I didn’t know I was a Border Collie or a Rottweiler. Or a pig. Or a horse. Or a sheep. Or hens, perhaps. I thought I was the reader. I thought I was above it all, just got done dissecting the story like I was outside of it, clever enough to spot manipulation, strong enough to never fall for it, and kind enough to never cause it. But I’ve been every single animal. I’ve worked myself to death for people who saw me as disposable, convinced that loyalty made me noble. I’ve stayed silent when I should’ve screamed and repeated what I was told because it was easier than thinking. I’ve twisted the truth to protect myself. I’ve watched people suffer and felt a flicker of guilt, then moved on. I’ve wanted power, and I’ve justified wanting it. I’ve believed I was better than others and used that to feel good about doing nothing. This isn’t a story I’m analyzing; it’s a cycle I’m part of, a mirror I’m staring into, and the scariest part is that I still don’t know who I’ll become if I’m ever given a little more comfort, a little more power, or a little more applause. Maybe I’ll be different. Or maybe I’ll oink too.
In a world this full, it makes sense we all wear different hats: a surgeon who steadies trembling hands to mend broken limbs, an astronomer who traces constellations in cold observatories, and a muralist who splashes color onto brick walls to capture grief too heavy for words. That’s the beauty of it. But like in anything, there is a catch. You can’t live your life so specialized, so focused on being the best at what you do, that you forget to look up. We are born into a world already spinning with systems older than our ancestors. Education, politics, science, and culture are all arranged like a grand chessboard we never agreed to play on. And still, we move our pieces. We serve systems we’ve never studied. I used to think I was too young, too distant, and too science-bound to be political. I told myself I was just trying to do good work. But I never asked who I was doing it for. I didn’t stop to wonder who was harmed in the making of my opportunity. I turned a blind eye and called it focus. But everything is political. Ignore your roots, and you risk becoming like Napoleon’s dogs: trained from puppyhood to snap on command, muscles honed to guard a regime that sees them as tools, not kin. Remember how those dogs, once innocent, turned into shadows enforcing a tyranny they never questioned, so loyal they bit down on those who once fed them.No, you don’t have to memorize the politics of every nation or the history of every war. You must, however, know your history: the cracked photographs of ancestors who toiled under sun and storm, the whispers of battles lost and won, and the hard-won freedoms etched in stone and sweat. You must know your place, not as a blind heir but as a deliberate architect of your future. I remember we once laughed when Kamala Harris stood on that stage and said, “You didn’t fall from a coconut tree,” but really, you did not. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and came before you.” You are not random. You are not rootless. So no, my refusal to study physics as a biologist because it’s not my field isn’t the same as refusing to be socially conscious. Since I exist because someone fought for me to exist. And if I don’t know that, someone else will tell me who I am. And it won’t be the truth. That’s why Animal Farm matters. A question I have for this piece is for those of us who strive to be exceptional: we might be elite at our craft, faithful to our purpose, and loyal to our calling. But what if that craft is in the service of a system that harms more than it heals? What if greatness itself is a hollow virtue when nested in a broken world?
Let’s go back to Napoleon. Napoleon is a pig. The pigs are the smartest of the animals and the ones who started the revolution, the one that freed all the animals from the hand of their oppressor, the man. Napoleon led it alongside his colleague Snowball. But even in the early days of the rebellion, Napoleon was already making moves to become what they had just overthrown. He took the puppies of one of the most loyal dogs, Jessie, and said it was to “educate” them. In reality, he raised them in secret to become his private security force. Guard dogs. Once the farm was theirs, Napoleon wanted control—not shared, not democratic, not for the animals. Just his. He had the brains, but he needed muscle. The dogs became his hands. A good guard dog is alert, confident, and trainable. Loyal. Protective of its people and property. And make no mistake, they were excellent at their jobs. They didn’t just protect Napoleon; they made his rule possible. They enforced it and expanded it. They helped build the very thing they were taught to fear. In another world, they’d be heroes. But in Orwell’s allegory, they serve tyranny. Not because they were evil. Because they were useful. They didn’t ask who they were protecting. They just did the job well. And that’s the part that gets me. Because if you're brilliant in a corrupt system—skilled, loyal, indispensable—are you fixing it or just helping it run more efficiently? And then there’s Jessie.She isn’t just a character; she’s a tragedy written in lowercase. She gave birth to her own people’s downfall. Her puppies, the ones Napoleon raised in secret, the guard dogs that enforced his regime. And yet, Jessie didn’t stop him. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. But the silence still stings, like a slow poison in a family dinner where nobody speaks the truth. Power doesn’t always storm the gates with swords; sometimes it wraps you in velvet chains, calling control “protection,” making you lower your guard in the name of “care.” There’s something quietly devastating in that. Because if you don’t raise your children, the system will. If you don’t shape their conscience, someone else will shape their obedience. Jessie didn’t raise her pups. Napoleon did. He took them young, isolated them, trained them, fed them ideology instead of truth, and turned them into weapons. Isn’t that how it happens in real life? Hate passed down like heirlooms—from whispered slurs in playgrounds to lessons in silence at dinner tables. Racism is inked in textbooks that erase whole people. Violence is learned in neighborhoods where fear is a daily language, each generation shaping the next with scars and stories.
That’s what Animal Farm reminds me of: not everyone who nurtures you is your ally. Like the colonizer who taught “civilization” while erasing your culture, or the family member whose love came with conditions that clipped your wings. Some who feed your body starve your soul, offering crumbs of comfort while keeping you hungry for truth. You might grow up thinking the pigs are your people because they gave you food, rules, and “education.” But your real people? Your real people are the ones who fought for your right to exist in the first place. The ones whose stories were never written down but live in your bones anyway. That’s why memory matters. That’s why history matters. You need to know who raised you, not just biologically but ideologically. Who taught you what’s right? Who made you believe that protecting power was the same as protecting truth? Because if you don’t ask those questions, you’ll end up a well-trained dog in a corrupt system—fighting your own people, thinking you’re doing good, when you’re really just performing obedience someone else rehearsed for you.There’s a particular tragedy in greatness that’s built on discipline but blind to awareness. Boxer in Animal Farm embodies that tragedy perfectly: the ideal worker, the loyal citizen who bears the heaviest burden of the revolution, and yet never tastes its rewards. His strength becomes his weakness; his loyalty, his death sentence. He builds the windmill. He builds the farm. He believes in the pigs even as his body breaks down, and when he’s no longer useful, they don’t just discard him; they sell him for profit. That, more than anything, terrifies me. To be so good at what you do, so strong, disciplined, and selfless, only to become a cog in a machine built to use you and then throw you away. But Boxer wasn’t weak. He wasn’t lazy. He simply wasn’t educated. The pigs, on the other hand, stayed quiet, learned to read, mastered language and symbols, and used that knowledge to manipulate the system while Boxer broke his back in the fields. That’s why education matters. Awareness matters. Because if you’re not building for yourself, you’re building for someone else. If you don’t understand the system you serve, your body just becomes part of its foundation. The pigs knew that. The dogs protected it. Boxer upheld it and died by it.
And that’s where my questions begin. What’s the point of being “the best”? The best what, and for whom? The “best guard dog” is still a tool owned by whoever controls the farm. The “best surgeon” and the “best scientist”—without knowing the system you serve, your excellence can be twisted into a weapon used against others or even yourself. That’s the real fear: becoming excellent but not free. And the sheep—oh, don’t get me started on the sheep; they make it all possible and more sickening. They don’t question. They echo. They repeat the slogans and drown out thought. "Four legs good, two legs bad." Then later, "Four legs good, two legs better." No hesitation. No reflection. Just repetition. They are the noise that silences resistance. Water itself is life-giving, not scary. But water becomes powerful—and terrifying—when it moves together, when drops adhere and swell into a sea, an ocean. The sheep are like that water’s illusion: numbers that seem united but only reinforce the hierarchy. They don’t need to understand power to uphold it. They just need to believe and repeat. And that’s what makes them dangerous. Because sometimes, evil doesn’t shout; it chants. We have all been the sheep at one point—repeating what we were told because thinking for ourselves feels too heavy. Too many problems, too many uncomfortable truths. So we close the door, sing the songs, and let someone else handle the reckoning.
Not everyone on the farm is Boxer, loyal to the bone. Not everyone is Jessie, caught in the tragedy of losing what matters most. Some choose to be Mollie. The ones who disappear when things get hard. The ones who won’t pick a side unless it feeds their ego and sugar cubes their pride. She’s not unintelligent; in fact, Mollie might be the most clear-eyed of them all. She knows the pigs are taking over, she knows rebellion is unstable, and she makes a calculated choice: I will go where I am wanted. I will sell myself to whoever gives me the most. And isn’t that a type of survival, too? To float through systems without resisting them, without questioning them, because they’ve never harmed you directly? Mollie doesn’t fight, but she doesn’t suffer either. She doesn’t win liberation; she trades it for comfort. That’s what makes Mollie dangerous in a quiet, insidious way. She’ll never challenge power, because she doesn’t care who holds it. She just wants to be on the winning team. And if the pigs are winning, then so be it. She’ll defect for a better room and a little praise. Mollies won’t betray you out of hatred; they’ll do it because they don’t see the point in loyalty to a cause. They don’t see why they should suffer for ideals. They weren’t taught to be this way; they chose it. And in a world built on exploitation, sometimes the scariest person is the one who refuses to care.
And then there’s Benjamin. Oh, dear Benjamin. He’s no fool. He’s no naive believer. He’s painfully aware. That’s what makes him so hard to place and so devastating. He could read. He could think. He saw through it all. And yet… he did nothing. He doesn’t believe in rebellion. He doesn’t believe in change. He doesn't believe in hope. He watches everything fall apart—the commandments, the farm, and the animals—and his only response is, "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey." Meaning: he’s seen this before. He’ll see it again. Systems rise; systems fall. Nothing changes. Interestingly, the moment that defines him is Boxer’s final betrayal. When Boxer is injured and the van comes, Benjamin reads the writing on the side. He realizes it’s not a hospital; it’s the glue factory. And only then does he start yelling, screaming, and running. But it’s too late. The others can’t read or don’t believe him. And Boxer is gone. Why didn’t he speak sooner? Maybe he thought no one would listen. Maybe he thought it wouldn’t matter. Maybe he wanted to survive. To me, Benjamin is the intellectual who stays on the sidelines. The one who knows too much to be hopeful and is too scared to be brave. He’s the scholar who watches the world burn with a quiet “I told you so.” And maybe, maybe, that’s even worse than the sheep. Because what is knowledge without action? What is truth without courage?
In a way, I feel like most of us are Benjamin, too. We think we’re too young, too powerless to fight the system. We see the lies, the cracks, and the injustice—and feel like nothing we say or do can change it. So we carry that weight silently, every day. Benjamin didn’t fail because he was wrong—he failed because he was right and still stayed silent. I think our generation, myself included, of course, is deeply haunted by the question, what is it all for? They say, “Do it for your legacy. Leave a mark.” But legacies are curated. History is written by those in power and, often, those with the privilege to tell the story. For every name etched into textbooks, there are thousands erased. And even if you are remembered—so what? You won’t be here to feel it. Legacy isn’t immortality; it’s just a footnote until someone edits the page. We say, maybe it’s not about impact; it’s about happiness. But we aren’t happy. Not sustainably. Maybe it’s about curiosity, but what if the answers hurt more than the questions? The deeper you go, the more you realize: maybe this whole structure was never made for people like us to thrive, honestly, in the first place.
Therefore, I argue that societal awareness isn’t a side quest. It isn’t activism for people who “have time for it.” It is survival. It is memory. It is the thing that keeps you from becoming a villain with a clean conscience. And the truth is — it hurts. It is painful to learn what you didn’t know, to admit what you refused to see. But you can’t outsource that pain. You can’t say, “Someone else can think about that for me.” Because someone else already is. And they might be building your cage. So then, why? Despite it all, some still keep going, not out of delusion but out of choice. Maybe the point isn’t to change the whole system at once but to live in defiance of it. To be good not because it changes everything, but because it changes something. Because in a world this backward, a life of conscious integrity is rebellion. And maybe the point isn’t to win the game but to remind people it’s rigged. And so, maybe tomorrow, I’ll be a pig again. Maybe I’ll even justify it. But if I can name it, if I can feel the sting, maybe I can stop before I forget I was ever human.