Dystopia is Here

The past is the present is the future

Haruki Murakami, the writer who not only mesmerizes us with his style of writing and imagination but also by the mention of the little snippets of sound bites from great pieces of classical music or sometimes of pop music of the era mentioned in the book. I don’t read Murakami only for the surreal use of music as a metaphor for characters' emotional state but also for his imaginative and weird characters, their love for cats and the bizarre situation they get themselves involved into, all filled with raw emotions echoing in my head through his words. Presently as I am more than half way through with his magnum opus called ‘1Q84’, I came across the usual elements of his books, lots of sex obviously, but the term that caught my attention, which I knew I had read somewhere before, in some other weird literary dimension. As the characters in the 1Q84 were busy basking in the glory of their own creation, the author accused them to be guilty of that exact term - 

Thought Crime. 

The term in itself might be pretty self explanatory and something that I would associate with a dystopian future where human race was on brink of extinction and the technology was so advanced that the remainder of the human kind could deal in thoughts, make a business out of it - Legal and/or Illegal.

Imagining the very idea that any of our thoughts would be openly available for audits and monitoring and then be deemed as acceptable or otherwise, sent a chill down my spine, or to be honest, the chill was from the ice tea that I was drinking, but to that same effect. As soon as the term ‘Dystopia’ popped into my head, my mind wandered to another book of a famous literary genius - 

1984 by George Orwell

It is in that book that I first saw the term ‘Thought Crime’.

1984 ———> 1Q84 , sneaky ode to the genius, Mr. Murakami.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” ― George Orwell, 1984

The book by Murakami is a strenuous read, over 900 pages of sheer brilliance engulfed in lost characters, over described to an extreme with few loose ends left untied. It is not a complain but just an observation when you read 900 odd pages, all the while aching for the mystery to be unfolded not knowing which character to root for, which one to hate. In such a huge book, for a term to stand out is unique and I thought to myself, crime against thoughts, are we there yet or is that best left to dystopian future?

During these testing times that we are dealing with , I guess crime against thoughts is the least of our concerns. In fact the times are such that the people are hell bent on sharing every little thought that pops in their head and event happening in their lives. Every idea or thought is an excuse to be presented and be visible to the general population of the inter web world. In these over sharing times, we won’t need any kind of Orwellian Think Police to surveil, detect and punish the thought criminals, we will be more than happy to surrender ourselves through the oceans of data that we are creating, essentially an after effect of thoughts themselves. Amazingly, at the time when these books were written, precisely 60 years apart, the authors set the premise to be as imaginative and as dystopian as possibly they could think of, I imagine, yet the times are such we couldn’t be more closer to becoming thought criminals, given the recent turn of events and the positive awakening of the masses. As it was in the yesteryears where rejection of an ideology was more than frowned upon, in the year 2020, the very idea of thought crime isn’t that dystopian but a mere byproduct of the idolatry culture that we have managed to cultivate for ourselves. 

“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.” ― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

As Murakami plays with the concept of multiple worlds in the book, not visibly distinguishable but only through each other’s perspective. The recent struggles duly feel similar to those of the characters in his books, a moral struggle of an artist, balancing his talents with responsibility, an almost vigilante for hire who longs for the artist while stuck in a world with two moons, all mixed up in a cause that neither of them created or could end but in a way trying to play their part, as honestly as they can and hoping to make a difference.

If only we had awareness and time to look up into the night sky, notice the moon or for some , the moons.