What I know about Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:
Well, firstly I know that it is not about a group of women who suffer from dwarfism. That came as a bit of a disappointment when I was nine and first tried to read that classic.
My wife surprised me a bit today by purchasing me the first hardback of this series of 100 Books You Should Read Before You Die. It's quite nice actually, and purchased from The Hermitage, a shop here in Denver that sells only hardbacks, rare, and first editions, which is the only place I'd ever buy books if it were possible and my budget allowed. That place is simply put one of the greatest treasures I have found second only, perhaps...and mostly due to nostalgia, to Parnasus in my hometown. Miss Lilian, the owner, believed in me as a writer before I ever was even sure I wanted to be. She noticed me reading Keats one day and marveled (I was 17 at the time). But I digress...
I asked my beloved if she mentioned to the shop owner about my little project. She replied that she did and he called it a "Noble goal." Yeah, I'm not sure how to take that either.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. This is yet another of those books that was somewhat forced upon me as a child. I didn't get it at the time and barely remembered. Why read a book about girls and love and parties when I could read Treasure Island or Gulliver's Travels?
I know that I half watched the movie version with Christian Bale as the love interest...who if I remember correctly everyone thinks he loves the one girl and really wants another or...something. There was a bit of a love polygon going on in there...perhaps a rhombus. I only watched the film because I had made a girl that I liked watch Gerard Depardieu's Cyrano Debergerac, in French with little yellow subtitles, and so she responded that I then had to watch Little Women. I still maintain that Cyrano is in the 10 best foreign films of all time and the single most romantic film I've ever seen. She disagreed and soon after we parted ways. Not because of her choice in romantic cinematography, of course. It had more to do with the fact that I was directionless in life and her parents had a talk with her. Fair point now that I'm a parent myself, but back then it stung a bit.
I'm looking forward to Little Women with a bit of optimism having been delightfully surprised by Pride and Prejudice.
Pax,
W
Monday, July 20, 2015
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Here Comes the Chopper to Chop Off Your Head (1984 Pt. 2 Ch. 11 - End)
It really shouldn't be surprising to me as much as it is, but not since Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged has a book affected me as much as 1984. It has shone a light, been the comforting "You're not alone" message in a bottle that has washed up on my shore, has shown me pitfalls to avoid and defenses to set within my mind and personal philosophies. I do feel like a better person for having read it or, at least, a better prepared member of an intelligent species anyway.
There are plenty of political parties, institutions both religious and secular, even work environments where people simply want to grasp power for power's sake, and that is by far the most insidious motivation. They will lie, cheat, steal, brainwash, and then look at you like you are the crazy one for finding fault in them. There are far more people who ask us regularly to deny the truth of our senses. Our society currently is taken up in a swell of moral/philosophical/ethical/religious relativity. The facts, we are told, do no matter. "Madame, kindly do not confuse the issue with facts" used to be a joke line and now it's practically a protest march chant. We've been told by our superiors in Washington D.C. that we have to vote on a bill first and then we can find out what is in it...and nobody acts like that is madness. "There is nothing good or bad except that thinking make it so," was a line from Shakespeare and our generation turned it into "There is nothing right or wrong...". Gender is no longer considered a fact of birth. It's what you "feel" that is more important than facts, these days. The sea level hasn't risen to predicted levels, but we're still right on track for the environmental flambe...until we're headed for another Ice Age (as was recently decided by top scientists).
The scariest, darkest part of the entire novel was this last quarter. Winston is captured and psychologically dismantled piece by piece until he gave in at the end and found his heart full of nothing but love for Big Brother. "We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves..." was the quote that filled me full of fear. I've spent a good portion of my life looking at the world and desperately trying to find consistency. I'm attracted to consistency. You say what you believe and what you are going to do and then you do it and you'll have my vote fairly easily. I've felt crazier in this past six or so years than I ever have before and, like Winston, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not insane. The media tends to do just that, scoop you out and put themselves back in.
"Water will wet us and fire will burn," is practically a mantra between my wife and I these days. It comes from Rudyard Kipling's "The Gods of Copy Book Headings" which is a poem about what happens when we deny universal truths for too long. When we pretend to be masters over reality we eventually get our comeuppance. When we print trillions of dollars and give out sub prime loans eventually the piper must be paid. "...we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun..." O'brien declares while torturing Winston into realigning his beliefs with the Party which include their fact that 2 + 2 = 5. We find it convenient...sometimes when we need it to 2 + 2 = 4...That mentality has always filled me with nothing but contempt for whoever has expressed it. It is the most selfish of phrases. I once admired a girl for being a pretty rational feminist. She seemed to walk the talk, which is always big in my book, and then she was talking about how she'd go to the bars, dress in something tight and revealing so that guys would buy her drinks. She boasted that she hasn't paid for a drink since her 21st birthday...and she immediately lost my respect. Why? Because she was not a person of principle. What we shout from the roof tops had better be how we live in the day to day or it's little better than a full on lie.
I've had this discussion so many times before where someone expresses a supposedly deeply held principle that doesn't carry over into other areas of their life. I'll say, "OK, so you believe and declare this, but what about over here where you violate that principle." I get the most dumbfounded looks where they say, "Uh, that's not what I'm talking about, dude." The most notorious example of this in my life has been with people who believe, and generally say in an airy fairy hippy manner, "All life is sacred and so precious, ya know?" This usually is said after explaining why they are against war or for veganism. I reply, "Ok. So are you for the death penalty" "Well, yeah, of course." "Abortion?" "I think that the supreme court has ruled quite clearly on Abortion, thank you. I don't understand why you're bringing those things up. I'm talking about how sacred life is." Doublethink is not a far off fantasy of dystopian science fiction. We've already trained ourselves to have principles and opinions that are limited to a specific issue in a specific portion of our brain and neither the twain shall meet.
It's not about having the courage of our convictions anymore...I'd be happy with just the consistency of our convictions.
Orwell cautions us to reject sensationalism, to reject those who would say that facts are subject to our whim, to embrace principal, and to know without a doubt that any Party is a fox in a henhouse...but it is so difficult. We have forever been slipping toward 1984 and we will be forever slipping until it actually arrives.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a face - forever."
For the past few months this has been a haunting image. It's one of the most famous lines from the novel so I knew that it was coming, but it has never seemed more appropriate or more potent. Find a cause, give them someone to hate, whip them into an emotional frenzy, reject logic and they will press that boot into flesh every single time. The mob...no one on either side is immune. Our own parties are replete with this rhetoric. Republicans hate the poor and want to starve your grandmother while carpet bombing the third world. Democrats just want to bankrupt the country financially and morally...gay pride parades every day while they tear down the churches. They each make you demonize the other side and call one another out on the demonization. Why? Because it's an election year and you need to feel afraid or you won't vote and they won't win.
I know I've been rambling and all over the place...try talking to me about it and it will be 20 times more so. I have but one more point to cover and then I will place some of the most meaningful quotes from this chapter as a closing on this amazing, provocative, and most enduring of novels.
After Julia and Winston are released from torture and re-education they see each other again. It should be hopeful. Love should conquer all...but this isn't that kind of story. There is an intensity to the moment as they admit to each other that they had betrayed one another. Their love was broken by what they said and did under interrogation. For a moment Winston is determined to begin again. He walks with her side by side to the tube station, through the crowd. And then he stops. He lets her go. She disappears and they never see each other again. It is so fraught with things unspoken, deep wells of feeling dampened by the horrors of the society that they live in. I so want to see that moment done well on screen. In my head it is so intense, and it reaches so many because, as I've said about every novel so far, it is real life. We are all broken people in search of healing and society will lean on, put pressure on every hairline crack to make us bend to its will. It will destroy love with hate every time that it can. "The ends justify the means" it is often said and I defy that with every breath. "The means condemn the ends". It is such a basic thing that we forget because we want to, because it is easier to live without principle...and the Party and Big Brother are just waiting for us to compromise. The only way 1984 can come to pass is in a world where the good compromise, where those able to stand just beg it all to happen to someone else when the pain comes.
"...the aim of this (the torture/re-education) was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning."
"...in the eyes of the Party there was no distinction between the thought and the deed."
"You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident...Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else...only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party."
"The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them."
"The command of the old despotisms was 'Thou shalt not.' The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt.' Our command is 'Thou art.'"
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power."
"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish a dictatorship." (This quote should make activists run scared...but it never will. We'd like to believe all humanity is good at its core...it is selfserving to its core and always has been.)
"How does one man assert his power over another...By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."
"The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement...all competing pleasures will be destroyed."
"It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism...Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible - and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord." (This is what scares me about the current thinking that to disagree is to hate, to dissent is to be a bigot. They don't just agree to disagree, many in this world destroy the lives of those who dare to disagree.)
Monday, July 13, 2015
Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed (1984 Pt. 2 Ch. 6-Ch. 10)
In which things get real...
It has been quite a while since my last post. I blame summer. The adventures have been great and plentiful to be sure, so...I regret nothing. 1984 has continued to burn in the back of my mind the whole month I've been away, however. We've seen the world shift in that time. Doublethink is in high gear in our country. Facts don't matter, emotions rule the day, we've even seen our own Hate week of sorts in the racial riots. Never mind what the court says, never mind what the evidence is, never mind what the people actually have voted for and want. Freedom is teetering on her perilous perch and 1984 has never seemed closer.
That is the magic and the power of 1984. It is rather like reading the book of Revelation of Saint John. It is the future, a possible future, a road map to destruction. You can see the signs and the mileposts all along the way ever getting closer, ever drawing nearer even if it is still a long way off.
1984 is our shadow. When we are turned towards the light and move for a substantially truly better world we can't see it, but it's there lurking. When we look over our shoulder we see it staring back at us like a fact of life connected to us by the feet. Our feet can take us further towards light or shadow and we're never far from either choice.
The majority of this section is history of the world and the policy of Big Brother revealed through a book that O'brien (don't quite trust that little bugger) gets to Winston and Julia after they become a part of the Underground. Winston reveals that he has spent most of his life thinking it was his fault his mother died. He says he always thought he murdered her, but a recent dream makes him rethink that. The couple has accepted that it is inevitable that they will be caught and that they might betray each other.
"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal...If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal." Winston tells her. She responds, "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -anything- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
I'm the kind of guy who reads like Harry from the movie "When Harry Met Sally". I read the last page of the book before I even start. It's not for quite the same slightly morbid reasons as Harry, but I do it. Knowing the last page, the last line even gave that reassuring moment a real darkness. They CAN get inside you. They CAN make you believe it.
Orwell later says, "They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or though; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable." As a writer I can recognize the wind up before the pitch. Writer's reassure you that the story can't possibly go wrong, possibly go bad, that it's going to end exactly how you want it to and there will be puppies, and unicorns, and flowers, and hopes and wishes all come true in Fictionland. Some writers deliver exactly that. My favorites, however, don't. There may be puppies but they're missing an ear. The unicorn is actually an obscure goat from the African sub continent. The flowers die and wilt eventually because you picked them. It's not as depressing as it sounds, but as a writer you have to inflate the expectations before the crashing reality.
So, according to the book they receive the world has devolved into three main superpowers (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania) who are basically in constant war with each other. Because they've been on a war footing for so long that has become their life and their basis of economy. They are at a three way stalemate being each equal in power and each equal in destructive ability.
"...war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths...there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about..."
There is a section between each of the three mega nations that is constantly fought over and its inhabitants are basically life long slaves to one master or another depending on who won that week.
Scientific progress has come to a grinding halt because of Doublethink. If there is no empirical habit of thought, if knowledge is dictated by the government as both a thing and not a thing at the same time and can change on a dime then science cannot progress. This has dangerous tinges of "relativism" going on here. Science is based on facts and data (which could also be known as Truth) but we train our children, as a society, that they can have their own truth, that facts don't matter. It's about what you feel and think. Science can't progress in a world without truth. To me this is the true destruction of the world of this novel. A world without principles, consistency, truth, etc. is not a world I'd like to live in. It's no small wonder the characters feel lost and adrift mentally with nothing to hold on to. They can't even be sure that the date is accurate because even that is up to Big Brother's discretion. It could be July 13th or November 23rd and it would be equally true to the Party and the Proles.
So, why be constantly at war? The answer shouldn't surprise anyone, and yet it shocked me in its parallels to our own "forever war", aka the War on Terrorism. "...at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural condition of survival." Politicians want, above all else, power and have proven they don't care about how much of the Constitution they have to shred to get it. "Never let a crisis go to waste" (a mantra of leftist politicians but is seemingly adhered to just as equally by rightists) has its roots here. There is always a power kickback in every "safety" measure they push in Congress. Whether it is gun control or a "Patriot Act" the goal is always more power to control the American people by pushing the fear button and taking advantage of the crisis. And oh how we beg for the chains in exchange for assurances that it will keep "even just one child safe", which if we ruminate rather than react we would admit the measures can assure no such thing at all ever.
In reference to the Party members Orwell reveals this: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph" (bold for emphasis is my own). Emotions are the enemy of logic. I am constantly suspicious of any appeals to emotion. Once I realize my emotions are being stirred up by a group or an individual I reflexively stop and step back. Why? Because people, especially politicians and religious leaders, only engage the emotions when they cannot make their case with logic and reason. Emotion is the easiest way to motivate people. Fascinatingly if you have two groups whipped up in an emotional fervor and set them against each other generally you'll find that the prevailing opinion is that the other side is just a bunch of easily led sheep. And they are right. Both of them. The right and the left are easily led sheep who will condemn the other's tactics WHILE employing them themselves.
A few years ago Paula Dean was shredded and destroyed for life by leftists for admitting that in the 70's (yes...40 years ago) she used a racial slur. George Takei used a racial slur weeks ago and the leftists say, "Oh, come on. I'm sure he didn't mean it like that." Rightists praised George W. Bush's Patriot Act but when it came time for it to be renewed under a Democrat president then it was the work of a tyrant. Each wants to accuse the other of partisanship and each side is correct. They are each side as partisan as they can be.
"...competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph."
In the words of Egon from Ghostbusters "Yes...have some."
(That might be a little too "inside baseball" so I apologize in advance, but I'm not changing it.)
The chapter on "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" is predominantly occupied with class warfare. For me this was extremely instructive. Growing up in the United States and listening to the nightly news I couldn't help but be inundated with facts about the "Middle Class" which naturally leads to the knowledge that there is an "Upper Class" and a "Lower Class" of citizen. These classes are universal in every culture and nation. There are nations with more layers of classes (I'm glancing at India in particular here) but none with less. Nations can claim to have less (oh, hey. Look there's China) but the fact remains that there are at least three.
Now, Orwell posits, and rightly so I believe, that these three classes are the natural human state and each irreconcilable.
"The aim of the High is to remain where they are." Can you blame them? If I was in the Upper class I'd want to stay there as well.
"The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High." Naturally.
"The aim of the Low, when they have an aim- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal." Obkb. These things all follow quite naturally. We see all three of these time and time again.
Now, the High stay in power continually until/unless they lose their faith in themselves. This often comes in the form of guilt via "social consciousness" etc. At this point they falter and the Middle sees the opportunity to strike and move themselves up the ladder. The Middle, being the Middle, understands that their position isn't going to win much sympathy. I mean, sure they aren't rich and "rollin' in the Benjamins", but they aren't poor and suffering. On their own the Middle can do little. Now, I grant you the U. S. is completely different. One can leap from one rung to the other in a generation or less, but let's table that for the sake of discussion.
The Middle turns to the Low and uses phrases like "equality", "justices", "brotherhood" and the like to engage the Low to come alongside with them. They give the Middle a boost to get into the High and then the Middle abandons them.
"From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters." To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
"In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown."
So, how did Big Brother "achieve" "equality"? It was by conscious strategy to halt the pendulum; to control thought, to control actions. Surveillance, re-education, changing the very model of human behavior not so that there would be genuine equality but rather so that the flip flop could not occur and they could force everyone to believe that equality had been achieved. Anyone who disrupts the placid waters (stagnant waters are just as placid) of the equality are removed from the society.
There is so much that I haven't brought up from Crimestop and the intricacies of Doublethink that shed a lot of light of politics and life and so much. 1984 is really, when it comes down to it, less of a prophecy, less of a warning necessarily than a handbook for preserving your own sanity in a world gone mad. I probably should leave this sort of thing for the end, but it gives comfort to those who truly believe in facts and truth. It is the best kind of writing...the kind that is a message in a bottle that washes upon your shore and says, "You're not alone."
Sadly, just as Winston and Julia start to feel this the owner of the knick knack shop is revealed to be Thought Police and captures them.
Pax,
W
It has been quite a while since my last post. I blame summer. The adventures have been great and plentiful to be sure, so...I regret nothing. 1984 has continued to burn in the back of my mind the whole month I've been away, however. We've seen the world shift in that time. Doublethink is in high gear in our country. Facts don't matter, emotions rule the day, we've even seen our own Hate week of sorts in the racial riots. Never mind what the court says, never mind what the evidence is, never mind what the people actually have voted for and want. Freedom is teetering on her perilous perch and 1984 has never seemed closer.
That is the magic and the power of 1984. It is rather like reading the book of Revelation of Saint John. It is the future, a possible future, a road map to destruction. You can see the signs and the mileposts all along the way ever getting closer, ever drawing nearer even if it is still a long way off.
1984 is our shadow. When we are turned towards the light and move for a substantially truly better world we can't see it, but it's there lurking. When we look over our shoulder we see it staring back at us like a fact of life connected to us by the feet. Our feet can take us further towards light or shadow and we're never far from either choice.
The majority of this section is history of the world and the policy of Big Brother revealed through a book that O'brien (don't quite trust that little bugger) gets to Winston and Julia after they become a part of the Underground. Winston reveals that he has spent most of his life thinking it was his fault his mother died. He says he always thought he murdered her, but a recent dream makes him rethink that. The couple has accepted that it is inevitable that they will be caught and that they might betray each other.
"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal...If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal." Winston tells her. She responds, "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -anything- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
I'm the kind of guy who reads like Harry from the movie "When Harry Met Sally". I read the last page of the book before I even start. It's not for quite the same slightly morbid reasons as Harry, but I do it. Knowing the last page, the last line even gave that reassuring moment a real darkness. They CAN get inside you. They CAN make you believe it.
Orwell later says, "They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or though; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable." As a writer I can recognize the wind up before the pitch. Writer's reassure you that the story can't possibly go wrong, possibly go bad, that it's going to end exactly how you want it to and there will be puppies, and unicorns, and flowers, and hopes and wishes all come true in Fictionland. Some writers deliver exactly that. My favorites, however, don't. There may be puppies but they're missing an ear. The unicorn is actually an obscure goat from the African sub continent. The flowers die and wilt eventually because you picked them. It's not as depressing as it sounds, but as a writer you have to inflate the expectations before the crashing reality.
So, according to the book they receive the world has devolved into three main superpowers (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania) who are basically in constant war with each other. Because they've been on a war footing for so long that has become their life and their basis of economy. They are at a three way stalemate being each equal in power and each equal in destructive ability.
"...war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths...there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about..."
There is a section between each of the three mega nations that is constantly fought over and its inhabitants are basically life long slaves to one master or another depending on who won that week.
Scientific progress has come to a grinding halt because of Doublethink. If there is no empirical habit of thought, if knowledge is dictated by the government as both a thing and not a thing at the same time and can change on a dime then science cannot progress. This has dangerous tinges of "relativism" going on here. Science is based on facts and data (which could also be known as Truth) but we train our children, as a society, that they can have their own truth, that facts don't matter. It's about what you feel and think. Science can't progress in a world without truth. To me this is the true destruction of the world of this novel. A world without principles, consistency, truth, etc. is not a world I'd like to live in. It's no small wonder the characters feel lost and adrift mentally with nothing to hold on to. They can't even be sure that the date is accurate because even that is up to Big Brother's discretion. It could be July 13th or November 23rd and it would be equally true to the Party and the Proles.
So, why be constantly at war? The answer shouldn't surprise anyone, and yet it shocked me in its parallels to our own "forever war", aka the War on Terrorism. "...at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural condition of survival." Politicians want, above all else, power and have proven they don't care about how much of the Constitution they have to shred to get it. "Never let a crisis go to waste" (a mantra of leftist politicians but is seemingly adhered to just as equally by rightists) has its roots here. There is always a power kickback in every "safety" measure they push in Congress. Whether it is gun control or a "Patriot Act" the goal is always more power to control the American people by pushing the fear button and taking advantage of the crisis. And oh how we beg for the chains in exchange for assurances that it will keep "even just one child safe", which if we ruminate rather than react we would admit the measures can assure no such thing at all ever.
In reference to the Party members Orwell reveals this: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph" (bold for emphasis is my own). Emotions are the enemy of logic. I am constantly suspicious of any appeals to emotion. Once I realize my emotions are being stirred up by a group or an individual I reflexively stop and step back. Why? Because people, especially politicians and religious leaders, only engage the emotions when they cannot make their case with logic and reason. Emotion is the easiest way to motivate people. Fascinatingly if you have two groups whipped up in an emotional fervor and set them against each other generally you'll find that the prevailing opinion is that the other side is just a bunch of easily led sheep. And they are right. Both of them. The right and the left are easily led sheep who will condemn the other's tactics WHILE employing them themselves.
A few years ago Paula Dean was shredded and destroyed for life by leftists for admitting that in the 70's (yes...40 years ago) she used a racial slur. George Takei used a racial slur weeks ago and the leftists say, "Oh, come on. I'm sure he didn't mean it like that." Rightists praised George W. Bush's Patriot Act but when it came time for it to be renewed under a Democrat president then it was the work of a tyrant. Each wants to accuse the other of partisanship and each side is correct. They are each side as partisan as they can be.
"...competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph."
In the words of Egon from Ghostbusters "Yes...have some."
(That might be a little too "inside baseball" so I apologize in advance, but I'm not changing it.)
The chapter on "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" is predominantly occupied with class warfare. For me this was extremely instructive. Growing up in the United States and listening to the nightly news I couldn't help but be inundated with facts about the "Middle Class" which naturally leads to the knowledge that there is an "Upper Class" and a "Lower Class" of citizen. These classes are universal in every culture and nation. There are nations with more layers of classes (I'm glancing at India in particular here) but none with less. Nations can claim to have less (oh, hey. Look there's China) but the fact remains that there are at least three.
Now, Orwell posits, and rightly so I believe, that these three classes are the natural human state and each irreconcilable.
"The aim of the High is to remain where they are." Can you blame them? If I was in the Upper class I'd want to stay there as well.
"The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High." Naturally.
"The aim of the Low, when they have an aim- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal." Obkb. These things all follow quite naturally. We see all three of these time and time again.
Now, the High stay in power continually until/unless they lose their faith in themselves. This often comes in the form of guilt via "social consciousness" etc. At this point they falter and the Middle sees the opportunity to strike and move themselves up the ladder. The Middle, being the Middle, understands that their position isn't going to win much sympathy. I mean, sure they aren't rich and "rollin' in the Benjamins", but they aren't poor and suffering. On their own the Middle can do little. Now, I grant you the U. S. is completely different. One can leap from one rung to the other in a generation or less, but let's table that for the sake of discussion.
The Middle turns to the Low and uses phrases like "equality", "justices", "brotherhood" and the like to engage the Low to come alongside with them. They give the Middle a boost to get into the High and then the Middle abandons them.
"From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters." To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
"In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown."
So, how did Big Brother "achieve" "equality"? It was by conscious strategy to halt the pendulum; to control thought, to control actions. Surveillance, re-education, changing the very model of human behavior not so that there would be genuine equality but rather so that the flip flop could not occur and they could force everyone to believe that equality had been achieved. Anyone who disrupts the placid waters (stagnant waters are just as placid) of the equality are removed from the society.
There is so much that I haven't brought up from Crimestop and the intricacies of Doublethink that shed a lot of light of politics and life and so much. 1984 is really, when it comes down to it, less of a prophecy, less of a warning necessarily than a handbook for preserving your own sanity in a world gone mad. I probably should leave this sort of thing for the end, but it gives comfort to those who truly believe in facts and truth. It is the best kind of writing...the kind that is a message in a bottle that washes upon your shore and says, "You're not alone."
Sadly, just as Winston and Julia start to feel this the owner of the knick knack shop is revealed to be Thought Police and captures them.
Pax,
W
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