Remembering 1984: or Not....

Since 1984, while working on their Animal Farm, the Owners, Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Orwell, have been raising Sheople. For the most part, Sheople are docile, productive farm animals. The Farmers were determined, however, to control their natural instinct to roam.

The Animal Farmers learned how to control the Sheople by finding a comfortable place in their environment and providing cheap, gratuitous entertainment. The Sheople couldn’t resist it and began to line up every day to be entertained. 

Once they were coming every day, the Farmers put a fence down one side of the place where they got their daily dose of escapism.  When the Sheople got used to the fence, they resumed looking at their entertainment, and the Farmers put up another side of the fence.  After a while the Sheople got used to that and went back to their escapist TV, video games/porno movies/ music, etc.  Eventually, the Farmers had all four sides of their little world fenced up with a gate in the last side.  

The Sheople, who were mesmerized and addicted to the entertainment, started to come through the gate to get more of it. Suddenly, the Farmers slammed the gate on them and caught the whole generation of Sheople farm animals by surprise. 

Suddenly the poor Sheople had lost their freedom. They looked at each other in disbelief. They screamed at each other, each blaming the other for ‘not paying attention.’

For the next several years, they ran around and around inside the fence, extremely frustrated, as they could see all kinds of interesting things outside of their fence, but the gate remained locked. They bitched and moaned, but they were caught. 

They had sacrificed their freedom for simple pleasures.

Soon they went back to entertaining themselves on mind-numbing alcohol, sex and morbid electronic media. Their anger increased and they grew mentally and physically unhealthy because of their reckless self indulgence, so the Farmers offered them drug therapy to help them feel better.

Eventually, the Sheople became so used to their routines that they had forgotten how to think for themselves.

Meanwhile, through that same entertainment media, the Farmers continually reminded the Sheople of how lucky they were to have keepers who understood and felt their pain.

Now, in 2014, the Sheople have accepted their fate and really believe they are better off in captivity, because it is ‘too hard’ to live in freedom…and, they are quite satisfied because their brains and their ambition have atrophied.

Amazing, isn’t it, in only 30 years since the last ‘New World’, thanks to the benevolent keepers at the Animal Farm, we all live in a Whole New World!