Proles

"In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous ; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them very little."

1984 Chapter 7
I just looked at this through new eyes. The "proles" are the proletariat, a citizen of the lowest class. In the world of 1984, they were the underbelly, those not even worth worrying about because they could be controlled so easily. When I saw this, I wondered if the book was true in some sense.

If you strain out the multi-millionaires and government employees and those in power, you get a distinct and sometimes disregarded (especially by some in leadership) group of people who don't really care much about how things happen as long as they don't mess with their status quo very much. As long as I'm doing all right, it doesn't really matter what happens four doors down, much less on the other side of this big blue and green ball we live on. You could take this one paragraph and swap out very few words and perfectly describe a lot of life in the United States right now. Hardly 10% of the entire population votes in any election, meaning out of a country of 300 million, 30 million are deciding who will be in office. When special elections come up for state constitution amendments even less show up. That's just one example, and it is fresh because the elections just happened. But it's just something that made me stop and think. Another quote from the book...

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."