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We might be forgiven for feeling paranoid about this. But paranoia is actively encouraged by governments or organisations that like to wield complete power over the lives of its citizens. It’s like being brought up Catholic and told that God is watching everything you do, while your conscience constantly patrols what you’re thinking for evidence of inappropriateness. It’s like the chap in Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore who, when I asked him why it was that the train stations were so immaculately free from litter, graffiti and thugs, tapped his head sagely and said: “It’s the policeman who lives in your head.
”GeorgOrwell invented the term “Big Brother” in 1947 when he was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, his classic evocation of a socialist hell in which a government strives to own the minds of its people, as well as change its country’s history as it suits them. According to the novelist and polymath Anthony Burgess, “Big Brother” began with a billboard advertisement that Orwell would have seen during the Second World War an ad for Bennett’s Educational correspondence courses.
It featured a photograph of the kindly-looking proprietor offering prospective clients advice, under the phrase “Let me be your father.” When Mr Bennett died, his son took over the business, employed a photograph of himself looking stern and imposing, and changed the shout line to “Let me be your big brother”. Between this and the memory of the posters of Lord Kitchener from the First World War, pointing a minatory finger at the viewer and intoning the words, “Your Country Needs YOU”, Orwell had his perfect image of benevolent dictatorship of a doctrinaire government telling its subjects that it will run your life for your own good. We might be forgiven for feeling paranoid about this. But paranoia is actively encouraged by governments or organisations that like to wield complete power over the lives of its citizens. It’s like being brought up Catholic and told that God is watching everything you do, while your conscience constantly patrols what you’re thinking for evidence of inappropriateness. It’s like the chap in Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore who, when I asked him why it was that the train stations were so immaculately free from litter, graffiti and thugs, tapped his head sagely and said: “It’s the policeman who lives in your head.”GeorgOrwell invented the term “Big Brother” in 1947 when he was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, his classic evocation of a socialist hell in which a government strives to own the minds of its people, as well as change its country’s history as it suits them. According to the novelist and polymath Anthony Burgess, “Big Brother” began with a billboard advertisement that Orwell would have seen during the Second World War an ad for Bennett’s Educational correspondence courses. It featured a photograph of the kindly-looking proprietor offering prospective clients advice, under the phrase “Let me be your father.” When Mr Bennett died, his son took over the business, employed a photograph of Let me be your father.” When Mr Bennett died, his son took over the business, employed a photograph of Let me be your father.” When Mr Bennett died, his son took over the business, employed a photograph of Let me be your father.” When Mr Bennett died, his son took over the business
