Deleted member 6086
Aren't some of these people watching footage all day going to feel dissent, and as they aren't watched by anyone else, wouldn't it be easy to set up a revolt? Same with the Thought Police.
How long could the society in 1984 last?
- Thread starter strangeland
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As a medievalist, I'd have to disagree with that comparison. If anything, the Middle Ages were more dynamic than the civilization that proceeded it. The Romans were surprisingly conservative when it came to technology, and extremely conservative in terms of social progress.
Even aside from that, Medieval Europe simply can't compare to the world of 1984. I don't think anything from our history can, really. Such a rigidly controlled, stagnate, opressed society is almost beyond our means to comprehend.
I'm with this.
The system is fairly stable internally no matter how corrupt or wasteful it gets, like a hydraulic empire. But one day it will just run out of stuff. And then you'll see thirty states instead of three, then three hundred, then three thousand, and then no states at all. All the while with massive depopulation as transport networks break down. Urban dwellers flood into the countryside as the cities starve, and they use their initial numbers advantage to take from the farmers, either killing or enslaving them. So now the second generation will have no useful knowledge of the land, and further depopulation occurs as agriculture breaks down. The clock will be set back to the stone age.
And it could be that crawling out of it will be harder the second time, if easily accessed resources have been utterly depleted.
If the Oceanians haven't advanced beyond 40s levels of technology then I'm guessing there's no off shore drilling for oil and gas. So they're basically dependent on what comes out of the ground in mainland USA.
Eventually they're not going to be able to fuel their war machine without resorting to taking the resources from Eastasia or Eurasia. Even with increased rationing for the civilian population.
Eventually they're not going to be able to fuel their war machine without resorting to taking the resources from Eastasia or Eurasia. Even with increased rationing for the civilian population.
Forever.
The whole society apparatus is totally focused at self preservation and continuation
The whole society apparatus is totally focused at self preservation and continuation
I could see the Inner and Outer Party eventually becoming the upper and lower echelons of a priestly caste dedicated to the continuation of the cult of Big Brother in a post industrial Oceania. With the ThinkPol evolving into some kind of Inquisition.
By "oppressed" I assume you mean "oppressive". But the Proles are allowed much more "freedom" then the Party members, as long as they don't directly oppose the Party. Isn't this similar to how the peasantry was treated by the Church in Medieval Europe? The Party is organized hierarchically, similar to the Catholic Church. Big Brother could be seen as an analogue for Jesus or even God. The Thought Police fulfills a similar function to the Inquisition, i.e. routing out heresy. Goldstein is a Jew who betrayed Big Brother, much like Judas betrayed Jesus. Do I even have to mention the Junior Anti-Sex League? The anti-sex attitude of the Party finds no parallel in modern totalitarian societies (as far as I know), and is a distinctive aspect of Christian ideology. When O'Brien is torturing Winston he even compares the process to what the Church and the Nazis and Soviets did to their thoughtcriminals.
The Proles in the book don't seem to understand how oppressive the society of Oceania really is, and they don't seem to display the same meekness that the Party members do. So, could the society of Oceania be as oppressive as is commonly assumed? We really only see the society of 1984 through the eyes of Party members, and for them the society is extremely oppressive. Isn't this similar to the experience of the clergy, who live in a much more regimented, hierarchical society (the Church), with it's strict discipline, poverty and sexual abstinence, than the common Church goer?
This view of Oceania as a theocracy is fascinating to say the least. But it can also be viewed as many other things, just like North Korea can be a Stalinist state, a police state, a militarist state, a fascist state and a theocratic state all at once. It seems the Dear Leader is OTL Big Brother...
Kim Il-Sung is the "Eternal President" of North Korea, even though he's been dead now for 17 years. North Korea is a great example of modern totalitarian-theocratic state.
By the way, I don't think that fascist, militarist, totalitarian, theocratic, etc. states are necessarily exclusive. A fascist state could also be a theocracy, and so on.
By the way, I don't think that fascist, militarist, totalitarian, theocratic, etc. states are necessarily exclusive. A fascist state could also be a theocracy, and so on.
archaeogeek
Banned
It's also shown in its decline.
The notes on newspeak are obviously written in the past tense, as an academic "after the fact" exposition.
North Korea can afford this level of control because it's small.
There is also the eternal question of whether or not Oceania is actually a trans continental megastate, or if Ingsoc is merely confined to a British Pariah state.
I think people underestimate how many resources there are in the world.
Britain for instane has enough coal to last for 1000 years. And the 1984 world doesn't really have high living standards and so its rate of resource use is well below our own.
Excess population of proles- well I guess thats what the wars are for. Controlling that.
Though I must say I always favoured the North Korea intrepretation of 1984. It just doesn't make sense how things could have came to be otherwise (even like that things seem iffy with it being 1984...and if its not why would they lie about the year?)
Britain for instane has enough coal to last for 1000 years. And the 1984 world doesn't really have high living standards and so its rate of resource use is well below our own.
Excess population of proles- well I guess thats what the wars are for. Controlling that.
Though I must say I always favoured the North Korea intrepretation of 1984. It just doesn't make sense how things could have came to be otherwise (even like that things seem iffy with it being 1984...and if its not why would they lie about the year?)
There's lot of things logically wrong with the society of 1984, and how long it wll last is the least of it. (But it's still my favourite novel)
FWIW couple of points:
1. I don't think the populaton is increasing - I think the idea is statis. If the proles have more kids, that's easly dealt with by war, infant mortality, etc.
2. I don't think oil running out, over-population, etc., were big concerns in the 40s when the novel was written. In any case, see above for population, as far as oil is concerned it's manually used for military and industrial purposes (private motor-car use, air travel, etc. is rare to non-existent) so it would last a lot longer than in our society. In any case, they can eventually switch to coal.
3. As far New Speak meaning the party won't understand the proles, I don't think that matters. It may even be desirable. Because the theory of ingsoc, explicitly stated in the novel, is that ruling class (inner party) can only be over-thrown by middle class (outer party). The lower class (proles) are stupified by work, and are at best temporary allies of the middle in the revolution, but are always quickly betrayed after any revolution... and are no threat without the help of the middle
Anyway:
The very idea of New Speak seems to be self-contradictory, maybe even nonsense in its own terms.
The purpose of New Speak is to eliminate the possibility of unorthodox anti-party thoughts. (explicitly explained in the novel)
But the hidden unstated purpose of Ingsoc is to maximize the intoxification of power (explicitly explained in the novel), by oppressing the middle (strongly implied in the novel)
If the inner party (oppressors) and outer party (oppressed) never know they are oppressing or being oppressed, and can't conceive of the concepts of oppression (this is explained when they talk about how the parties slogans of freedom is slavery etc., are meaningless in New Speak)... then I don't there can be much intoxification of power.
FWIW couple of points:
1. I don't think the populaton is increasing - I think the idea is statis. If the proles have more kids, that's easly dealt with by war, infant mortality, etc.
2. I don't think oil running out, over-population, etc., were big concerns in the 40s when the novel was written. In any case, see above for population, as far as oil is concerned it's manually used for military and industrial purposes (private motor-car use, air travel, etc. is rare to non-existent) so it would last a lot longer than in our society. In any case, they can eventually switch to coal.
3. As far New Speak meaning the party won't understand the proles, I don't think that matters. It may even be desirable. Because the theory of ingsoc, explicitly stated in the novel, is that ruling class (inner party) can only be over-thrown by middle class (outer party). The lower class (proles) are stupified by work, and are at best temporary allies of the middle in the revolution, but are always quickly betrayed after any revolution... and are no threat without the help of the middle
Anyway:
The very idea of New Speak seems to be self-contradictory, maybe even nonsense in its own terms.
The purpose of New Speak is to eliminate the possibility of unorthodox anti-party thoughts. (explicitly explained in the novel)
But the hidden unstated purpose of Ingsoc is to maximize the intoxification of power (explicitly explained in the novel), by oppressing the middle (strongly implied in the novel)
If the inner party (oppressors) and outer party (oppressed) never know they are oppressing or being oppressed, and can't conceive of the concepts of oppression (this is explained when they talk about how the parties slogans of freedom is slavery etc., are meaningless in New Speak)... then I don't there can be much intoxification of power.
That is if the war is even real. I believe that in Goldstein's book it is mentioned that the war may not actually exist. And that it is just a ploy to keep morale up. But I may be remembering the plot incorrectly.
Goldstein's book says the war is real, but the purpose of the war is the destructon of surplus production... so in that sense the war is being waged against each state's own population.
I don't think it ever actually says it, but elimination of surpluses in population would be covered to: after all, the war not only kills people directly (Goldstein's book actually says not that many people since the wars are limited wars by professional armies) but more importantly keeps standards of living low killing people indirectly.
I don't think it ever actually says it, but elimination of surpluses in population would be covered to: after all, the war not only kills people directly (Goldstein's book actually says not that many people since the wars are limited wars by professional armies) but more importantly keeps standards of living low killing people indirectly.
I don't know if I buy into the notion that Airstrip One is North Korea. North Korea, as crazy as it is, can't afford to alter the past or ignore reality the way that The Party in Oceania can because it would leave itself vulnerable to conquest by an outside power, as it's stated clearly in Goldstein's Book. The precondition for IngSoc and doublethink and the manipulation of reality is that Oceania is a world unto itself and that The Party is not afraid of being defeated by another state.
Goldstein's Book points out that one of the main reasons for the war is to use up the products of the industrial machine without increasing the standard of living of the population. The main reason for the revolution in the 50s is said to have been the threat to inequality (a hierarchical society) posed by industrial society, that is, the rising living standards associated with industrial development. If this is true, than using up all the planet's natural resources may be a deliberate policy of The Party, a kind of "Final Solution" to the threat of human equality.
The Book states that the revolution that brought the Parties of IngSoc, Neo-Bolshevism and Death Worship to power happened simultaneous in all three superstates. All three Parties had nearly identical ideologies, and so mutually understood their ultimate goal; it's conceivable (and this is speculation on my part) at this stage that they could have formed a World State, which allowed them to consolidate their rule but that this proved unstable because there was no war to provide stability to the society. So the Party leadership decided to divide the planet into three superstates, who were permanently at war with one another (three being the most stable configuration), and mutually agree not to conquer each other. The atomic war served to lower the population numbers, to permanently lower the people's standard of living, and to annihilate any remaining centers of resistance to their rule. Given this collusion, it's not too far of a stretch to conclude that they may also have agreed to use up all the natural resources of the planet on a massive scale. Once the oil and gas, etc. are gone, the superstates break down into smaller states, by mutual consent, since efficient centralized control on a large scale is probably impossible without the use of oil to fuel one's warmachine. I don't think the Party's rule is necessarily dependent on three superstates, assuming that there's no threat of outside conquest.
An analogy could be to Christianity's rise to power: the Church consolidates its power under the unified Roman Empire, which then becomes increasingly unstable as the Christians attack the pagan population (which was the majority) and their religion and culture. The Roman Empire splits into two states (East and West), and then eventually into a thousand squabbling little kingdoms.
The Outer Party members we see in the novel clearly understand the oppressive nature of the society, some more than others (I'm thinking of Parsons who may be too stupid to fully understand this). The Inner Party understands this as well. Part of the intoxication of power is precisely the manipulation of reality implied by doublethink, the ability to know and not know at the same time, and the total domination of one's own mind in opposition to the world outside it. O'Brien at one points states that if he wanted to he could levitate off the ground, but that he's decided not to. The entire torture session at the end of the novel is about the total power O'brien has over Winston. Throughout, Winston believes that O'Brien loves him and wants to help him. This is the ultimate power! O'Brien tells Winston that power is the ability to inflict pain on another human being; assuming this is true, to elicit love from the person you're torturing is the ultimate power trip imaginable.
That's precisely my point. They know now - but the reason they know now is because they're not yet thinking in NewSpeak.
Once they start thinking in Newspeak, and only in Newspeak, then it becomes very much hard to know, maybe even impossible to know, and the whole doublethink is not only superfluous but also impossible on anything but the most trivial level.
It says as much in the book. The point of Newspeak is to narrow the range of human thought so as to ensure the permanence of the Ingsoc revolution.
The contradiction is that if the Newspeak project is successful in narrowing the range of human thought it must of necessity undermine a main purpose of the Ingsoc revolution - the joy intoxification of power by the ruling group.
archaeogeek
Banned
It's extremely weak linguistic theory
Not even Sapir-Whorf maintained a version of their theory that went that far, and with good reasons.