Strong disagreement here! 1984 was about an opiated, programmed masses. Everyone was heads down, keeping to themselves in that world, doing as they were told, receptive. It was the ultimate spectator culture. Subservience was required, radical participation, radical inclusivity (thinking of others) was not.

You might be scared of strong messaging- a common thema to both scenarios- but the messages are about as opposite as it gets: RECEIVE versus BE.

Since being a school kid, I have felt that a lot of the world keeps a very very very strong filter up. They don't engage, they don't see most of the world around them, they selectively pick & choose a very limited part of the world to acknowledge & engage in. It's taken me a long long time to see & acknowledge how scary the world can be, to learn to empathize with how burdensome the outside world is, how infrequently being non-spectator & being receptive & engaged is rewarded, how usually slim those rewards are.

In many ways, there's a bit of a tragedy, especially in cities, where engaged people too often are not entirely well, not entirely kind, are not just engaged or interested benevolently but angling to attention, up to something.

I still really prefer a world where we can be heads up, aware of each other, aware of the world about us, casually participatory with each other as we go about. It's such a waste of personage, of society, when people keep to themselves, wrap themselves in their tight knit world, shut themselves off to the world: radical participation seems like such a natural expectation, such a natural way for each of us to be ante-ing in, a little bit, to the world we inhabit. Inclusivity to not tune each other out. But alas, yes, there is also quite the din in the world, many visible & worse & more dangerously many not obviously apparent unpleasant noisemakers out there, good reasons to just go about quietly, on your way, staying in your own world.