In societies where freedom is expected, few can contemplate a world where their privileges are denied. Imagine a world where criticizing the government while shopping with a friend results in a five year jail sentence because the store owner overheard the conversation. Imagine a journalist writing an editorial and the next day the authorities bang on their door, drag them down to the police station, and torture them for hours. Imagine a friend falling in love and they’re summarily executed because the government disagrees with their sexuality. Imagine a neighbor disappearing one day. No one knows what happened to them and no one dares to ask, because everyone’s terrified. It’s difficult to comprehend such realities when we live in a freedom bubble. But this is someone’s reality, somewhere in the world.

We live in Friedrich Nietzsche’s world where everyone is sheep. We’re programmed by society without realizing it, perpetually living with rose colored glasses manufactured by the powers-that-be. Even freedom has been indoctrinated as a right rather than a privilege. Whether in a repressed society or not, most people live in blissful ignorance. Few question the borders erected before their very eyes, never realizing they’re living out their existence in a cage. These prisons are particularly insidious when the incarceration is psychological. Waking to the awareness that we’re sheep doesn’t change our reality - taking the red pill doesn’t take us out of the matrix. This only gives us self-awareness. At least we know the truth.

Holding on to freedom in its various forms is a fragile endeavor. Only those who were denied basic their rights can attest to its suffering. For those born into privilege, the concept of oppression is an academic discussion relegated to the dinner table. We’re incapable of contemplating the horrors of persecution until we’re living it. By that time it’s too late.

It’s been 76 years since “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” was published in 1948, prompted by the atrocities of the Second World War. That same year George Orwell wrote “1984”. His dystopian magnum opus seems more relevant today than ever before. Three generations have passed since the end of the second world war and we now live in a society that has forgotten the past. Decades of prosperity and technological advancement has made us complacent to an unimaginable alternative. We’re destined to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors if we’re oblivious to their mistakes. For this reason, it’s vitally important that we wake up to our surroundings and not take freedom for granted. Our basic human rights need to be protected. They’re fragile and should to be treated as such. Attempts to incrementally remove our civil liberties have the consequence of cascading with a momentum that will be irreversible.

It’s easy to extinguish a single flame when we act quickly, but an entire nation is needed to prevent a country from burning to the ground.