At 12:34 PM -0400 06/12/2000, Darryl Shannon wrote:
>Gord writeth:
Far too often. :) below I mainly kind of try to excavate what I saw in
_1984_ that made my comparison, to my mind, less insane that it seems to
you Darryl.
>Well, Xinjiang is the "Chinese" province just north of the Himalayas,
>but Kazakhstan is northwest of there, not south.
South? Did I give the impression I though Kazakhstan was south? I was
looking at a map when I wrote my post. *scratches head* I meant the Western
outer border shared with Kazakhstan. Though, looking at the map again, it's
equally shared with Krygyzstan. But I can't tell, looking at the lights
alone . . . it's just I would've sworn I saw a line that was shaped a
little like the border.
>Part of Xinjiang is
>the Taklamakan desert, I've heard its name translated as, "You go in,
>but you don't come out"!
Ah, so there IS a pun in the short story by Bruce Sterling by the name
"Taklamakan" (in _A Good Old-Fashioned Future_) which is set there. Good
one! Great book of short stories, by the way, I highly recommend it.
>Kazakhstan is a former Soviet republic, I
>think those bright lights in the middle of central asia are in
>Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. But the western 2/3 of China is pretty
>much uninhabited.
Probably they are, but I was still pretty surprised. I guess the population
is just concentrated in centers there; but I thought a lot of Uzbekistan
(cotton cropper of the USSR) and Kazakhstan (various crops, apparently) had
farming of various types, and it's all just *dark*.
I hadn't thought about the brightness-representation thing or the
industrial lights thing, thanks for pointing them out. I'm still surprised
about the East-West thing in the Northwest, though . . . I expected it in
the Rockies and the southern deserts, but not in Montana and the Dakotas. I
knew Canada was like that, very people-sparse in the middle, but didn't
expect it to extend south so far. Saskatchewan is only technically desert
in some regions, but about as unsettled in the south as Montana and North
Dakota look, and those aren't desert (well, if they are they're just
barely, like parts of Saskatchewan). Maybe the world just doesn't have that
many ranchers? *grin*
>>>So here's one more indication that North Korea deserves the title
>>>"Real
>>>World Country that most closely resembles '1984'".
>
>>*grin* That's probably true, in terms of the literal stuff in 1984
>like
>>ignorance and poverty used as a weapon against the masses...
>
>Um, yeah, I WAS thinking about the "literal" stuff...y'know, secret
>police, artificial shortages, torture, starvation, mind control...all
>those cultural differences that make up the gorgeous mosaic of
>humanity....
Sorry, I misused the word "literal", I meant "literalist" (as in reading of
_1984_) but even that's the wrong word. I guess the closest word I can get
to is "physical."
As I remember the book -- I read it this summer, but that feels an age ago
as I look out my window into the snow -- _1984_ is full of all kinds of
horrid things that are done to control the people. Artificial shortages,
starvation, secret police, yes. But as I recall, Orwell seemed to reserve
the greatest horror for the processes of "mind control" that go on not
simply through torture -- torture is a peripheral thing used to threaten
only those few who question or stray from the program of INGSOC -- but
more importantly through the deformation of thought and the destruction of
the possibility of thought. This is achieved, in that
oh-so-British-modernist way, by telling the story of the deformation of
language. It seems that poverty and physical privation were secondary to
the worse evil, which was mental privation. Heck, Orwell even ends the book
with an appendix on Newspeak and its process of application to the world.
And in the film version I've seen, the torture is bad, but I also got a
horrid chill from the sentence that the linguist says about how the
language is being reduced daily, and soon people will not be able to think,
and that all language will be mindless reflex of assertion of the Party and
BB.
Why is that *more* horrifying? Because it's the bloody backdrop. Smith may
be our hero, and he is a tragic one . . . but the world he lives in is well
on its way to becoming hell . . . and most people don't even realize it,
question it, or even try to think about it. Worse, they will soon be unable
to do so, to the point where the Declaration of Independence cannot really
be translated except as one word: "crimespeak." Starving people can still
question as long as they have their minds, is the wisdom Orwell holds up.
They may be too weak or afraid to fight for now, but if you want to
maintain indefinite control, you need to eradicate their ability to think
or question. Now, this may be a problematic kind of manifestation of, you
know, Hegelian Master-Slave Dialectic, but I think it's also to some degree
more sensible than that because it's not so much about seeking freedom in
the mind, as kindling some tiny fire that will eventually be used to fight
for it, in whatever way possible. That's different. That's why Smith's
diary -- an act of language -- is so important and so subversive.
As for your comment about the "cultural differences that make up the
gorgeous mosaic of humanity", I would say that such remarks do not help
your argument. I find them a little insulting actually, because it seems to
me that you are trying to say that I'm one of those cultural relativists
that are so widely reviled here. Well, I happen not to think that cultural
difference -- that is, difference from your culture -- is the root cause
of all such things as torture, enforced starvation, secret police, and so
on. These things have showed up in many cultures and in many guises, and it
is not impossible for cultures that prominently feature such things to
actually engage in reforms and rehabilitate. After all, ours did. It's not
easy, but it is possible for a culture to change, without having to be
utterly discarded in favor of, say, our model. A culture could be a decent,
humane one and still disagree with us on a number of points . . . that is,
and still be another culture
It's unfortunate that I can't find my copy of this book I have in mind,
because I wanted to cite a passage from a political philosopher named C.
Douglas Lummis who wrote very interestingly about the ways in which,
instead of viewing undemocratic oppression as inherent in a given culture,
we should instead try to encourage and nurture that which would help that
society to become "a democratic version of itself." This is not the
standard simplistic strawman of moral relativism that so many love to beat
so much here: it's a recognition that some systems seem to be the most
utilitarian in ensuring general welfare, and that this recognition is
probably (I would argue necessarily *is* reconcilable with any culture...
cultural change is inevitable, but it can be urged to change in ways that
increasing numbers of people, both from within and without.
>>I didn't think of _1984_ immediately, but in that novel, there is an
>>inner
>>party who has real coffee and so on, while the masses simply have to
>do
>>without. The map looks different from that perspective.
>>
>>Hmm. Depends what you're looking at and for, I guess. :)
>
>Gord, you are completely wrong. The inner party deprived the masses of
>the essentials ON PURPOSE.
Is that fully confirmed, in such a simplified way, in the novel? I would
agree that a lot of the distribution of resources IS restricted to the
inner party on purpose, but there are moments in the novel that also
suggest that resources *are* rather scarce in the world of _1984_. After
all, when Julia brings in tea, she says, "There's been a lot of tea about
lately. They've captured India or something." Maybe we aren't able to her
explanation -- though I would think there would be *some* fighting going
on, since it's a wonderful way to destroy resources which is what INGSOC
seems to love to do. Certainly, if as many people work in jobs like
Winston's as it seems, then people are NOT farming at a high capacity.
They're not fishing or making coal in great amounts. The society is
centered on one thing: the society. Not production and distribution of
goods out of resources, and not the inherent value of humans in it (which
is what becomes horrifically apparent in O'Brien's description of the party
as an immortal thing, stamping on the face of man forever, toward the end
of the novel). The withholding of goods *and* the neglect of the value of
humans are both symptoms of the society being overly-centered on its
systematic control mechanism -- on stability, sustainability, and order
regardless of all costs.
So good so far?
>Satisfied people make poor slaves. The
>people were kept on the ragged edge of starvation in order to control
>them.
Darryl, this is true within the framework of a literal reading of the book.
But you and I obviously read differently. I read _1984_ on several
different levels at once. In some ways, all of the other forms of control
were all twined into the same goal, which was mind control. Mind control
was achieved on the one hand by thought control (via language-control, the
self-censorship created by awareness of surveillance, manipulative media
systems, and so on...) and on the other by the infliction (or, for most
people, the threat of) torture in conjunction with physical privation and
hardships.
Is the only was we can read this literally? No, but we can. Of course, it's
set in the future with reference to when it was written, but let's set that
aside. On a literal level, it suggests that mind-control can be achieved by
both physical privation *and* mental oppression, although it seems to
suggest that insofar as they are separable, then of the two, the latter is
more horrifying. It also can be read to express Orwell's worries about the
real goals in comparison to the ideological aspect of socialism in his
time, and his fears about how far people would go in neglect of human
welfare to serve the end of ideology.
[This angered many socialists when the book was published, as they regarded
Orwell as a traitor . . . though others have noted the book could just as
easily be read a Socialist's cautionary tale about how badly a cynically
construed pseudo-Socialism *could* -- rather than all Socialism *would*
-- go wrong; in other words, as more than one critic has written of the
book, it can be seen as a contribution to the debate within socialism.]
There are also striking observations on the ability of media to be
manipulable to massive effect. The control of history -- that is, of the
popular "discourse" used to describe reality -- is recognized to be the
means by which reality can in effect be controlled. The destruction of
language in the literal sense is an interesting, though unlikely, method of
this controlling thought, but it's probably more important as a metaphor.
For what? For controlling the "discourse" itself through media. Having
language be cut to shreads before a reader's eyes is one way to impact this
effect very hard -- it removes the need to make the reader read the
newspaper that Smith doctors, before and after. It's a wonderful narratice
technique. But just because English hasn't been eviscerated, doesn't mean
that the a powerful form of control doesn't exist in the area of popular
discourse via the media. Is this the action of an "Inner Party", a
conspiracy?
No! Come on. Conspiracies are silly. Mostly, anyway. But people and
organizations who have power and resources at their disposal tend to work
hard to safeguard it. People who realize that mass media shapes public
opinion (and it does to a large degree!) court it and/or buy it in one way
or another.
How about reading it metaphorically? allegorically? anagogically?
Metaphorically one can apply a lot of what is said above in saying that
_1984_ is a metaphorized version of a future envisionable under a failed
socialist regime . . . but also, strikingly like England in the time just
before it was written. People were bombarded with stories of the war, but
they were all heavily mediated. People were told vaguely what was going on,
and they lived under threat of death from above nightly. They made do with
many privations for the sake of the war effort, and they saw what looked
from their side of the channel to be a huge, powerful, destructive, and
insane military/social system expanding to engulf Europe.
Yet for all the privation, for all the hunger and suffering and confusion
about the war, people still had access to the past, and to the present in
some senses. They moved freely, they were "free" to interact as they
pleased [within limits], and they were allowed to think at least as much as
they were allowed to think before the war. That's not completely true, but
my point is that they were much more free in mind than the people in
_1984_. This is probably another reason why the horror of physical
privation is secondary to the horror of mental distortion in _1984_,
although it is used to facilitate it.
Further, did anyone notice what role O'Brien has in conjunction with Smith?
It is very, very similar to the role of a confessor (or therapist). Like a
confessor or therapist, O'Brien "helps" Smith return to a "clear"
perception of "reality", which is that there is no reality except what the
party dictates. But you know what? The scariest damn thing about that is
the sense I get that O'Brien has been through all of this himself. He
*believes* in the illusion, and is thus willing to make endless assault on
mean and on reality in order to serve a thing that is based on the idea
that reality is an illusion.
Which is to say that the Inner Party is also effectively brainwashed, from
what we can tell, or at least from what we have seen of it. The Inner Party
believes its own rhetoric, and the Inner Party makes effectively real (by
the distribution of resources in the INGSOC society) whatever illusion
serves its purposes.
>If you are seriously trying to compare our global economy to
>totalitarian dictatorship, may I suggest that you have completely taken
>leave of your senses?
You may suggest it. It wouldn't necessarily be correct, however. I think
however that it's a poor argument to accuse another person of being "crazy"
because they suggest something with which you don't agree.
My original point was to suggest that the proportional demographics of
resource consumption in _1984_ resemble the proportional demographics of
resource consumption in our world today. [I can get stats from 1995 if you
would like, or maybe I can find more recent ones if you prefer. Or maybe
you have some? I assume your convictions are based on stats, as they are
more firm than my mere suspicions.] To this I would add that, like the
Inner Party in that novel, that portion of the population enjoying the
greatest concentration of those resources seems to believe the rhetoric
that it uses to explain this disparity -- although the disparity may have
other causes, no matter how complex. That was what I was saying.
>If you like, we can have a long discussion about whether ironically
>pretending to confuse our freedoms with totalitarian slavery is more
>likely to expand our freedoms or destroy our freedoms. You might take
>the side that we are really living in a totalitarian dictatorship, I
>might take the side that we are really living in constitutional
>democracies. But perhaps that is not neccesary and you'll simply admit
>you were teasing.
Or perhaps I will simply suggest to you that both models you have advanced
fail to meet with my sense of the real world, because they are too
simplified, black and white, and skewed by perspective and audience. For
example, define "we." Plenty of people today are not living in an age of
constitutional democracies. Plenty of people live in a state where the
poverty in _1984_ is a way of life for them. I happened to be born white in
Malawi, to white parents with enough money to move to Canada. If I had been
born to a native [black, let's say of the Chewa tribe] Malawian family I
would have been far less likely to have enjoyed such marvelous luck.
Except I don't believe in the idea of luck. So I am busy trying to figure
out the causality of that little issue right there. Yes, I agree, it's
misguided to suggest that it's ALL OUR FAULT. I wouldn't go so far as that
now, but I think it's also problematic to dismiss all responsibility for
the current situation. Therefore I would suggest that the "long discussion"
that you suggested above is unnecessary, because I already don't think *I*
[or you] live in a fully totalitarian dictatorship, and already I don't
think it's particularly useful to play pretend about confusing slavery and
freedom. I appreciate the freedoms that you and I enjoy. I am, however,
exceedingly suspicious about the degree to which the consumerist freedoms
that *we* enjoy impact on *others'* potential freedoms.
I would suggest that, if in Orwell's world the focus was too far to the
side of the "system" in neglect of truth, or goods, or humanity, that in
our world the focus is skewed as well . . . it's just that the chains of
causality are more subtle, and more distributed, and more complex. Not all
of them connect to our apparent abundance, but our apparent abundance (and
waste) does take a deeply sinister tinge when viewed in proportion to the
amount of privation in the world . . . in my perception, anyway. Maybe it's
true that, like in _1984_, there is a possibility that resources are scarce
on top of the fact that their distribution is by circumstance and system
limited to the elite. Still, the disparity looks nasty. And rather than
through privation, it seems to me the "inner party" -- us -- seems to be
enticed into doublethink by luxuries that we enjoy. Excuse the gendered
example, but the way to a man's mind is through a big comfy chair and a
movie with a sexy woman in it...
As I say, maybe I am misinformed or missing some crucial information. Every
second book aside from schoolbooks that I've read for a while now has been
on this issue (a couple of years now, but that is not much because I am a
SLOW reader and have been busy for the last few years), but I haven't read
everything you have. Sorry. But my disagreeing with your view is not a
symptom of insanity, any more than is your disagreement with my view. :) In
any case, I don't think that I usually bother to ironically pretend
anything, even when I am teasing (which I often do). I might be wrong, but
I am saying what I think and feel. I'd prefer to be told if I am wrong,
and why, without it being suggested that either of us is crazy. Let's play
nice, Darryl, shan't we?
Gord
