If you actually stop and ask, “Okay, what’s the closest thing we’ve ever had to 1984 in real life?” the usual answers come up right away. Nazi Germany. Stalin’s USSR. Mao’s China. And sure, all of those matter. But North Korea is probably the closest thing we’ve got right now. Not just because it’s brutal, but because it’s thorough. It doesn’t just control behavior; it tries to control thought, movement, loyalty—everything.
Over there, independent thinking isn’t just frowned upon. It literally doesn’t fit into the system. If you’re the kind of person who insists on thinking for yourself—especially if you’re stubborn or openly defiant—you’re basically forced into a corner. Either you learn to suppress that part of yourself completely, or you deal with serious consequences. There’s no safe space for dissent, no “agree to disagree.” Even private doubt has to be buried and carefully managed. And the most telling part? You can’t just leave. Leaving is a crime. There are no study-abroad programs, no travel for fun, no “I just want to see the world.” Trying to get out isn’t treated as moving—it’s treated as betrayal. Feels eerie.
When you look at it that way, the rest of the world almost feels like one big country by comparison. Not literally, obviously. Borders still exist. Passports and visas are real, and they can be a pain. But the key difference is that movement isn’t criminalized. Crossing borders usually means paperwork, not moral judgment. If you want to leave your country and live somewhere else, neither your home government nor the new one automatically treats you like you’ve done something wrong.
A huge part of why this feels normal now is the internet. For most of the world, there’s a shared online space. Same platforms, same conversations, same arguments, same memes. People collaborate, work, learn, and build identities in spaces that don’t really care what passport you hold. That creates a kind of global continuity that just didn’t exist before—and still doesn’t exist in places like North Korea, where access to shared reality itself is tightly controlled.
From my perspective—especially as someone who thinks of themselves in pretty global terms—most informed people would push back hard on the idea that they’re “owned” by their state. The state is usually seen as a tool: something that represents a group of people and is supposed to work for them. And if it’s not doing a good job, you’re allowed to complain. You’re allowed to push back. And, if it comes to it, you’re allowed to leave and try your luck with another government somewhere else. That’s not treason; it’s just opting out. Like going out of walmart to try target.
That said, I don’t think this way of thinking is the default for most people—even if it’s becoming more common, especially among gen Z (I'm a Zillenial myself). In a lot of places, national identity runs deep. If you’re from country M, being “M-ian” is often treated as part of who you are, not just where you live. That idea gets baked in early—through school, media, traditions, flags, sports, all of it. And most people never really stop to question it. But it’s not intrinsic. It’s inherited. Constructed and fictional. And actually noticing that takes effort. Deciding whether you even want to keep that identity or remove it takes even more effort.
To see things this way, you kind of have to pull apart concepts people usually mash together. The state. The country. The nation. The state is basically a service provider. The country is the physical area where that service operates. And the nation is the story—the cultural and symbolic narrative that gets wrapped around everything to create loyalty and cohesion. States love blending those together because it makes authority feel natural. But culture isn’t owned by the state. It’s something people can adopt or leave—often after a mountain of paperwork—or walk away from if they want.
And honestly, the land itself isn’t the problem. The culture that grows out of it isn’t either. That stuff is what makes the world interesting in the first place. The problem only starts when institutions claim they own who you are, how you think, or where you’re allowed to go. Being able to separate those things—to see states as temporary arrangements, identities as optional, and leaving as legitimate—that’s the real difference between an open world and something that starts looking uncomfortably Orwellian.