Little Big Brother

Posted on February 2, 2004
Filed Under Journal, Society |

I recently found that logging had been enabled on the instant messaging service used within my workplace. The basics of this are due to the belief that the system is abused by the workers. That too much communication between colleagues as well as friends and family that are outside of the workplace takes place. So the answer put forward was to monitor and record all conversations that take place on this service without the users knowledge.

The issue above is but a small aspect of a much larger matter. Throughout the world we are coming under ever increasing surveillance; through the use of various electronic systems. Now whether these systems are here to protect us, or whether they are here to control us is not an issue that needs be discussed here. However it can be generally accepted that regardless of the “truth” of the claim, such systems are gaining themselves a reputation by an ever increasing portion of the public. That is “Big Brother”.

I do not seek to refute or sustain such claims; rather I would take a different perspective on the issues of censorship and control that these situations always seem to raise.

Now ethical, moral and legal issues aside, censorship (whether through control or invisible monitoring) is without doubt a problem. The so-called Big Brother issue takes that further, especially if and when such control is enforced to maintain ignorance. The ignorance I refer to here would be that which stifles communication of ideas and thoughts that exist outside of contemporary pre-described belief systems.

But let us take a look away from those that are monitored, this sort of censorship is largely irrelevant to them within the parameters of a day to day life. That is to say, it only affects them so long as they are concerned about their materialistic status. So instead, let’s take a look at the affect this has on those that request and use such policies.

The ultimate conclusion of censorship is that it halts change. In this case – it is claimed - people obviously do not want change, because with continuous change, control becomes difficult to impossible. Interestingly this whole attitude towards the concept of change is odd in itself. The mind isn’t static, it isn’t constant. Ideas come and go, thought floats about aimlessly at times. In that manner the mind creates events, both linear and non-linear. In the simple process of thinking, change itself arises.

However, it has become human nature to go against the nature of the mind; to create a paradoxical conflict. People generally do not like change; we fight against it, and try to hold fast to ideas, concepts, beliefs and styles of life. In so doing we give birth to the concept of death, for it is only within a mind that fights change that death of ideas is possible.

These people that use any system for a means of control…these enforcers of censorship, fear change, they fear the expression of new forms, and new ideas. Simply because such change shatters the bondage they hold, it shatters their control and their illusions. It brings the death of their worldview. And if they are such that they hold onto these worldviews as if the views are life itself, then such change brings death to their minds.

Here we see an old pattern arise again and again. Those that seek to control don’t destroy those they subjugate, rather, they destroy themselves. The evolution of the mind can only come if one is free of fear. To be free of fear one must not fight change, but rather realise it is a part of our very nature. It is that which defines us. Only when we release our grip on the things that we hold onto can we become free of them. But more than that, only when we do so can our mind become free. Free to accept change, free to exist within our own nature.

Free to evolve into that which we are capable of becoming.

Ultimately, with this understanding it becomes eminently clear that these “controllers” are harming themselves rather than the people they seek to control. And those that become controlled only do so through their own free will. Those that would work within the confines of the settings that the controllers put down, padlock their own minds. Contrary to contemporary belief…the problems of the Big Brother phenomenon do not lie within the realms of lost freedoms. Rather the phenomenon conditions in us the descent to self-destruction.

Conditioning of the mind only occurs when individuals give way to physical pressures around them. In the context we are discussing here; the physical only has bearing on an individual if and when they allow it to (either consciously or unconsciously).

It is all too easy to always believe that any system makes an individual a part of something larger, that in effect we become part of a larger machine, part of a community, or a society or a corporation. The truth we must realise though is that each of us are entirely on our own…our minds are singular. The tangled web of control is an illusion weaved to be perceived as a Big Brother, when in fact he is little more than an irrelevant forgotten invisible friend.

Marcus - 2004