Kevin's Watch

I'm not doing the read-along...but I remember the mind-wipe scene from reading the book lo, these many years ago.

Unless *my* memories have been tampered with. I do own an e-reader, after all.

ussusimiel wrote: 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 who downloaded a book then because of some legal issue the book was withdrawn and remove directly from their Kindle.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!)

Two books actually. 1984 & Animal Farm.

Anyway.

For me, it was that he had been broken. It wasn't the violence, it was that his intentions were for nothing. It was the end of hope that they could change things.

Peter wrote:("Oh my God - Not Room 101, anything but Room 101!") and when we eventually got there it just wasn't that bad.

I don't agree. I think the point was that the room was whatever you most feared it would be. If you were a terrible arachnophobe, it would be full of spiders. If you were afraid of fire, it would be where they douse you with petrol and start flicking lit matches about. It was always the worst thing you could imagine.

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.

The difference, I think, is shown by the recent riots in London. That's what strikes me as false...that the proles just merrily continue in their course. Is there no disaffection with the better conditions of the party members etc? He says himself if they would only rise...now, I know how much it takes to make people rise...it takes a lot. But it does happen. The book seems to say it never will.

I think that the other superpowers did exist. In fact, I suspect that the "book" was largely true actually.

As for whether he dies in the end or not, I don't think it matters. (For the record, I assumed he did not.) I think it seemed far more terrible that he should live like that. Broken.

One thing that really struck me was earlier, when he was questioning the old man in the pub...he didn't realise that his questions were being answered. He just couldn't extrapolate from teh answers because he was so removed from them.

(Which brings me to another issue...it all happened too fast. 40 years at the most is too short a time to bring about such radical change I think.)

Anyway.

On to BNW. I just started it last night, so not very far yet. In fact, I've only read the forward twice. My copy has a forward written by Huxley 20 years later which gives some very interesting insight into the story.

The full text of the forward is available online: Here.

It contains serious spoilers, so if you haven't finished the book yet, don't read it until you have.

What really strikes me is the assumption, by two writers, writing nearly 20 years apart, that the world will inevitably descend into totalitarianism.

Now, at a glance, it looks like we have steadily moved away from it. But in some senses, I wonder if that is as true as it seems. It is, afterall, possible to have a totalitarian democracy too...

--A

Avatar wrote:(Which brings me to another issue...it all happened too fast. 40 years at the most is too short a time to bring about such radical change I think.)

Thinking on the Two Minutes Hate, it occurs to me you could draw comparisons with the way North Koreans were shown reacting to Kim Jong-il's death - hysteria, the people reacting with emotional outbursts because they've been conditioned to, and fear what'll happen if they don't. It's been longer than 40 years for Korea, but not too much longer.

Today I am listening to the sounds of the helicopters buzzing to and fro from my local hospital but they sound different and I am wondering exactly what is being done in my name to protect me from them. Sky News on my computer heads with 'Public Warned of Deadly Dangers in Barbecue food'. Is Murdoch hand in glove with the regime in feeding the public a constant scource of banal trash mixed with just the right amount of fear inducing headlines to keep people unbalanced and subliminally afraid. Is he the means by which the 'proles' are prodded and goaded to where they are required to be. Ah well - such are the perils of reading.

Brave new world seems almost banal (in style) compared to the grimness of 1984 (in BNW it is always sunny in the minds eye, in 1984 it is always grey) but I realise the atitude of (most) charachters in the book to thier surroundings has much to do with that - the people do not 'fear' under the World Govornment and this is the difference. The book in parts is almost a satire (is that the right word), almost delibreately funny - but of course it's not. As I read I am absorbed by the story (much more so than 1984) and after putting the book down (generally an hour or two later) the paralells with our own society start to pop, unforced into my mind. Is not the aging process being further and further pushed back for those who can afford the treatments. I think of The 'A' list celebs who have babies and hit 60 and still look barely more than twenty - and I look at my lumpen next door neighbour, all pendulous breasts and greasy hair (old at 40) and I can't but think 'Yes - in many ways it's here already'. if my neighbour (who I like) were to walk into an 'A' list celebrity bash populated by the likes of Angelina and Cameron, the results would be no different from the tragic scene where the director is confronted with the wreckage that the previousely 'pnuematic' Julia has become once deprived of youth giving hormones and soma. The stratification of our society is not in many ways so far removed from that of BNW at all.

(I have deliberately not read any comments posted since I last did so - I have now read the appendix of 1984 in full - because I wanted to get my thoughts down as they are in there 'unadulterated' state as it were. Not sure that's a good idea but.....! nb Pretty sure that if I existed in BNW I'd have been a Delta )

Ok - have flipped back and read the comments. I think a problem for me Av with the 101 scene is that when push comes to shove I believe the type of - irrational is the wrong word but let's say 'non fatal' phobia that is presented would be quickly pulled back into perspective and cease to be damaging in the way described. eg I hate heights - but to save myself I'd climb down the side of a building like the human fly. I hate spiders but given the choice between them and having my fingers snipped off with wire cutters I'd eat a bowl full and come back for seconds.

I take the point Ussusimiel about O'Briens almost telepathic knowledge of Winstons thought processes but isn't this just a demonstation of how far the Thought Police have advanced in their knowledge of 'reading' an individual from the smallest signs observed in his behaviour. Certainly Winston spoke of his fear of rats to his girlfriend in the room they rented and was observed to do so via the telescreen behind the picture. I need to go back and read Ron's earlier observation to actually see what he was getting at here. re the asking of Winston about his belief in God - I was suprised here both by the brevity of Winstons response and O'Briens immediate acceptance of this answer (to what must have been a terribly important thing to know for sure about the person one was interrogating).

The point regarding the alteration of texts - deliberate or otherwise; my 1984 Kindle read contained a number of 'typo's') - had occured to me and I think is a very serious issue that needs to be adressed. Hard copy 'aint perfect, but it is hard. And paranoid I may be, but I see reasons why governments would want to controll what people do and do not read (either within gviven texts or in particualr texts as a whole) all over the place. Yesterday a woman in Birmingham (?) was arrested for 'possesion of literature likely to encite terrorist activity' or similar. 'Possesion of literature' are the words to note here. Someone once said 'When first you burn books you eventually burn people' - how close are we to that?

Yes Av - we chose to read the two books in the order we did even given that BNW was the first published of the two and in many ways perhaps the more prescient (with the readings I'm not sure that that in itself is of much importance anymore to me - it's now more about the force they exert in making me 'think'). Given that the times in which the books were written were the times in which the horrors of totalitarianism were being enacted to their fullest extent it is perhaps less suprising that it is that this is the asumption of the writers as to where the future of mankind would lie. Indeed I think it still is. The trend has always since the dawn of time been toward ever increasing centralisation of government - first from villages into towns, then areas within countries into nation states,then to groups of nation states etc. Who can doubt that the current climate and economic problems are going to demand ever closer union between countries and that this must ultimately end with world government in one form or another. Wether this will be benign or a thing to fear will no-doubt depend on where you sit in the 'great scheme of things'. I have little doubt that even the most benevolent of administations has the capability of plucking out the thorn that pierces it in the side if it so chooses to do. And I think it is your last point of all Av that most has 'watch this space ' written all over it.

Still working my way through BNW, but I'm finding it a drag at times. I simply do not like any of the characters. Unlike Winston, Julia and O'Brien none of the people in BNW seem fully formed. This may be a factor of the world they're set in but I'm still finding it off-putting. (I'm only about half-way through so that may change.) I'm also finding a bit of cognitive dissonance between some of the detailed descriptions and the characters. I'm not sure if thay are meant to be focalised through the characters or if they are the voice of an omnipotent narrator.

peter wrote:Today I am listening to the sounds of the helicopters buzzing to and fro from my local hospital but they sound different and I am wondering exactly what is being done in my name to protect me from them. Sky News on my computer heads with 'Public Warned of Deadly Dangers in Barbecue food'. Is Murdoch hand in glove with the regime in feeding the public a constant scource of banal trash mixed with just the right amount of fear inducing headlines to keep people unbalanced and subliminally afraid. Is he the means by which the 'proles' are prodded and goaded to where they are required to be. Ah well - such are the perils of reading.

Sounds like 1984 got under your skin, sign of a good book

peter wrote:... and I look at my lumpen next door neighbour, all pendulous breasts and greasy hair (old at 40) and I can't but think 'Yes - in many ways it's here already'. if my neighbour (who I like) were to walk into an 'A' list celebrity bash populated by the likes of Angelina and Cameron, the results would be no different from the tragic scene where the director is confronted with the wreckage that the previousely 'pnuematic' Julia has become once deprived of youth giving hormones and soma.

I think you are correct at one level, but at another, I'd have to disagree. The dignity and wisdom of some older people seems to be given weight by the signs of their age. The signs that they have lived. Wise people see through the superficiality of the surface and would eschew such superficiality even of it were offered them. Often the deterioration that you describe in your neighbour is due to circumstances and culture rather than physical aging itself.

peter wrote:I take the point Ussusimiel about O'Briens almost telepathic knowledge of Winstons thought processes but isn't this just a demonstation of how far the Thought Police have advanced in their knowledge of 'reading' an individual from the smallest signs observed in his behaviour. Certainly Winston spoke of his fear of rats to his girlfriend in the room they rented and was observed to do so via the telescreen behind the picture.

Sorry to be so disagreeable, peter, but I think it goes deeper than simple surface knowledge. I'd recommend the article Ron linked to see how entangled O'Brien's knowledge of Winston's thoughts is. An example used in the article is O'Brien's detailed description of Winston's wall/rat dream. I'm fairly sure that Winston does not describe that dream anywhere in the novel or in his diary.

peter wrote:The point regarding the alteration of texts - deliberate or otherwise; my 1984 Kindle read contained a number of 'typo's') -

Same with mine. It's interesting how much less care is taken with something that can be easily changed. SRD has had a 'hellish' time trying to get the e-versions of his books properly proof-read. (He may have resorted to doing it himself in the end ) A typo in a printed book involves an expensive reprint to correct, whereas a mistake in an ebook is a simple matter of a keystroke. I wonder is there a certain Microsoft element involved, where you let the reader/user proof-read/debug your product.

peter wrote:Who can doubt that the current climate and economic problems are going to demand ever closer union between countries and that this must ultimately end with world government in one form or another. Wether this will be benign or a thing to fear will no-doubt depend on where you sit in the 'great scheme of things'.

Avatar wrote:Now, at a glance, it looks like we have steadily moved away from it. But in some senses, I wonder if that is as true as it seems. It is, afterall, possible to have a totalitarian democracy too...

This is my big fear. Plutocracy and corporate power are, for me, the two greatest challenges to democracy in our time. We're having a bit of a discussion that relates to it here at the moment. Unsurprisingly, it revolves around education Plutocats and corporations are responsible to nobody and if the electorate is kept ignorant enough the politicians they elect will simply be puppets of those who really wield power. Frightening!

u.

While, as a book, I generally prefer 1984, I quite enjoyed BNW this time round. Some things did strike a note of truth...immediate gratification, chemical mood control (as pointed out earlier), but what was really interesting was the Controller and his effective sympathy for the unorthodox etc.

Also that there was provision made for the people who were not suited to conformity.

Happiness...some people would just prefer to be miserable.

I found many of his arguments toward the end quite convincing.

And of course, set 500 odd years in the future, it's easier to imagine building up to it.

--A

Sorry I've been 'out of the room' for a day or two guys - long shifts at work punctuated with short bursts of sleep at home!

Ussusimiel - you are more of a human in your disagreable mode than most of us achieve on our best behaviour!

Could the dislike of the charachters of BNW be related to their shallowness - a feature directly related to their deliberate 'infantalisation' by the process by which they have been created. The reason they don't seem 'fully formed' might be that they are not fully formed - and deliberately so both by the 'state' and the authors intent. (Helmholtz by contrast has the potential to be developed (again both by the author as a charachter in the story and within the BNW world itself) but is not so. I think this is deliberate so as not to distract us from the inherent shallowness of the BNW society.)

I agree Av, the Controller and indeed the whole BNW state apparatus seems curiousely 'benevlont' and understanding when it comes to looking at and indeed dealing with dissent ("Now what would you like - a hot island or a cold one?") I wonder how the effect of each book we read would have been altered in our perception if we had switched the order of the read and tackled BNW first.

Is not BNW more of a critique of where science may take us than a political comment, where 1984 has bad politics at it's root.

By the way I still have 10 or so pages to read of BNW and then the 'forward' by Huxley. I'll do this before reading Ron's article link.

Is it possible Ussusimiel to give an example of the 'cognitive dissonance' problem that you are seeing (I understand the words but can't get the meaning if you get me . An example might straighten this out for me.)

One more point - Given the choice I know which of the two 'dystopias' I would choose to live in. The big question is whether I would choose to live in it rather than in the 'dystopia' I currently inhabit (or more seriousely if our society/world could be presented to an outsider in the form of a novel how good/bad would it look in comparison to what we have been reading about).

(Briefly back following a bath and some thinking) We have the consumerist throw away society that keeps us all busy producing, earning to, and actively consuming (side effect - the planet dies which is a shame). We have the ageless disease free society in our sights thanks to the advances of medicine and science in these areas. Similarly with the advances in the production of 'designer babies' we see the beginings of the 'Hatcheries'. Soma consumption could be Prozac nation. And most worrying of all we have the increasingly wide held (and as always totally unrealistic) belief that because we are alive means we have the 'right' to be happy. Huxley would appear to be ticking the boxes.

peter wrote:Ussusimiel - you are more of a human in your disagreable mode than most of us achieve on our best behaviour!

Aw shucks! Thanks, peter. I'm not quite as polite in RL

And thanks for the great opportunity to read along and comment on two excellent books. As I've said before, your restless curiosity across a wide range of topics is constantly refreshing

Here are a couple of examples of the 'cognitive dissonance' I mentioned.

He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into the zenith.[p.50 in the ebook.]

This might not seem only description but the use of 'crimson' and 'zenith' jarred because I can't imagine Lenina or Henry observing the scene in this way.

THE MESA was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloured dust. The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green-the river and its fields. On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost. [p.72]

Again this seems a bit too poetic for Bernard or Lenina's character.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've finished the two books and it now seems to me that they are both existentialist novels (maybe all dystopian novels are). It seems that the effect of science on society is their main concern. The absence of God and the possibility of material equality for all seem to create a crisis point. The authors perceive that human beings have a problem with 'freedom'. (To paraphrase Eliot; too much reality is bad for us )

In 1984 I am coming around to the idea that one of the ways that the problem of freedom is dealt with by Winston is to hand over power to a sadistic Superego character. I find this an interesting take on how our psyches may be structured. Do our egos so fear 'freedom' as to prefer to live in a self-imposed 'hell' rather than face the consequences of 'freedom'. I have considered this before and think that there may be a lot of truth in it.

peter, I think that you are correct about my dislike of the characters stemming from 'infantalisation'. Huxley himself seemed to recognise this as a weakness in his foreward to BNW:

Brought up among the primitives, the Savage (in this hypothetical new version of the book) would not be transported to Utopia until he had had an opportunity of learning something at first hand about the nature of a society composed of freely co-operating individuals devoted to the pursuit of sanity. Thus altered, Brave New World would possess artistic and (if it is permissible to use so large a word in connection with a work of fiction) a philosophical completeness, which in its present form it evidently lacks.

The characters on the islands would have been fuller. The lack of options offered the Savage doesn't reflect the true state of the world in BNW. He would have been alright on one of the islands with Helmholz or Bernard. I think as a consequence of this I found the Savage's character a bit over-the-top and the ending of the novel melodramatic and unsatisfactory.

I now understand that one of the reasons I don't like BNW that much is because the 'system' in BNW is more successful than that in 1984. This has real implications for out time because (as you have pointed out) BNW hits the mark a lot closer to our actual reality than 1984 does. Oppressing people's desires is the not the most effective way to neutralise people; manipulating and feeding their desires is (it's called 'retail therapy ).

Reading Huxley's foreward I came across a couple of other things I found interesting.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.

This is the real danger in my opinion. The focusing of people's attention on a selected set of specific issues (through spin and media manipulation) controls what (and more importantly) how people see the world. This reduces people's imaginative power and it removes from the their sight many of the most enriching and powerful potentials that they have within them. My biggest criticism of science and capitalism is their insistence that they are they only 'way' and that all other ways to knowledge and economic/social organisation must bow down before them.

[T]he prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"

I strongly agree with this. It is basically where I stand in relation to our potential as human beings.

u.

peter wrote: Is not BNW more of a critique of where science may take us than a political comment, where 1984 has bad politics at it's root.

I think you're quite right there.

Given the choice I know which of the two 'dystopias' I would choose to live in.

Hell yeah. BNW all the way.

...And most worrying of all we have the increasingly wide held (and as always totally unrealistic) belief that because we are alive means we have the 'right' to be happy. Huxley would appear to be ticking the boxes.

Which is pretty damn funny, because "Happiness" as a state of being is a pretty recent concept. .

And as people, we don't really understand what happiness is. Or what makes us happy. Or that trying to be happy makes you unhappy.

--A

Avatar wrote:

peter wrote:Given the choice I know which of the two 'dystopias' I would choose to live in.

Hell yeah. BNW all the way.

+1

I see BNW as an echo our current external world and 1984 as resonating with the internal one (for some).

Avatar wrote:And as people, we don't really understand what happiness is. Or what makes us happy.

I agree with this and it's interesting that one of the articles that you quote comes to the following conclusion:

However, results of the study... revealed that the key to true happiness was much more simple: meaningful relationships with friends and family members.

What I find interesting is that both books' systems attack these bonds. (BNW's system being more effective.) Meaningful relationships may be the source of happiness, but they are also the source of much misery.

u.

OK - it's done. Last night I finished BNW and read Huxley's 'forward' written 15 years after the original publication in 1931. In it Huxley admits straight up some of the novels limitations and also raises the problem of the Savages charachter (particularly in the end sequence where he talks to the Controller) not being 'in keeping' with what could be expected from a person brought up in this way on the 'Reservation'. I am not sure why Huxley had to use the Linda/John plot device to introduce a non-hatched individual into the BNW - would not an ordinary 'savage' (ie a true reservation born individual with no 'outsider' background) have done equally well. It's almost like a little bit of 'Tarzan' style racism where a white man is just naturally superior to a native even if raised on exactly comparable lines.

The 'Ford' thing is interesting too. I loved the final sequence with the controller (but like Ussusimiel found the final end unsatisfactory in some way). The Controller was clearly humane, as was the society they had created as a whole. He had much of sense to say. There's not much point in producing masses of stuff if no-one buys it, but just keeps repairing the old stuff. To keep people consuming is to keep people working which in turn is to keep them consuming. This is the cycle that Ford's mass production lines demands - and in fairness who can say it has not worked. Similarly (and God I hate this) there's not much point in educating everybody to the gills if in so doing all you do is create dissatisfaction amongst those whose expectations remain unfulfiled. There will always be those who will be society's 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'.

Of the two books clearly 1984 is the more powerfull but I maintain that BNW is far the more relevant to us as we stand today. We seem, in Western Society, to be willing participants in the execution of our own demise on so many fronts that it hurts. The plutocratic interests that beaver away behind the scenes goading us this way and that as the fancy (or profit) takes them never so much as have to even reveal themselves let alone answer for their actions and we, the meme imbibing proles of today soak up the rubbish as fast as our credit cards will allow and line up, greasy hand outstretched for more, more, more. (Getting into my swing there Guys you'll note ).

Do the two books taken as a whole give a fair swipe at the 'shape of things to come' - I suppose yes they do. Each has it's own take, the one deeply political and dark, the other satirical and lighter in tone. It's difficult to say which of the books I 'liked the best'. As I've said before in 1984 it is the sheer power of the work that grinds you down (though I think the Appendix is meant to tell us that the proles did indeed take back the world from the hands of IngSoc at some future unspecified time although it was a long-winded way of saying so for all exept the most semantically minded of us. Although we do not get any glimpse of what lies ahead for the Alpa's and Delta's of BNW I have an idea of what I would like to be the case (I would like something similar for all the worlds 'celebrities' - to tow them out onto an island of their own where they could spend the rest of their lives in splendid and self-congratulatory isolation loving each (beautiful) other and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives without their tedious and purile intervention). Sorry - got diverted there, where was I, yes - I hope in BNW that all those people dropped off on 'islands' actually got back on with the real work of living, loveing, producing and dying and over time it was the 'stable' BNW'ers who became the prisoners of their own failure to advance.

What is it that makes these two works 'classics' of the modern era. I don't think either is stong enough on it's literary merit alone to qualify as such. I've read a thousand (to me) better books than these two - but I wouldn't have missed this last week for the world. The books have made me think (always tricky ), they've made me question and they've made me work - but most of all they have entertained me. Yes - it's been a worthwhile exercise and my thanks to you Guys for keeping me company on it.

Hahaha, I enjoyed it too.

Think you make some good points in your final summation.

I think in these days of multi-volume series, each volume of which can be 100's of pages, it's inevitable that we would find such short "novels" to be shallow and insufficiently explored.

In many ways, these are more vehicles for polemic than anything else. Expanded morality tales perhaps.

--A

Thanks Av. I've had some fun with this one! I've been meaning to 'do' this back to back reading for a long while and thanks to you at last I got motivated to do it. Job done!

What? What did I have to do with it?

It was your idea...I just thought it would be fun to read them too.

--A

Avatar wrote:What? What did I have to do with it?

It was your idea...I just thought it would be fun to read them too.

--A

You just have that motivating effect on people, Av!

You're scary! Get over it

u.

Avatar wrote:What? What did I have to do with it?

It was your idea...I just thought it would be fun to read them too.

--A

Once you had said you were up for it Av I had no chance to let my usual 'Butterflyesque' attention span kick in and move on to something else before seeing the deed through! A bad case of the willingnus of the spirit vs the weakfullness of the flesh I'm afraid

Hahahaha, believe me, a condition I'm all too familiar with.

--A

Vraith wrote:Of course, I have a bone to pick with you as well...
Don't confuse existentialism with nihilism.

And the world rights itself on its axis

Vraith wrote:Don't confuse existentialism with nihilism.

You are right. I was being a bit too blanket in my use of the term 'existentialism'. I suppose what I was noting (which I hadn't myself noticed before) was that an external source of meaning (i.e. God) is absent from both books and that this is one of the powerful motivating forces for the authors. The rise of the 'machine' and the possibility for human 'freedom' that this enables leads both authors, IMO, towards a nihilistic view of the future.

Yourself (among a number of others on the Watch) are exemplars of joyful, creative, light-filled existentialists. (Maybe, during the season that's in it, we should have a Watchy nomination for Existentialist of the Year )

u.

Yeah, I wouldn't have called BNW nihilist...1984, definitely, but BNW had a hint of hope amidst the freedom.

--A