Awesome Reddit comment by api
Seen on reddit.com:
You’re raised Christian, and you rebel by taking up “anti-Christianity.” You dress in black, you do drugs, you listen to “Satanic” music, etc.
This is, of course, just the flip side of the Christian coin. Emmanuel Goldstein was a creation of the Party, remember? Satan is a creation of Christianity and Christian culture, as is the faux Satanist rebellion cult that uses this imagery.
Then they “get it out of their system” and run back to Jesus with lots of horrific stories– some of them true– about how they screwed their life up by rebelling. That’s because Emmanuel Goldstein is a bird-dog; his purpose is to link rebellion to irrational and insane things. In the case of anti-Christianity, those things are drug abuse, self-destructive hedonism, and bad fashion. Those things are meant to herd you back into the fold. That burnt-out empty feeling after rebelling is the barking of the sheep dog.
To truly rebel, you have to discover rational morality, moderation, real philosophy, and real individual inner spirituality. Very few people ever do that. We have a whole culture set up to market fake rebellion.
You have to break the record, not play it backwards (emphasis mine).
So, so true
