When George Orwell wrote his legendary novel “1984” he might and might not have expected that it could apply not only to authoritarian regimes but to democracies as well.  Even though this novel was written in 1949 almost three-quarters of a century ago, it has formed the idea of the “Big Brother” who knows better than you as an ordinary citizen. He knows what is best for you and you have to follow. He also makes sure that you don’t have another opinion or even shouldn’t have, shouldn’t think of having another one. Despite that most of the analysis of the novel goes in the direction of being mainly describing the Soviet Union at that time and or the authoritarian regimes in general, I think that the idea is much more than that.

The Big Brother is everywhere even in democratic countries.  Especially when you see what is taking place right now in many countries and the deterioration of freedom. The Big Brother owes the narrative through media and formal information channels, he directs and forms the cognitive mind. The Big Brother in democratic countries will not tell you directly what to do but he will use different methods like enforcing new laws that have no legal foundation but a moral one or subjective means like protecting secularism or values of democracy. Subjective broad terms with many definitions that could be understood differently.

There is no doubt that the system of Big Brother in democratic countries is being challenged due to the existence of new streams not under his control that started to affect the formation of the cognitive mind. So, instead of offering more space for people to express their differences, democratic countries’ Big Brother wanted more control over these streams or would ban them.

I think no one can deny that democracy is the best-governing regime now but there is much literature out there that talks about the backsliding of democracy. But what I hoped for when a system is being challenged is to open the public sphere more to allow people to express their differences, views, and fears and to challenge one another with words and discussion. We are not going to invent something new; we only need to go back to the dialectical method.