Memory

While reading this horrifying story of George Orwell, as a middle-age man brought up by the colonial education, I could understand the worry and confusion faced by Winston Smith.

To begin with, there is always a vague memory of the old days and old system that we used to live with. Alas, now, we are not having a better system. In contrast, we are repeatedly being reassured that the things we are seeing are the same as the one we used to have, say, twenty or thirty years ago. (It is in its own a curious objective when a people refuse to improve, which always involve some difference, but insist to remain unchanged.) Each time, when a regulation is breached or a rule is modified, we are told that the rule is not new but has always been the same - although rather often we need to seek someone higher up to clarify the interpretation.

And, our memory is failing us. History study is ridiculed. Like the Department of Truth, our government is actively wiping off everything that triggers the memory of the colonial days. The portrait of the queen vanished and becomes the logo of bauhinia. Royal turned into People's. Nothing seemed to have happened in this fishing village for 100 years, and, according to the textbook of our children, the place suddenly became a metropolis and returned to its mother country in 1997. That's why by 2046, nothing would have changed, because no one would actually remember what this place was like fifty years ago.

As to the few who happen to believe they remember, their memory must be wrong.

They would be taken care of at room 101.