The War on Intuition and Empathy: How 1984 Isn’t Just Fiction Anymore

We are living in a moment that George Orwell once warned about, a world where truth becomes negotiable and empathy is increasingly framed as weakness. In 1984, Orwell did not simply imagine a government that controlled information. He described a system that trained people to distrust their own senses, silence their moral instincts, and surrender their inner authority to external power. Only when individuals abandoned their capacity for independent thought and emotional truth did tyranny become effortless to maintain. Orwell’s warning was never just about politics. It was about the slow, calculated erosion of human intuition, empathy, and critical thinking. In Oceania, citizens were conditioned to reject their own lived experience in favor of official narratives. They were taught to trust the state over their own eyes and conscience, and to view compassion as a threat to social order rather than its foundation. Emotional authenticity was replaced with ideological obedience. Moral discernment was traded for compliance. The Party’s greatest victory was not surveillance or censorship, but psychological conditioning. People learned to doubt what they felt, suppress what they knew, and accept contradictions without resistance. Over time, they stopped asking whether something was true and focused only on whether it was approved. That dystopian dynamic is no longer confined to fiction. It is unfolding around us. Long before I ever taught spiritual practice or intuitive development, I was a high school English teacher. Books like 1984 weren’t just part of a curriculum to me, they lived in my psyche. I watched teenagers wrestle with Orwell’s ideas about power, truth, and psychological control, and I watched some of them begin to recognize those patterns in the real world. Even then, it was clear that the novel wasn’t primarily about politics. It was about consciousness. It was about what happens when human beings lose trust in their inner voice. Looking back now, I see how deeply that work shaped me. It laid the foundation for everything I do today. Teaching literature was my first doorway into teaching discernment, intuition, and emotional awareness. My work as a spiritual guide did not replace that path, it grew directly from it. The same questions remain at the center: How do we stay awake? How do we stay human? How do we protect our inner truth in a world that constantly pressures us to abandon it? Across the United States, we are witnessing a cultural environment that increasingly rewards conformity over conscience and reaction over reflection. Short-form video and algorithm-driven media train us to crave instant stimulation rather than sustained thought. Attention spans shrink, nuance disappears, and complex ideas are flattened into memes and outrage clips. We are being conditioned to react emotionally while thinking less and less critically. At the same time, public education struggles under political pressure, underfunding, and systems that prioritize standardized testing over genuine inquiry. Many students graduate without the tools to question narratives, evaluate evidence, or empathize across difference. Political tribalism fills the void. Instead of asking whether something is right, many people ask only whether it aligns with their “side.” Loyalty becomes more important than integrity. Discernment becomes dangerous. People become stupid. Perhaps most disturbing is the growing rhetoric, including from some self-described religious nationalists, that empathy is a weakness. Compassion is framed as softness. Care for the vulnerable is portrayed as naïve. Yet this directly contradicts the teachings they claim to follow. Christ’s life was built on radical compassion for the poor, the stranger, the sick, and the marginalized. To reject empathy while claiming spiritual authority is not strength. It is moral confusion and straight-up gaslighting. These patterns are no longer abstract. They appear in our headlines and in our communities. Federal immigration enforcement actions have led to fatal shootings involving U.S. citizens. Children have been detained alongside their parents and transported far from home. Families have been shattered under the language of “law and order.” Each incident is framed as necessary, procedural, or justified. Over time, repeated exposure dulls public outrage. What once would have shocked the conscience becomes another passing story. This is exactly the psychological terrain Orwell warned about. In 1984, citizens were trained not merely to obey, but to stop trusting their own emotional responses. They were taught to feel what they were told to feel and ignore what their conscience whispered. When people lose confidence in their inner moral compass, they become dependent on external authority for meaning, truth, and permission. The call to “question everything” echoes across spiritual and philosophical traditions, from the Buddha to Socrates to Jefferson....