Ah, I apologize for the misunderstanding. It's a very interesting idea. I have to go back and re-read the novel because this has never occurred to me.
How long could the society in 1984 last?
- Thread starter strangeland
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Ah, I apologize for the misunderstanding. It's a very interesting idea. I have to go back and re-read the novel because this has never occurred to me.
What archeogeek said, and after all, there's no reason the Inner Party can't continue to use Oldspeak among themselves.
Bruce
There is a reason. Orwell had that one.
1. According to Goldstein's book, one of the reasons regimes fall is that the ruling group becomes liberalised and weak, and thus provides an opportunity for its own overthrow.
2. Another purpose of Ingsoc, stated in the book was to freeze the current (as of 1984) class hierarchy. Ingsoc made revolution, the middle overthrew the upper, and then become the new upper - and now they want to permanently freeze things that way.
3. To guard against 1, and achieve 2, freezing, you don't want liberal ideas in the upper (inner party)... and that's another purpose of newspeak.
1+2 are definitely started in the book, perhaps more than once - I remember them in Goldstein's book.
I'm not sure if 3 is started outright, but I think at the very least it's strongly implied.
One of the beauties of 1984, apart from being very well written, is its intellectual puzzle in its own terms (whch is one of the reasons why I hate the North Korea theories - they destroy this aspect of the book all based on one throw away line about *maybe* the thought police launch the flying bombs).
archaeogeek
Banned
The problem is that IRL it doesn't work. A language is a living thing and is influenced by the people who speak it, it's not just an abstract thing that can be purely modified from afar (and no the french academy is not a good example: all the french academy does is produce a standard, which would then lead to a situation where you have standard newspeak and overtime a mess of dialects derived from newspeak.). Empires have tried to freeze hierarchies all the time, languages have tried to show this. It still falls as the inner core starts squabbling over petty shit, no matter what language it speaks. And yes newspeak will lead to this for the reason that if newspeak is so poor then it will borrow to fill its holes or it will fall apart into a cargo cult and the party will be facing entropy anyway.
I agree with that.
There's lots of other things in 1984, which with outside knowledge we could dispute. For example we could dispute that proles could never over-throw the government without the middle. Or we could dispute the idea that the superstates are unconquerable. Or ask about what happens when oil runs out, etc.
But my point is that even if we accept the premise of Newspeak being possible, it fails on its own terms. For me it's the only obvious thing like that in the book.
There's lots of other things in 1984, which with outside knowledge we could dispute. For example we could dispute that proles could never over-throw the government without the middle. Or we could dispute the idea that the superstates are unconquerable. Or ask about what happens when oil runs out, etc.
But my point is that even if we accept the premise of Newspeak being possible, it fails on its own terms. For me it's the only obvious thing like that in the book.
archaeogeek
Banned
I'm actually pretty sure it's part of the point of the book. I suspect the proles are not supposed to be how Winston sees them, how Winston sees them is how he's been indoctrinated to see them. Basically it's the middle class conceit of the bourgeois revolutionary who can't abandon the middle class mindset. Basically a caste system.
Remember, we have no reason to believe that there ever was a Goldstein, or that the book ever was anything but fishbait cast out by the inner party to catch Outer Party members. Even if we assume it is broadly correct, the Inner Party cannot have _liberal_ ideas, but it cannot have the same set of illiberal ideas as the outer Party does, since the Outer Party does not, for instance, realize that the eternal war is a parlour game with no point. They take it seriously - which might lead to the disastrous result of one side beating the other two (the natural military balance thing is entirely bullshit, and must require deliberate coordination to make sure nobody gains an _inherent_ advantage). The Inner Party must maintain a certain distance from the official ideology, not just to continue to properly enjoy their position of power, but simply to keep the system going.
Also, since when has a revolutionary dictatorship, in any country, adhered to the same rules for itself as for its followers?
In any event, if we accept the book on its own terms, we must also accept Orwell's rather dubious assumptions about language, human motivation, and technology, and we have taken it into the realms of the ASB. If we follow the internal logic, which is that of political nightmare, the setup will go on until the sun dies (or crusts over, or whatever they thought would happen in 1948), with humanity perhaps evolving into some sort of ant-like cast species.
As far as I can see, what the Inner Party is is a self-selecting and self-policing society of sociopaths. (Does the Ingsoc Revolution really have any other purpose than maintaining the Inner Party in power and allowing them the unlimited excercise of brute power over the great majority of the population? I mean, name one.)
I'd agree with the North Korea bit, but not with the bit about the bombs being launched by the state itself. The whole setup is a lot more stable if there is only one, world-girdling state.
And I'd suspect the bit about the proles never successfully launching a revolution has a lot to do with Orwell's own disentchantment with the British working classes...
Bruce
Human recognition or understanding of a concept is not dependent on a word for it. And if they need to communicate amongst themselves these concepts, they will make new words. Newspeak will not work.
loughery111
Banned
It isn't even mere sociopathy; after all, that would simply dictate that they're willing to do anything to others to make themselves better off. The Inner Party must not only be sociopaths, but also have a self-perpetuating values system that means that EVERYONE in the IP views "better off" as "wielding power", rather than "living comfortably." It requires, in essence, a system that can rewire the inner party to not give a damn about its own comfort as compared to power, while giving it the emotional tool (sociopathy) needed to ensure its control regardless of cost.
So option one is to create such a dual values- and personality-manipulation system that has near 100% efficiency.
Alternatively, option two is to make an entire segment of society into such severe sadists that they'd rather inflict pain than enjoy comfort, and weed ruthlessly enough for intelligence that they can inflict pain in measured ways that allow the sustainable long-term infliction thereof. So another two-fold system requiring the creation of a value (sadism) and the maintenance of the tools needed to use it (intelligence).
I'm not at all sure that any organization can POSSIBLY do this to itself, under any circumstances. Orwell, speaking through the IP, was right; a dictatorship of this nature will only fall if it gets stupid/lazy or liberalizes. What I'm not at all sure of is that it can mold itself so completely as to prevent more than a small minority from becoming this way, and police itself so thoroughly as to utterly eradicate that small minority.
You may be right, but that's not Orwell's premise.
Orwell does specifically say (in the book proper and the appendix), more than once, that lack of words make an idea impossible. Or atleast impossible on anything but a trivial level.
He gives an example of saying something like "big brother doubleplus ungood" - you can say it newspeak, but you can't say why
Then he is wrong. And you can always make a language say what you need it to say, given time and you can make others understand it as well.
The Thought Police are ludicrously inefficient. IngSoc will lose control.
Spengler
Banned
Yeah about that, that's utter bullshit. The library of alexandria had been destroyed twice and it got accidentally destroyed for the last time in a political power struggle for the patriarchy in Alexandria.
Till recently, I thought the whole idea of Newspeak and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was fundamentally flawed, and that thought engendered language and not the contrary. Now I'm not as sure. Archaeologist seem to believe that humans only started to make tools that had a defined set of properties and purposes at the time modern language arose. I've also read about NGOs having problems to inform some backwards African population about abortion as there was no way to describe it in their language but "to kill the baby", and they could not imagine it otherwise, seemingly.
Errr, you seem to think that the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was some sort of totalitarian superstate. You're giving it faaaarrr too much credit. Oh, sure, it tried to enforce orthodoxy, but even with the inquisition it failed miserably. There were hundreds of heresies running around, many that are still with us today. Not to mention the clash between Church and State all over Europe-and only about half the time did the church win. So your analogy still really isn't sound.
You've been listening to Christian propaganda. Everyone else is to blame -- pagans, barbarian invaders, Muslims, some angry anonymous mob -- everyone (anyone!) except the Christians. The Library first suffered damage caused by Caesar's expedition to Egypt, the books lost (about 20,000) being replaced later by Mark Anthony. The pagan Emperors Claudius and Hadrian later added to the collections by building their own Libraries in Alexandria. The Emperor Aurelian caused damage as well, but the manuscripts were preserved and were moved to the Serapeum, where they were eventually deliberately destroyed by Christians, whether in a "political power struggle" or whatever.
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I think that the endurance of the 1984 society as portrayed really depends on the outside world, e.g. the Global superstate vs British Isles theory. One could argue that the decline in technology and the standard of living isn't so much because it's just deliberate but also it could be because the British State is cut off from the rest of the world and the inner and outer party are deliberately subjected to this decline in order to feed a tiny inner circle around Big Brother, if he exists in the first place. Because consider, all we see could all be the long-term outcome of a super-North Korea where the damage of the Korean War is never really repaired.
It's admittedly been some years since I read the book, and back then it was a German translation to boot, but the optimist in me subscribes to the "Britain Only" theory.
It's admittedly been some years since I read the book, and back then it was a German translation to boot, but the optimist in me subscribes to the "Britain Only" theory.
If you got the impression from my post that I was trying to make the case that the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was some sort of totalitarian superstate, then I apologize for my lack of clarity. I was not trying to say that. You are right to point out that such a claim is incorrect. You will grant, I hope, that I did draw attention to some striking similarities, however.
Er, no, actually, such similarities are fleeting at best. You're attempting to compare a highly fragmented changing society with a stagnated oppressive one. As much as you might try to force the mold of 1984 on the middle ages, or any time period in human history, it's not going to work. We've never seen anything like it, and hopefully we never will.
And no, Christians were not soley responsible for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Julius Caesar and Aurelian might be more to blame, though time and neglect were probably the biggest vandals.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2233/what-happened-to-the-great-library-of-alexandria
Also, if you're using that "askwhy.uk website as your sole source, I would consider branching out a bit. It's not exactly what I'd consider a rigorous academic resource.
And no, Christians were not soley responsible for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Julius Caesar and Aurelian might be more to blame, though time and neglect were probably the biggest vandals.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2233/what-happened-to-the-great-library-of-alexandria
Also, if you're using that "askwhy.uk website as your sole source, I would consider branching out a bit. It's not exactly what I'd consider a rigorous academic resource.
Your source tends to back up my version of events than otherwise. I asserted that Caesar damaged the Library during his campaign in Alexandria. To quote your source:
"Some people therefore blame Caesar for the destruction of the library. However, while the library may have been damaged during this episode, it probably wasn't destroyed. Forty thousand books would only have been a small fraction of the library's collection. A fire in the harbor wouldn't have reached the library proper, although scrolls stored in warehouses might have been burned. The Greek geographer Strabo (64 BC-24 AD), writing during the reign of Augustus, seems to have had some acquaintance with a functioning Alexandrian library. Suetonius, writing around 125 AD, says that the Emperor Domitian (reigning from 81 to 96 AD) used Alexandrian scholars to replace texts from Augustus' library at Palatine after a fire. This is strong evidence that the Alexandria library continued to exist well after Caesar burned the harbor."
I also asserted that Aurelian caused considerable damage. From The Straight Dope:
"The next fire came 300 years later, in 273 AD, when the Roman Emperor Aurelian invaded Egypt as part of his war with Zenobia of Palmyra. Much of Alexandria was burned, including the Brucheion district. Whether this fire destroyed the entire library or whether some portion was rebuilt is not known."
Your own source lays the blame squarely on the Christians:
"As Christians gained dominance in the region, they felt uncomfortable with pagan temples full of pagan documents. In 391 AD, Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, urged a mob to destroy the temple at Serapis, presumably at the same time destroying whatever books were left in the daughter library. This was hailed as a great victory of the Christians over the pagans."
The conclusion of the article is pure apologetics in my opinion. The Christians didn't destroy the Library, despite what our historical sources say. Oh, no! It was the ravages of time!?! Ridiculous. Your own source supports my conclusion that the Library was destroyed by the Christians more than yours.
As to my use of askwhy.uk, it's not my source, it was the most convenient link that provided a concise account of the historical events under discussion. My source is Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
"The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice." [Chapter 28]
Gibbon had no doubt who was to blame for the destruction of the library:
"Demolition of the Idolatrous Temples at Alexandria, and the Consequent Conflict between the Pagans and Christians. At the solicitation of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria the emperor issued an order at the time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the utmost ... he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out ... Then he destroyed the Serapeum .. and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the midst of the forum ... the heathen temples ... were therefore razed to the ground, and the images of their gods molten into pots and other convenient utensils for the use of the Alexandrian church."
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