Among other things, 1984 is a mid-life crisis: Winston is a middle-aged man with declining health, estranged from his wife in a loveless marriage. He realizes that everything he built his life on is wrong, and goes on a journey to figure it out. Along the way he has an affair with a younger woman (Julia). Then the system catches up and crushes his newly awakened soul out of existence. The end.
Ugh! I hear Orwell laughing from behind the pages, “See, I have destroyed all reason and hope in you by destroying my characters.” Why make such a journey of despair? I suspect there is a bit of satire in this meaningless ending, and Orwell is daring us to prove him wrong by doing better.
One of the many aspects of satirical meaninglessness is that we never find out Why. Sure, O’Brien (Mr. Bad) gives a reason for how the Party operates, but it is completely empty: power for power’s sake. At least in Brave New World there is a reason for everything, and it sort of makes sense. In 1984, the people in power have abandoned any vestige of rationality.
I feel motivated to prove Orwell wrong. Not because I want to be lazy and do nothing to prevent 1984, rather because 1984 could never happen. Sure, every bad thing in the book has happened (and in some places still happen). There are police states. People get tortured and brainwashed. Governments built on cult of personality try to rewrite reality. North Korea is probably at the top of the list.
However, there are logical contradictions and scientific errors in the book. There is a reason why the world never turned out the way Orwell describes, and he can’t simply take the credit for scaring us out of it.
- The Party is forever — They try to stop the perpetual cycle of history, the constant turnover of human government, by fully embracing the evil of absolute power, with no illusion of any redeeming quality. Nonsense! Human nature is a constant, and the people in power will act according to it. At a minimum they will be self-interested. They will seek pleasure and their own advancement. This will naturally destabilize the system. That is the true cause of repeated “purges”, not the ever-tightening grip of absolute power. Note that “Big Brother” does not really exist. He is an imaginary figurehead (perhaps a satire of God). That means the Party is run by a collective of elites. What could be more ripe for internal conflict?
- Brainwashing that actually changes how you think — Since we can’t test this in a laboratory (at least not ethically), all we have is historical cases. According to this brainwashing article on HowStuffWorks, the success rate on American POWs during the Korean War was something like 0.1%. Anyone can be made to do anything under duress, including say that 2+2=5, but it is very difficult to make them believe it.
- Power — O’Brien says that power is ability to make others suffer, and it has no higher purpose. IMHO, power is the ability to influence the actions of others. Its purpose is to couple us into a larger functioning organism called “society”. The larger an organization becomes, the more power it has over the individual. I consider oversized organizations to be a force of evil, but such things emerge naturally from human nature. In 1984, the Party is trying to destroy human nature (such as eliminating natural affection and pleasure in sex) for the sake of power. This shows a deep misunderstanding.
- Big Brother is watching you — Even today, it is very hard for computers to watch a video and figure out what is happening. The world of 1984 is peppered with cameras and microphones, but they must all be monitored by humans. That means that most of the time, most people are not being watched. It also means that the watchers have human motivations. In a world of decaying science and technology, the infrastructure necessary to move such an enormous volume of data must be spectacular, and highly vulnerable to sabotage. It wouldn’t be necessary to disable your own viewscreen, simply go and cut the main communication wire in your area. (BTW, where do the viewscreens get power when they shut off the electricity at night?)
- Newspeak — Mercifully, there is almost no Newspeak dialog in the book. It is merely an idea that Orwell is playing with. I like the idea of simplifying English vocabulary and grammar. OTOH, that notion that reducing vocabulary could limit people’s ability to think and communicate subversive ideas is utter rubbish. Language is not dictated by a dictionary. It is constantly created and negotiated between people. If they want to share something and lack a word, they simply create a new one! Some philosophers believe that thought requires language. They are wrong, of course. Language is processed in one corner of the human brain, but that brain does a lot of other things that we call conscious thought. Example: visual reasoning.
As with most of my posts, here is an obligatory mention of my novel SuSAn. It contains the concept of the “Fourth Order”, which fills a role similar to the Party in 1984. Not nearly as scary on the surface, but every bit as implacable. The 4th Order is a super-organism that emerges naturally from our DNA, and is inherently self-destructive. It keeps us trapped in the endless cycle of history, the growth and decay of civilizations.
In the sequel (Time of the Stones) the cycle is broken and civilization enters a steady-state. Exactly how this happens is surprisingly simple. It certainly won’t require two full chapters of drivel didactic. However, I won’t spoil it here.