Actionable Steps to Keep Power in the Hands of the ‘Proles’
George Orwell’s “1984” is commonly known as a parable for the dangers of totalitarian government. “Big Brother” is a term often thrown around these days in describing our current government. It almost seems that we have reached the amount of surveillance that Winston was wary of.
However, the lesson from Winston that stuck with me the most is that the working class “proles” were more powerful than they perceived themselves to be. The ability that they had to regain power from the power structures that be.
“But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning.” (Orwell, “1984”)
If there has been any shred of positivity from 2020 and early 2021, it has been the illumination that the common people have wakened to the power that they have. We see this awakening in the Black Lives Matter marches from the summer to the highest voter turnout in this year’s election, and even the idea that a group of Redditer’s could screw over powerful hedge funds.
All of these significant movements have one thing in common: the mass mobilization through social media, an alternative to the standard top-down structure of media that has been in place for decades.
It has given rise to horizontal communication that gives possibilities of counter-power, as University of Southern California sociologist Manuel Castells puts it: “The capacity by social actors to challenge and eventually change the power relations institutionalized in society” (Castells, 248). Without these new platforms, it was much harder for people to make the structural changes needed for social justice initiatives.
However, we are on the brink of losing this power because of our inability to keep social media from controlling our lives.
The Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, opened many minds when former creators of the social platforms warned that the sites may be too dangerously addicting for our own good. In the film, Roger McNamee, a venture-capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook, tells us we are in a fight against AI that knows everything about us while we know nothing about it — “That is an unfair fight”.
While most of the film backs up this argument, that social media is almost too dangerous for its own good, we are given actionable steps from some of the platforms’ creators to keep ourselves from being enveloped by addiction and disinformation.
- Turning off notifications that aren’t pertinent
- Before sharing “news”, fact check it yourself, do the extra google search
- Like many of the platforms’ creators themselves choose to do, don’t give these addicting devices to your children
- Have devices out of bedrooms by a fixed time
- Work out a time budget with yourself to determine how much time you really want to spend on social media that you think is a good amount of time.
We must be reminded of the great power of social media. As Castells puts it, “the emergence of mass self-communication offers an extraordinary medium for social movements and rebellious individuals to build their autonomy and confront the institutions of society in their own terms and around their own projects” (249).
He later expands “it appears that without the means and ways of mass self-communication, the new movements and new forms of insurgent politics could not be conceived” (249). These are extremely powerful tools that have brought rise to many important movements.
We must be mindful of our power as the “proles” of today. Because if we don’t take these actionable steps and end up getting wrapped up in the trivial elements of social media, we will be wasting a great tool for societal change.
