1984
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- xzonia
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Re: 1984
Although no society today exhibits such a high degree of control over their people (though I think China and some Muslim countries today, and some countries over the years, want this level of control over their citizens), I see many examples of how Orwell described the world playing out today. I was thinking of this book just this week regarding the re-writing of facts. Watching the government shutdown with the Republican party switching from "we want to shut down the government!" to "the Democrats shut down the government!" this week, I couldn't help but think of this book and how the government in it rewrote books and burned evidence of any contradiction to the current narrative they were telling their people. I see Jon Stewart show clips of Republicans yelling about how they want to shut down the government, and then other clips saying it was all the Democrats, and shake my head. If the Republicans had the power to go back and destroy all proof of their self-contradictory claims, I feel they would. The fact that we still live in a free society that prevents hiding the truth in this fashion is how we differ from Orwell's vision, but I often get the feeling that politicians on both / all sides wish they could follow the example of 1984 and rewrite history. I know for a fact that history textbooks for schools here in the U.S. often do change the facts (ie rewrite history literally) to tell the narratives they want citizens here to grow up believing. If you are over 40 and were to read the history books kids today are reading, you would say "that's not what I learned when I was in school!" to many accounts in today's textbooks. So even in a free society like ours, these things occur from time to time. In a more controlled society like China, I imagine this happens more than any of us here realize.
Still, I think modern politics has proven it really isn't necessary to go back and change the story. Most people today believe whatever they heard 5 minutes ago, and discount what they heard yesterday or last week as "erroneous" or "not having all the facts." I don't know how many times I've heard people say no one ever told them what Obamacare would have in it, when the entire 2000 page text was published online for all to read! But who took the time to read it? If they did, how many understood it? I did, but I don't know that many people in our society have both the patience and capacity to read such documents today. They certainly lack the desire. Then they cry that they have been left uninformed, and will believe whatever they are told, regardless how many times that story changes.
Newspeak is a real thing today. We see politicians and media use it all the time to change the meaning of language and narrow the conversation down to an argument they can win. Here is an example of changing our vocabulary that I ran across this week: "Entitlement" is an accounting term meaning "fixed payments that must be honored." Republicans have changed that meaning by equating it to its vernacular form to suggest entitlements are "something you feel you are entitled to." It's a linguistics trick used to influence the minds of people.
I feel that because we live in a free society, there is a constant struggle going on between implementing or using ideas like the ones George Orwell presented in 1984, and working to keep our society free. Much of the technology he predicted exists today. The telescreen could easily be reproduced now by putting a flat screen TV up on the wall, and Skyping with someone on it via webTV technology. America is no longer above torturing war criminals... how long until we as a society would condone torturing U.S. citizens in instances we feel are "justified?" If one was a war criminal, it could happen today already. The the struggle is ever present in our society. Much of what Orwell wrote in that book exists already today, just not as concentrated and extensive as he imagined it could be... yet.
We are already being monitored almost everywhere we go through security cameras, and our location is tracked 24/7 via the GPS in our cars and cell phones. I love watching that new show Person of Interest, and it shows how technology can be used to track and monitor people on a daily basis today. Our own government already listens in on all our phone conversations, reads all our emails, and monitors our posting activity on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. How much more privacy do we realistically have today than the characters of 1984? Not as much as we like to think.
I am by no means a government conspiracy nut, nor do I feel we are in "imminent danger" of becoming like Oceania. Still, I think 1984 is a cautionary tale we should all take seriously now, and not be so quick to dismiss as the fanciful imagination of a man who lived a few decades ago. After all, Russia was trying to implement some fairly stringent laws in Orwell's day, and his book was only following those types of policies out to their logical conclusion.
- dea0045
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Also, The Giver is a wonder dystopian novel as well!!
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A book like 1984 can continue to resonate through the centuries when it addresses a subject that hasn't been resolved in the human condition. 1984 looks at what humans do to other humans, and the conditions that make it so easy for us to hurt one another. It emphasizes how easy it is to lose the freedoms we have under the guise of comfort.
- yessaniareader26
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Would this be an example of "doublespeak?
'Chinese media: smog has at least five benefits'
December 10, 2013
In America, we're used to our government, our industry and our media putting a spin on events to make the world seem a brighter, better place than it really is. But some of China's media is showing some impressive spin talent of its own, with a rationalization for pollution that is, quite literally, breathtaking.
Much of China has been suffering through choking smog in recent weeks, which has hampered daily activities and forced the closure of schools. In response, state broadcaster CCTV published a list of reasons documenting the benefits of smog. Yes, benefits.
A Time magazine translator indicated the following CCTV rationalizations for smog:
1. It unifies the Chinese people.
2. It makes China more equal
3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development.
4. It makes people funnier.
5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like meteorology and the English word haze).
That's some interesting rationalization. Following that line of thinking, hurricanes also unify people by forcing them to leave their isolated homes and gather in collectives. Tornadoes give people a sense of the power of nature. Wildfires place everyone on an equal footing by burning everyone's possessions to the ground. See? The problem isn't nature, the problem is you.
Oh, but the campaign wasn't done. The Global Times, which is published by the Communist Party's official People's Daily, noted that smog has a defensive benefit. “Smog may affect people’s health and daily lives," the newspaper wrote, "but on the battlefield, it can serve as a defensive advantage in military operations." The article pointed to military operations in Kosovo and Saudi Arabia that used smoke as a means of obscuring the enemy's sight lines and fouling electronic equipment. This takes "we had to burn the village to save it" to a completely new level.
http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-governmen ... 49885.html
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- S dot Lennon
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- jenrobot2
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But torture, like telescreens, is only a tool that "Ingsoc", the English Socialist Party, uses to achieve its real aim, which is to control your thoughts. If your brain came with a remote there would be no need for torture, and if your thoughts could be read, there would be nothing for the telescreens to transmit. Since thoughts can't be read, Ingsoc has to rely on visible cues like "facecrime" in which a person's facial expression suggests "thoughtcrime". This is more like North Korea than LG's too smart TVs - in North Korea those who showed signs of not sufficiently mourning Kim Jong Il, even patients who remained in hospitals after hearing the news of his death, were singled out for punishment by the party.
One can threaten punishment and command the appearance of an emotion like loyalty - but is it possible to bully someone into feeling loyal? "They can make you say anything - anything - but they can't make you believe it," says Juila. If so, why force someone to pretend to feel love for big brother? When you consider the effort and difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of controlling a person, why would anyone want to try? As Winston writes in his diary, "I understand HOW; I do not understand WHY".
If you've ever been in an abusive relationship it's easy to relate to Winston's perplexity: the party's techniques of control resemble those of a toxic partner, and violence is only one of the tricks up its sleeve. The continual rewriting of history - sometimes for an obvious gain but sometimes because "purges and vaporisations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government" - is a large scale version of a form of mental abuse called "gaslighting", and it has Winston questioning his sanity and continually in search of proof that he is not insane. In the "ministry of love" sometimes a telescreen will shout at a prisoner for some trivial action, while a similar action goes unpunished; often your questioners will torture you but sometimes they are nice, and since they have been watching you for a long time, they seem to understand you. You could almost believe that the right behaviour could avoid the ministry's cruelty.
And although Winston says he doesn't understand why, he has more in common with his enemy than he cares to admit. He takes some satisfaction in the power trips in the small role he plays in helping the party to rewrite history, and muses as he invents a war hero for a falsified article, "It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones". The party shares small samples of its power with its members the same way it rations out an inferior version of chocolate (and cuts the rations then rewrites history to say they've increased).
Winston wants to believe in "the brotherhood" that opposes big brother yet its very name is similar. He is driven by hatred of the party to say he would be prepared to throw acid in a child's face in the name of opposing the party, but the party thrives on hatred of the evil character Goldstein who may not exist and of Eurasia or Eastasia who may or may not be at war with Oceania. And as many a self-help guru has said, love and hate are not the opposites they appear.
For me the psychology of control that Orwell explores is more interesting than the science fiction, since as companies like LG have shown, the technology he describes has been possible for some time. I like to think the mind control techniques used are less plausible than the technology, especially the idea that it's possible to create a language in which only "orthodox" ideas can be expressed. Orwell can't seem to do so without cheating - newspeak has the word "free" for example, but it has somehow been stripped of all political meaning. I think the "proles" are a more plausible controllable class of citizen than the party members - they are too apolitical and self-involved to organise a revolt, and the governent can get away with its ridiculous practices as long as the proles get their "prolefeed" - porn ("to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal"), alcohol, tabloids and gambling. Early in the novel a prole woman expresses displeasure with the violent propaganda shown by the party - "they didn't oughta 'ave shown it, not in front of the kids" - but this gets the same attention as negative comments on YouTube, and even Winston dismisses it as a typical prole reaction. Proles are allowed the illusion of rebellion so they do the party no harm. I think anyone who has spent time surfing porn or engaging in flame wars online is a bit of a prole, and it's sobering to think that these are the ways that "the man" is happy to keep us busy in faux rebellion.
- marissamace92
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Firstly, Huxley was writing before the reality of Soviet Russia was fully on the radar of the Western world. Thus, he took the long view that the greatest threat to Western civilisation as he knew it was the onward march of industrialisation (he imagined a world in which time is measured before and after (Henry) Ford). Orwell, whilst his critique of totalitarianism was prescient and accurate, predicted the future of the East in places like North Korea and China, rather than the future of the West. Huxley understood that the West was far more likely to be a slave to pleasure than to pain.
The other thing is that 1984 is a novel written by an essayist. Brave New World is a novel written by a novelist. It's just a bit too easy to tell who the bad guys are in Orwell, and whilst that makes for a very powerful piece of anti-totalitarian polemic, it doesn't, in my opinion, make for much of a novel. Huxley's portrayal of a complex and intertwined set of interests and demands on life in Brave New World has, for the time being, been vindicated.
Having said all that, revelations regarding international spying may lead us to think that we were living in 1984, we just didn't know it.