1984 and Brave New World

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

1984 has been far more politicized than Brave New World. Whenever something happens politically that one does not like, the talking heads will say things like, 'It's like 1984! Watch out for Big Brother!' etc. etc. For the most part, it's completely uncalled for, and you will find that these talking heads have never read 1984.

As far as these works being 'prophetic', I am naturally skeptical. I do not call using your own observations on human nature being 'prophetic', and that all that Huxley and Orwell did was observe the human condition in certain conditions and then extended them to extreme scenarios. Whenever we see things that are 'similar', it's because it has happened before and will happen again. Huxley and Orwell realized this and used it to their advantage.

I do not consider 1984 to be prophetic or even very useful as a political critique as the thrust is eschatological rather than historic. "A boot stamping on a human face -- forever" invokes the end of history rather than a possible political outcome within the causal universe (I'll refer the doubters to Vaclev Havel). 1984 is archetypal -- mythic, even. Like Milton or Dante.

[Avatar]

Have got my BNW copy secured (the library has managed to get onr for me which I will collect on Tuesday). Also with Ron's download of 1984 (and the chance of picking up a book or borrowing a Kindle today) I'm pretty 'good to go'.

What is the 'form' for doing this Av (and possibly Vraith). I read 2+ hours a day but not massively fast by some peoples standards. Do we comment just as it takes us or in a more 'formal' manner - say at the end of every three or for chapters. (I'm a 'greenhorn' at doing anything like a group read and so am in the dark as to how it goes )

Well...it's your idea and thread, so can do it however you like. The dissections we do by chapter, then give others time to comment then move on, new thread for new chapter...but this is different, cuz your intention is to compare the two at some point...I mean, are you going to read one all the way through, then the next? or Ch1 of 84 compare ch1 BNW? then move? it's really up to you, though.

Right, and I found my copy of BNW too, so I'm good to go on all fronts.

As vraith said, up to you. I can see merits in any of the proposed methods myself. Maybe start reading, and then just post your thoughts on as far as you get? I'm easy.

--A

[peter]

Yes Av - I think a 'chapter by chapter' aproach, though great, would be a bit beyond the scope of my intentions and (alas) time. I have started '1984' on a friend's Kindle, which I have to return on Thursday night (BNW I now have the library copy in my possesion) so will expect to finish it prior to then with a bit of luck. I am currently 59% through it - so the Kindle informs me - and have a few preliminary observations to make.

As a 'predictive' exercise as to what was going to happen, or what might happen in the future if english socialism went down the path already taken in the Soviet Union it clearly 'ticks the boxes'. As I mention above, I'm coming into it 'blind' and only have my previous encounter with 'Animal Farm' and the cultural baggage I have collected in a lifetime of being exposed to the '1984 Idea' that permeates many aspects of our lives beyond the frontiers of the book (ie how CCTV is described as 'Big Brother is Watching You' etc and the 'creepiness' of a '1984' society), to base any judgements upon. I would have to guess at this time that it clearly *was* Orwells intention to send out some kind of message in this book (as opposed to just doing some 'tale telling') and that, summed up the message was twofold. Firstly it seems a stark warning about the dangers of totalitatian government when power becomes excessively centralised and secondly (but relatedly) a demonstration of the extent to which 'reality' can be tampered with, as it is experienced by the massas in the pusuit of their day to day lives. The 'reach' of government if you like, in it's ability to alter the way people actually think by the adroit manipulation of the information they are fed about the past and the present ("He who controll's the Past...etc).

I won't go too far into what I think of the book as yet in terms of how it reads and in fairness I am less interested in the book(s) as literature (neither need my endorsement on that front) than as I said as to how close they 'got it' (intividually or taken together) in respect of a scenario they could predict as there being a danger of being realised in the (not massively distant) future. Did the books achieve their ends in staveing off the futures they portray (if this was indeed their intention) is a subject that would clearly bear discussion at some point, perhaps when both novels are freshly under our belts.

One last point before I return to the benighted Kindle (I rather like it actually ) and that is, to date the episode in the book that has resonated with me most personally is the quick encounter that Winston has with a small group of 'proles' in the rough part of London who are arguing over the lottery numbers that have been drawn in the preceeding weeks. I sell lottery tickets where I work and can vouch first hand for the power of this 'game' in the creation of unrealistic dreams and the consumption of valuable time and scarce rescources of masses of individuals for whom each week, the lottery draw is the main focus of their attempt to escape from the drugery of daily life. Here alone if nowhere else Orwell got it bang on!

[Avatar]

Well, I started it this morning, so am only a couple pages in.

I was very struck by the fact that one of the seminal phrases of the book, the above-quoted "Big Brother Is Watching You," has been turned by our society into a "reality" TV program.

The last time I read this, I'm pretty sure it hadn't happened yet. The modern proliferation of passive surveillance is certainly another thing that the book is right about, even if we aren't quite at the point of them installing cameras in our homes.

That said, ask yourself how much of your activities things like Google is aware of...

--A

[peter]

Yes - the reality TV show thing had struck me too. All the more ironic in that it has been given an almost 'comic' overtone by the progam while as you note, the quiet proliferation of ever increasing levels of CCTV surveilance continues apace. Introduced for the most benevolent of reasons there always has to be the inherent risk of 'mission creep' in the way that it is used.

I'm cracking on with the book Av in order to get my bosses Kindle back to her on Thursday. I expect I'll slow down markedly on BNW which I have for a few weeks from the library.

At the three-quaters stage I'm finding 1984 a fairly disconcerting read. I'm painfully aware that my limitations as a reader will become brutaly exposed if/when I start to comment in depth on the books but be that as it may I won't hold back from saying what I feel. (Other people always seemed to see deeper meaning in the Chrons than me, where I saw them just as cracking good stories). I have just read the sequence where Winston reads to Julia from 'the Book' and the overall effect is to make one wonder as to how much of this kind of thing goes on at a more subtle level in our societies. Going too far down that road could clearly lead to paranoia! The similarities between what is described in the book and what was practiced in Stalins USSR is marked - can Orwell really have known the Soviet system in this depth (see Julian Gray's chapter 'The God Builders in his book 'The Immortalisation Commission' for an account of the activities of the Cheka and the similarities cannot but strike you). Such knowledge could only result from a deep level of aquaintance with the inner workings of the communist state machinery - or they were prescient indeed. All in all at this stage my feeling is that what we have averted from the front door in Orwells warning is in danger of slipping in through the back.
A furthur thing that I find of particular interest are the parts where (particularly in the Book) Orwell describes the events that for him were in the near future ie the fifties and sixties etc, but for us are known periods of time. I am fascinated by his description of the sequence of events that leads from the world he knows (the post war forties) to the world of his imagining in1984. The book is dark as yet and I suspect it's going to get darker. O'brien worries me and clearly the net is in some way tightening on Winston and Julia. I see no light at the end of this tunnel

The attitude of the 'regime' toward the 'proles' is also of great interest. Of all the peoples of the 11984 world it is the proles who are allowed the greatest freedom to pursue their lives as is their wont. The regime takes the view that their intelligence can be given free rein to go where it will because they haven't got any -or such as they have is so limited that it will not take them to places where it will cause problems to the designated order. They can be manipulated at will to any place where the state wills simply by a few chosen words/ press releases etc.

It is a strange fact that in the UK today despite ever increasing sums spent on education and training there is (or seems to be) an inexorable 'dumbing down' of the society, with each new generation of school leavers appearing (to me at least) to be more iliterate and inumerate than the one before. (Or maybe I'm just getting old and cranky! ). A week or two ago I suggested to my wife she read Kipling's 'Kim'. Her response after a few pages was 'I can't follow it - the language is too dificult'. Now 'Kim' was written as a kids story at the turn of the Twentieth century but now an inteligent adult deems it to hard to follow. Similarly a girl who comes into the shop is at university studying Eng. Lit. and I asked her what books she was studying. 'Dracula' she said, and whenI relied that I loved it and found it so easy to read (unlike Frankenstein) she looked suprised. To her it was hard. This theme cuts right back to the reason why we are here in this thread at all - the failure of my library to initially be able to provide me with quality literature! The 'Newspeak' of 1984 in it's atempt to limit what can actually be thought by the inhabitants of Ociana (ie no treasonous or dissenting ideas would be possible in Newspeak) is to an extent being achieved as we speak by the willing acceptance of western populations to 'dumbing down' and ever decreasing standards of literacy and vocabulary level. I can at will reel of a hundred - five hundred words - that my peers at work could not understand. This is not bragging it's a fact and a sad one. Thats five hundred ideas they will never have - and that to me is frightening! The complexity of the ideas you can form is bounded by the very architecture of the language you can muster and at the moment for the bulk of people this is shockingly low.

[Orlion]

Keep that last thought in mind for Brave New World, I believe it is most particularly relevant there.

It's also the idea of entertainment. If we look at Fahrenheit 451, we have similar problems where the vast majority of society is... brutish and stupid. This is due largely because their entertainment consists of driving things really fast *coughNascarcough* and setting up wall TVs where they can interact with fictional characters... dull, not eve soap opera worthy characters. This came about because of political correctness carried to an extreme, according to Bradbury.

And I think that's the closest thing to Newspeak we have: political correctness. Come to think of it, most things political will use a form of Newspeak, where they try to dumben things down to the point that you can not tell what the actual reality is that is being refered to (like 'Obamacare', 'Global Climate Change/Warming', 'Pepsi', etc.) The idea is to obfuscate the actual reality of something and manipulate the hearer with the speaker's own interpretation.

[I'm Murrin]

The modern proliferation of passive surveillance is certainly another thing that the book is right about, even if we aren't quite at the point of them installing cameras in our homes.

Something that's becoming more prevalent these days is the practice of using computer viruses to control a computer and then watch the owner through their webcam; it's also used in crime fighting software to remotely view thieves - in either case, it can be done passively, with no indication to the owner that it is occuring. It is not hard to imagine unscrupulous law enforcement making use of some of these techniques to spy on suspects, much as you hear occasionally of phone tapping being used. That is, essentially, what the telescreens in Nineteen Eighty-Four allow the Minitru to do.

[ussusimiel]

I'm doing the read-along using Ron's link for BNW. Thanks, Ron! (My buddy lent me 1984.)

I'm reading them kind of in parallel which is an interesting experience. I'll just give a few general comments and we can save the closer anaysis for when you've finished, peter.

What is interesting about both novels is how language is at the heart of them (as Orlion alluded to above). In 1984 the true oppression is focused squarely on language (with the consequent emphasis on emotion and spectacle). This is interesting when applied to the world we currently live in because, as has already been said, 'dumbing down' appears to be widespread (and Big Brother and X-Factor the new 'bread and circuses').

When we get into it later I will have something to say about the connection between 'dumbing down' and laissez faire capitalism, but for now let me just note that I see an interesting thread emerging from both books that reflects directly on it.

(Just as an aside, it occurs to me that the project of Newspeak is doomed to failure because the language of the human imagination and dreams is that of symbols rather than words. So, IMO, no amount of suppression (beyond death) can ever achieve what is aimed for by Newspeak. That's my eternal optimist hard at work )

u.

[I'm Murrin]

Even if the people lack the means to express their thoughts? It's likely to lead to futile emotional outburst rather than constructive opposition, don't you think?

It's worth noting that as far as IngSoc is concerned, controlling society comes down to controlling the middle class. The masses, the proles, are ignored, left to their devices, not expected to care about much beyond themselves. Newspeak is exclusively for control of the middle and upper class.

(This is why Winston thinks that the hope for the future lies with the proles.)

[ussusimiel]

Even if the people lack the means to express their thoughts? It's likely to lead to futile emotional outburst rather than constructive opposition, don't you think?

Yes (my internal optimist says) because so long as people have words like 'lion' or 'heart' they can be added to by symbolic associations. And then combined so that you quickly get 'lion-hearted' even if such a connotation has been carefully excised from the language. As a friend of mine says, 'language is infintely plastic'. Another word that could be used is 'promiscuous'; another 'organic'. Put language and symbol in contact with each other and words breed like rabbits.

It's worth noting that as far as IngSoc is concerned, controlling society comes down to controlling the middle class. The masses, the proles, are ignored, left to their devices, not expected to care about much beyond themselves. Newspeak is exclusively for control of the middle and upper class.

(This is why Winston thinks that the hope for the future lies with the proles.)

That's true, but it's also another reason that I don't think it can succeed. In our time the middle classes are anesthestised by consumption, by having stuff. One of the things that drives Winston mad is the shoddiness of everything and the lack of improvement. This is what keeps the middle class happy; their nice food, fine wine, new car, ability to travel and a sense that things are constantly improving. It's one of the things that Marx didn't predict. He didn't see that the middle class could expand so much; upwards and downwards.
u.

[I'm Murrin]

Yes, well, that's the thing, isn't it? In the end, in 1984, what happens is that their perfect programs are instituted from the top-down, and it's the Inner Party that find themselves believing their own propaganda and shaping their own thoughts, rather than the Outer Party. It's a top-down system, with the ones that have most power being taken in the most by the manufactured reality, eventually.

Doublethink is not a way to follow the rules while also circumventing them: It's a way to brainwash yourself even while knowing it is brainwashing. And this is how the Inner Party, especially Minitru, operate.

It is, most likely, unsustainable.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Yes, Murrin, you're exactly right that it is unsustainable, on a number of levels. Which calls 1984's vision of an endless dystopian regime into question. Tell you what though, I'll give it a rest until we've finished re-reading the books.

[Avatar]

I'm cracking on with the book Av in order to get my bosses Kindle back to her on Thursday. I expect I'll slow down markedly on BNW which I have for a few weeks from the library.

No worries. I saved myself 50 pages for today, so we'll probably finish at the same time, for our purposes anyway.

Other people always seemed to see deeper meaning...

Hahaha, don't worry about it. I've mentioned often enough that I'm not a critical reader myself...I don't go reading into things, on the whole.

(I just recently realised why this is btw...because I read so much by necessity, a good book is one that engages me, draws me into its world. If it does that, I don't worry about whether the author was trying to convey some sort of message.)

I have just read the sequence where Winston reads to Julia from 'the Book' and the overall effect is to make one wonder as to how much of this kind of thing goes on at a more subtle level in our societies.

Hahaha, I'm at the same place. Some things mentioned there still seem to apply...others are concepts taken to the logical extreme I think.

The similarities between what is described in the book and what was practiced in Stalins USSR is marked - can Orwell really have known the Soviet system in this depth?

I had the same question, especially since it was written in '49. However, if I recall, Orwell had a great deal of antipathy for Stalin, whom he accused of hijacking and perverting the socialist revolution. (That's what Animal Farm is about.)

I am fascinated by his description of the sequence of events that leads from the world he knows (the post war forties) to the world of his imagining in1984.

Yeah, that didn't really ring true for me...

The attitude of the 'regime' toward the 'proles' is also of great interest.

Yeah, I didn't quite buy that either...as Murrin said above, it strikes me as unsustainable.

...there is (or seems to be) an inexorable 'dumbing down' of the society, with each new generation of school leavers appearing (to me at least) to be more iliterate and inumerate than the one before. (Or maybe I'm just getting old and cranky! ).

I feel the same way, with the same caveats though. I don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly feels like it is.

Hold onto your hat. The ride is about to get rough.

...to control a computer and then watch the owner through their webcam...

Damn, I forgot about that. You're right.

The masses, the proles, are ignored, left to their devices, not expected to care about much beyond themselves. Newspeak is exclusively for control of the middle and upper class.

Yeah, I don't think that's too workable...it seems unlikely that a society like that would not bother to control the largest segment of the population.

Like Ron, I don't think it's possible the way that it presented here. But there are definitely aspects of it that are not only possible, but which already exist.

--A

[peter]

Last night by coincidence a news report on Chanel 4 news told the story of how Mandela's copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespear which sustained him and his fellow inmates on Ronin Island over their long years of incarceration, had been placed on display at the British Museum. One of his fellow prisoners, interviewed for the report finished up by saying ' A message to the young people - put down the earplug and the game controller. Pick up a Book. A mind that does not read atrophies. A mind that reads expands.' You can see why the first action of any totalitarian regime is always directed against free acess to literature.

I would like to believe Ron's/Uss's/Murrins optimism regarding the 'plasticity' of laguage sidesteping any atempt to constrain it and the power of imagination to develop complex concepts even in the face of inadequate language to express it - but alas my experience of people does not support it. All my lifetime's work has been involved with the meeting with scores of people daily from all strata of society. A 7 - 11 store is a fantastic place to see a vertical slice of your society in it's 'unguarded state' (the doctors buying their cigarrette's, the solicitors buying their two bottles of wine a night, the masses screaming out for lottery tickets and their next fix of 'Britains Got Talent') and I'm afraid Orwell hits pretty close to the mark in my book in his analysis of what concerns the bulk of people in the course of their daily lives. Deep thought is the exeption rather than the rule (and perhaps this is a good thing). There is no evidence apparant to me from my observation of people that they in any way react against the 'top down' system (who for example would ever believe our 'laisser faire' system to be 'fair' exept those at the top who benefit from it, but there is little or no reaction against it and that which does occur is feeble and quickly dissipates eg the 'Wall street protests').

(Sorry guy's - it was always going to be difficult to read these two without getting *a bit* political )

Well 1984 is finished and BNW started. A few comments regarding 1984 - like Avatar I found some of the explanations/descriptions went a bit too far. The book made me think (though whether any useful result will come of that you guys must be the judge ) but (and this is going to sound terrible I know) as a 'reading experience' I found it a bit 'hollow'. I think it's power is in it's ideas rather than it's story or literary execution. I found the introduction of the 'Room 101' thing contrived and melodromatic ("Oh my God - Not Room 101, anything but Room 101!") and when we eventually got there it just wasn't that bad. As horror it was weak, and Winstons route out by wishing the torture onto Julia instead of himself was ...just ok but it didn't move me. I know it was the final 'breaking of Winston' and all - but I don't know if I cared.

But that's not the point is it? As I say the power of the book for me is in the idea - and that idea is a frightening, thought provoking lever into the dark places of the world from which you cannot emerge unscathed. Brave New World is like a breath of fresh air in comparison and in a guilty sort of way the early chapters make the place sound sort of - OK (:oops:) in certain ways . Perhaps this effect is more pronounced by it's being encountered directly after the grim experience of 1984 and time will tell where the story take's us. As a read (about one third in) BNW is 'doing it' for me much more than 1984 - it's not as hard hitting yet, but it's still up there and in many ways the society presented 'resonates' much more with the world I inhabit than the overtly totalitarian one described in 1984. I can see stuff coming out that is disturbingly close to things we are now seeing emerge in our own world (our increasing power to custom build a fetus, the widespread use of prozac, the idea that constant activity rather than thought is preferable and the infantilisation of adults in their thinking). Still - let's see where it goes.

A couple of questions regarding 1984 that I'd be interested to get a few different perspectives on. I don't think I 'got' the end. What actually happened. Did Winston actually die in the corridor loving BB, or was this a 'dream sequence'. He clearly knew his end would come in such a place and formed his plan to think hatred of BB in his final moment in order that an intolerable thought that could not be changed would forever exist in the past, in view of this. But did he then fail in this.
A second question is whether the three world states also existed or were they just constucts of IngSoc in order to explain the (also figmentary) war that was always ongoing. Clearly Goldstein was a fiction created to draw out dissident thinkers into the open but did the Brotherhood have any real existence. 'The Book' was one of O'Briens ruses, but was there a truth that even he was unaware of under all the lies. (Terrible confession time) I did not read all of the appendix on Newspeak but this may have been a mistake. I have read subsequently that it uses the terms 'I' and 'We' and refers to Newspeak as though it were a thing of the past. Is this still part of the book and telling us that the 'proles' did indeed rise up and end the opression of IngSoc - or is it just as it is presented, Orwell just expounding his ideas on the creation of a 'perfect language' for Oligarchian Totalitarianists. Should I have kept reading?

Lastly in respect of 'doublethink' - I think I alredy practice it every time I try to get my head around quantum mechanics!

[I'm Murrin]

Yeah, the bit on the end about Newspeak talks about it as a historical curiosity, suggesting that the regime failed.

[peter]

OK - better get the Kindle back out and finish the job!

[ussusimiel]

Good stuff, peter, you're a faster reader than you let on. I finished the book last night. The ending wasn't as striking as when I read it years ago; graphic violence in film may have inured me to it somewhat.

What I found really interesting this time was the meditation on Power that forms the end of the book. This has become a central concern of mine over the last number of years and I think that it is one of the most important features of our own society. (It relates to the laissez faire capitalism and the ego. We can discuss it when we've read the two books.)

Another (directly related) thing that had never occurred to me is the absence of a real idea of God or the soul. When O'Brien asks if he believes in God, Winston states that he doesn't. No doubt O'Brien would have had a whole other attack reserved for if he did, but that's by the way. What struck me was that as long as Winston accepts that he's wholly material then he's doomed because he can be wholly controlled. The only real escape that I could imagine from the power of Big Brother is belief, and it is a complete escape because belief is irrational and so immune to manipulation and attack through language.

I kept Ron's suggestion in mind as I read the book (thanks again, Ron!) and I am coming around to the idea that rather than a dystopia, 1984 is actually an existentialist novel. The machine has not simply made equality possible, it has destroyed God. Nearer and nearer the end it seems that O'Brien knows more and more about Winston's inner life (especially the nightmare about the rats) in a way that leads me to speculate that O'Brien is a hellish projection on Winston's mind more than anything else.

u.

[P.S. Just to check. I had no memory of the scene where they give Winston electroshock and partially wipe his mind. Was this always in the book? Is it in your copies? Has BB inserted it and wiped it many times already? ]

[Orlion]

[P.S. Just to check. I had no memory of the scene where they give Winston electroshock and partially wipe his mind. Was this always in the book? Is it in your copies? Has BB inserted it and wiped it many times already? ]

Funny you should mention that. It's actually part of the reason why I refuse to get an eReader. As an electronic document, books would be easier to change, easier to control, and the fact that eReaders now are connected to the Wide Web, it'd be easier to replace all the edocuments everywhere, to where someone could question: "Hey, this wasn't here before... but everybody's book has it, sooo... must be my imagination...

[ussusimiel]

[P.S. Just to check. I had no memory of the scene where they give Winston electroshock and partially wipe his mind. Was this always in the book? Is it in your copies? Has BB inserted it and wiped it many times already? ]

Funny you should mention that. It's actually part of the reason why I refuse to get an eReader. As an electronic document, books would be easier to change, easier to control, and the fact that eReaders now are connected to the Wide Web, it'd be easier to replace all the edocuments everywhere, to where someone could question: "Hey, this wasn't here before... but everybody's book has it, sooo... must be my imagination...

Even funnier is the story of someone (was it someone on the Watch?) who downloaded a book then because of some legal issue the book was withdrawn and remove directly from their Kindle. The book in question: 1984 by George Orwell. (Seems too good to be true Maybe it was an April Fools!)

u.

[Orlion]

[P.S. Just to check. I had no memory of the scene where they give Winston electroshock and partially wipe his mind. Was this always in the book? Is it in your copies? Has BB inserted it and wiped it many times already? ]

Funny you should mention that. It's actually part of the reason why I refuse to get an eReader. As an electronic document, books would be easier to change, easier to control, and the fact that eReaders now are connected to the Wide Web, it'd be easier to replace all the edocuments everywhere, to where someone could question: "Hey, this wasn't here before... but everybody's book has it, sooo... must be my imagination...

Even funnier is the story of someone (was it someone on the Watch?) who downloaded a book then because of some legal issue the book was withdrawn and remove directly from their Kindle. The book in question: 1984 by George Orwell. (Seems too good to be true Maybe it was an April Fools!)

u.

Big Brother is watching... we must be careful...