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
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