totalitarianism just yet, the surveillance state is here and it is watching.  What does this do to the psyche of the people?  Can we remain free in such circumstances?

Common refrains from many these days is that "privacy is dead" and "I've got nothing to hide so who cares?"  But what if we had so many laws that the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn't even know it?  Would you still be confident that you have nothing to hide?  You are probably guilty; it's just a matter of whether or not you will be prosecuted.

Charting our own path, going our own way, inherently involves the ability to be left alone.  The surveillance state, the Gordian knot of bureaucratic laws, and the psychological effects these have on humanity takes this ability away, and it makes the world a more sterile place.  If you know, or even believe, that you are being watched in most moments of every day (imagine all of the technological devices with cameras and audio recorders in them, including your smart phone, computer, tablet, TV, and now even apparently ovens), and you know you're probably guilty of something, do you act differently than if you were not?  I'll let you answer that yourself.  Certainly, control over those cameras is part of this story, and one hopes that privacy remains a virtue in at least some of entrepreneurs designing new devices, however, evidence of compliance by tech companies to governmental access to their devices does not encourage me.

So can free men and women coexist with Big Brother, with the surveillance state and its army of laws, three letter law enforcement agencies, and prosecutors who can prosecute anyone?  Only with courage, and at least some defiance. Do not let your fire go out due to the surveillance storm.  Be free, and fight against the fate of Winston Smith before it is too late.