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

The Harrowing ("1984" Part 1 Ch. 1-7 )

(harrowing:  adj,  acutely distressing)

Before I get started on what very well may be my most epic post (in size...I don't guarantee epic quality of content) I want to point out that with this post I am sure to go over one thousand pageviews.  The fact that anyone looks at my blog at all makes me happy.  When there are enough people looking at it that it has been viewed one thousand times...while I may not sure how to process that stimulation I do, however, know how to appropriately respond.

Thank You.

Now that we've had a puppy validate you with positivity and cuteness, it's time for the bleakness.

The world that George Orwell creates is not frightening because of its substance or structure.  If he set it on some alien planet populated by Zygons then it would be an amusing entertainment.  It is so frightening because it is so close to not only the world we live in but the world we are becoming.  Every technological step along the way, every change in how we consume information propels us closer to 1984.  There's a sort of vertigo that I feel, that fear as we get closer and closer to the edge and we can see Oceania below.

The story itself is not the point of the book.  It is quite rightly seen as a warning rather than entertainment.  Normally I try to give a sense of the overall storyline in my blog.  With this novel, there are so many more ideas than actual story.  I haven't marked up a book like this since Atlas Shrugged.  I openly wondered to my wife if this book would change me in a similar way as Ayn Rand's prescient masterpiece.  She shrugged and said, "Probably not".  Now that we are both reading 1984 together it's clear that it will change us both.

The basic story is that of a man, Winston Smith, who goes about his day and life as a member of the Party.  In this world there are two castes.  There are the Proles, the working class stiffs, who are pretty much anyone middle class and lower.  Proles make up 85% of the population and are essentially "slave" labor for the Party.  The Party is the government, the intelligentsia, and the media.  They are the college graduates, the blessed, the smart ones who are controlled and indoctrinated by the ubiquitous and mustachioed Big Brother.  It's fairly strange to think, but the Party is more indoctrinated and has more confining laws placed on them than the Proles.

Winston has strange feelings that there is something missing in life.  He has noticed for ages that Big Brother and the Party manipulate facts and even create them out of whole cloth.  The past, which he can barely remember, has been erased and changed in so many ways that he can't be sure what is true.  Truth, in itself, could just be another lie.

Without realizing why, Winston purchases a diary at a shop and takes it home.  He discovered a blind spot in his apartment where the all seeing Teleplate cannot observe him and takes up writing in it.  He's gripped with an exhilarating fear as he goes to write in it.

"The thing he was about to do was open a diary.  This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp."

And that is our first taste of the great paradox of living in the world of Big Brother.  Sure, their slogans routinely pumped into them are:

"WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

But that can be readily discarded as party propaganda.  This fear is how they actually live on a day to day basis.  It is the substance of their thoughts which is, after all, Big Brother's goal.  Dominance of thought.  ELIMINATION of thought, actually.  This is how they think.  It's not illegal because there are no laws, but I could be punished for it.  Insane?  Just wait.

Winston works as one who "corrects" the past.  He adjusts news articles so that Big Brother appears to be all knowing, non-contradictory, and perfect in all his words.  He sort of sees a problem with this but his indoctrination is so deep that it is easier not to think.  A good member of the party always chooses not to think.  There are things he can't not think on though.  For instance:

"Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia.  In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines.  Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.  But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.  Officially the change of partners had never happened"..."The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible."

Winston viewed it as HIS fault for remembering anything other than the way the Party said it. 

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture or death."

"Reality Control".

This serves as a primer to doublethink: "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."

One only needs to turn on the TV, read a newspaper, or just pay attention to what is going on in the world to see all of this in action.  

The world we live in, this digitally predominant world, makes the past so easily malleable.  If we don't have hard copy then any administration could change something of the past.  People have been rightly worried about how easy it is to edit things like Wikipedia.  People look at it and believe its contents are truth.  However, if enough people agree that something should be changed it will be.  Our past could easily be destroyed.  I remember being in a discussion with someone about how my daughter was being taught that this leftist Union Leader in America was a hero.   They shrugged, said they didn't see anything wrong with it.  I mentioned, well except for the fact that he used violence, physical and financial retribution to achieve his goals.  If that was true, they reasoned, then they wouldn't teach about him to children.  We rationalize before we even dare to look it up.  It was not something that was included in the Wikipedia article and so what use was there in still looking?  Less than 5 minutes of doing a different search yielded proof.  With just ideology and a keyboard it has been wiped from the popular consciousness.

Recently I watched a TED talk where the speaker actually said the words "The era of knowing is over.  We don't need to actually have knowledge anymore.  If we need information we can look it up and then should forget it when we don't need it anymore."  

Creeping closer.

There are so many political issues on both sides of the spectrum that frighten me.  I have met so few people who even question their own party's line.  They'll give a pass on anything because it's "their guy".  They'll ignore blatant lies, forgive "readjustments" of their candidates history, and not bat an eye when he/she lies to them again, and again, and again.  If the other side does it then they are, quite naturally, scumbags bent on destroying the country.  We aren't that far from a single party in all but name anyway.  There is no consistency and no principles.  "Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think.  Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."  That, as far as Orwell's warning, is already here in many ways.

Personally I find the notion of Newspeak as particularly offensive.  It is the new language of Oceania, always being refined.  As a colleague of Winston's declares, "You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words.  But not a bit of it!  We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day.  We're cutting the language down to the bone."  Later her justifies, "After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words?...If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'?  'Ungood' will do just as well..."  

With some zealousness he later explains, "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it...Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."  

So, what would be the fall out?  "Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they use to be."

There is so much here that my mind is all abuzz with multiple ideas all firing at the same time.  Let's see if I can organize them and tease them into some sort coherent mess.

Firstly, language is so extremely important.  Their goal of controlling the people through language is not as far fetched as it seems.  When I first learned about rhetoric my mind was completely blown.  Rhetoric is how people use language in order to effectively state their position on something.  Well, that's the Light Side of rhetoric.  The Dark Side of rhetoric is choosing carefully the words you use in order to manipulate the listener/reader.  It's one thing to have a news report with the headline "Fifteen soldiers killed in a firefight with the Taliban" and completely another to say "Fifteen soldiers slaughtered in a firefight with the Taliban".  Which one grips you more emotionally?  The second one clearly sells more papers and, intended or not, makes you feel more negatively about the Taliban, or on the other hand may predispose you negatively toward the war.

Every day, language is used to manipulate.  Your emotions are being toyed with in order to achieve a desired result.  Now, in the world of advertising we can just go "Oh, look, they're using sex to sell blue jeans again" and discard it if we want.  Language is more tricky.  Reading and hearing automatically sets up residence in our minds and few are trained, let alone have the desire, to put it in a holding tank to consider it and either hold it or jettison.

I learned this and paid attention on my own over the years and then one day took a high level philosophy course as an elective.  (Yes...I took philosophy for fun.)  I get bored fairly easily, and so one of my ways to fend off boredom is to play with language and ideas.  I squish them, stretch them, spin them on their head just to see what happens.  I like to hold two contradictory thoughts in my head at one time and then watch as they play Texas Hold'em...to the death.  It was during one of these 'bouts that I realized that the teacher was manipulating the whole class.  He had taught about rhetoric only from the perspective of "the enemy" as perpetrator.  There wasn't a single bit about how our own "party" our own "allies" manipulate us.  I watched as he manipulated the class from one side of the issue to the other side of the issue and every one of them followed like obedient little ducklings and agreed wholeheartedly without even considering that just five minutes ago they were agreeing wholeheartedly with the complete opposite.  I started chuckling and the teacher turned and gave me a wink, knowing that I'd caught it.  He asked me, for the benefit of the class, to tell what I was chuckling at.  I explained and watched as each person in that 30 seat classroom couldn't figure it out.  They defended each side, as they had heard from the teacher, and some people even managing to argue the validity both contradictory views at the same time.  

So, what does this have to do with 1984?  We're not so far from it.  The enemy is the one trying to manipulate you, they will tell you, while deliberately and blatantly manipulating you just as well.  It's the Democrats.  It's the Republicans.  It's the Libertarians.  It's Greenpeace.  It's Big Oil.  It's the church.  It's Atheism.  Language and loyalty are the blinders every institution uses.  Not every institution is bad.  Not every use of rhetoric is bad, but we need to be aware of it or we may as well be sidling up to Big Brother.  If your emotions are engage by those you trust in order to sway your opinion then remember the "Two Minute Hate" from this book.  I am immediately suspicious of anything that engages my emotions in an argument of ideas because that tends to mean logic won't win them their argument.

Pax,

Will Arbaugh