Years ago, many people were very dependent upon horses for transportation and farm work. Horses were expensive, and so the buyer needed to make sure the new horse was in good health. If the horse was sick, the success of the farm could be in jeopardy. 

Prospective horse buyers would examine the animal's teeth. The condition of the teeth was a reliable way to determine the age and overall health of the horse. This examination helped protect the buyer from buying a bad horse.

In a flagrantly glaring display of irony, the UK’s University of Northampton is taking censorship and wokeness to caricaturish new levels by slapping a trigger warning on none other than George Orwell’s classic, dystopian novel, 1984, seeking to spare sensitive students from unwitting exposure to “explicit material.” 

Said “explicit material” is the story of a dystopian future world controlled by thought police, where language is redefined, former events and people are “memory holed,” and history is rewritten to suit the narrative of the ever watchful Big Brother. Truth is no longer objective. In fact, truth (or what used to be recognized as truth) is Public Enemy Number One, and must be hidden from the masses at all costs. 

It is to this novel that this bastion of re-education education has slapped its stamp of censorship -- woke culture’s most prolifically used mark of impending danger – the trigger warning.

This is nothing short of dystopian life, imitating dystopian art, imitating dystopian life. So close to current events have the themes of this sci-fi classic come, that putting a trigger warning on it is like putting a trigger warning on a mirror. Don’t look! You might see reality!

In response to criticism, a spokesman for the university said:

“While it is not university policy, we may warn students of content in relation to violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse and suicide. In these circumstances, we explain to applicants as part of the recruitment process that their course will include some challenging texts. This is reinforced by tutors as they progress through their programme of studies. We are aware some texts might be challenging for some students and have accounted for this when developing our courses.”

Studies have shown that if you blindfold a man and ask him to walk in a straight line, he will start out well but will soon begin to turn one way or another, looping around in ever tightening circles. It is a phenomenon that has been demonstrated over and over again: without a fixed reference point we cannot keep a straight line.

The strange thing is that it feels like we're walking in a straight line. But we begin to loop and curve erratically – without ever knowing it. We need a fixed point to walk a straight line.

Robert Kulwich, for NPR, observes, "Without a corrective, our insides take over and there's something inside us that won't stay straight."

[Studies of this phenomenon appear in Chris McManus' book, Right Hand, Left Hand, The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures (Phoenix, 2002).]