There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always, do not forget this Winston. Always there will be the intoxication of power Constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler always at every moment. There will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. Perhaps the most influential dystopian novel of all time, 1984 provided the world with a vision of the future where fascist and totalitarian forces rule supreme. But to understand 1984, you have to understand its author George Orwell and what he was trying so desperately to warn us against. George Orwell was a socialist and an ardent anti-fascist his entire life. In 1936 at the age of 33 He signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War and this was no mean feat, The British government trying to maintain peace with Nazi Germany Which had already taken a side in the conflict, outlawed its citizens from volunteering to fight for the Democratic Republic of Spain. Orwell went anyway, determined as he said, "To fight fascists." But the Stalinist Soviet Union supported the Republic and as the war began to go badly for the Republican cause, Soviet influence began to hold more and more sway. The once freedom-loving Republicans began to turn on each other. Succumbing to the same type of ideological purity test that the Soviet Union had adopted under Stalin. So anyone not firmly a Soviet style communist was being labeled a fascist and run out of the country or imprisoned. Orwell himself had to flee. And it was an experience that would color the rest of his life. It made him realize that Totalitarianism in all of its forms, not just fascism was a threat to the future of humankind. He would write about this in his excellent 'Homage to Catalonia' where he recounts his adventures in the Spanish Civil War. Then again in 'Animal Farm' where he would deal directly with the descent of the Russian Revolution. From an ideals driven, if perhaps somewhat naive drive for freedom to a totalitarian nightmare of starvation and purges. And while this analogy would serve well where his ideas really hit home. His home was in his 1949 classic '1984'. He envisioned a version of Great Britain dominated by a Soviet style totalitarian government. It is a surveillance state with cameras in every home and neighbor primed to turn on neighbor at work or at home or walking about the town. One must conform to the thoughts of the party. It's where we get the phrase, "Big brother is watching you." Which is plastered up all over 1984's London or as it's known in the book the principal city of Airstrip 1. And the terrifying thing is people find this comforting. They put pictures of big brother up in their home. He's a venerated figure even though no one knows if he actually exists. His watchful gaze keeps them safe and roots out traitors. Or at least that's what many people believe because they're told everyday that's what he does. But unlike the society in Brave New World though, There's little about the England of 1984 that could even be argued to be better than the world we know today. This world is in a constant state of war. Buildings are left in ruins and food often has to be rationed. Government services are nearly non-existent. And scientific progress seems limited to military and propaganda purposes. In fact a much of society's labor is devoted to propaganda. Newspapers are re-edited to remove the names and pictures of people the party no longer approves of. Speeches are constantly given about how terrible and evil the world outside England is. And films are spliced together for the two minutes hate, a daily ritual where people watch videos of enemies of the state And express their hatred for them and while that last bit may seem almost absurd to us, Listen to Orwell's description of what it was like to be part of it. "The horrible thing about the two minutes hate was not that one was obligated to act a part, But that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within 30 seconds Any pretence was always unnecessary, a hideous ecstasy of fear, and vindictiveness. A desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer Seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current. Turning one even against one's will into a grimacing screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion, which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blow lamp." Wait was that 1984 or Twitter's Terms of Service? ZING (=w= why?) This idea is the true heart of the book and you may ask yourself, "If society was that terrible Why didn't people just rise up?" And they may in the long run. They may, like the main character, harbors somewhere deep within them a hatred for the party and want to see it destroyed. But the populace is constantly distracted from that by xenophobia, Nationalism and hate. The idea that Orwell presents us is that people subtle enough and brutal enough, Can take that undirected dissatisfaction, that undirected anger of a society and point it at whatever they will, using us to dam ourselves. That does sound familiar Zoe. "Where have we heard stuff like that lately?" Hmmmmm There's a fantastic scene in which a person makes a speech denouncing the countries that they're at war with when halfway through that speech, The news comes in that they've made peace with their old enemies And allied against them to fight someone else and without missing a beat the order just starts denouncing the new enemy And praising the group he was spewing vitriol against a second before. And the crowd just moves with it. In a frenzy, they tear down the posters that some of them just hung moments before That lampooned the old enemy and start telling each other that they must have been put up by some double agents in their midst as As wild as this sounds there are plenty of examples, Both modern and ancient of this sort of instant about-face happening. Of people subconsciously wanting more to express their hate or be part of a group, Then actually caring about what the group's principles are that let them do so. There are plenty of times throughout history, Where a group expresses a belief and then their leader for whatever pragmatics ends, they desire Espouses the opposite belief and everyone who follows them. Not only switches what they believe in, but deny they ever believed in anything else at all. This is the warning that 1984 provides us. It tells us to catch ourselves, to stop ourselves in that moment And remember what we actually believe rather than what the group we belong to tells us. Because the alternative well, that way leads to tyranny.
