1984 Appreciation Thread

[Prometheus]

You f*cked up if you die without reading 1984.

Certain eras in history seem marked by a widespread sense that one's life is determined and constrained by large impersonal forces of many kinds--historical, political, military, social, economic, judicial, biological, elemental, instinctual--too powerful and dominant to be affected by the individual self. I believe we are in one of those eras right now. George Orwell captured this zeitgeist so well.



One question at any rate was answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm.



When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.




Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.




We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.


[quote]
"The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." [O'Brien] paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy

[egokiller]

The best thing about 1984 is that you only had to wait one more year for the NES to launch.

History was made!

[dunksby]

1984 gets a lot of recognition but a book equally as good which usually gets ignored is Brave New World. I'd say Huxley's novel is as essential a read as is 1984.

[Akrazotile]

1984 gets a lot of recognition but a book equally as good which usually gets ignored is Brave New World. I'd say Huxley's novel is as essential a read as is 1984.


Theyre conceptual equals.

1984 has a more compelling storyline, and Orwell is the superior technical writer. IMO.

But both are very important, yes.

[rufuspaul]

1984 gets a lot of recognition but a book equally as good which usually gets ignored is Brave New World. I'd say Huxley's novel is as essential a read as is 1984.


This. Plus it had more sex.

[Prometheus]

1984 gets a lot of recognition but a book equally as good which usually gets ignored is Brave New World. I'd say Huxley's novel is as essential a read as is 1984.

Perfect.

Brave New World was written and published in exactly one of these eras as well - during the Great Depression in 1931 and 1932. And of course, similar dystopian ideas are explored.

Share some of your favorite passages from Brave New World.

[JohnnySic]

1984 is a GREAT book but some elements in it are silly. The telescreens - you couldn't even breath the wrong way without someone knowing about it. GTFO.

[bladefd]

1984 is a GREAT book but some elements in it are silly. The telescreens - you couldn't even breath the wrong way without someone knowing about it. GTFO.

What's silly about that?

[Akrazotile]

1984 is a GREAT book but some elements in it are silly. The telescreens - you couldn't even breath the wrong way without someone knowing about it. GTFO.


Well technically it was not a certainty that you were being watched at any given moment, just a possibility.

It does stretch credulity a bit that the Inner Party would have the sheer man power to watch people often enough to catch the amount of transgressors as they seemed to. Even tho the IP only monitored the Outer Party and not the Proles, you

[Akrazotile]

What's silly about that?


Please do not contribute in this thread.

[Ben Simmons 25]

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is underrated. Cocksucking central bankers.

[JEFFERSON MONEY]

Both of those, along with Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies are standard in U.S. high school curriculum IIRC.

[Prometheus]

Both of those, along with Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies are standard in U.S. high school curriculum IIRC.

And yet, I come across a lot of adults who have never read it.

[Prometheus]

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is underrated. Cocksucking central bankers.

December 23, 1913

[DCL]

1984 is like a round 1 question on who wants to be a millionaire.

you don't really want to be friends with people who miss those. :lol

[FKAri]

China does remind me a bit of 1984. Though, I find the more insidious take on the dystopian future in Brave New World more prophetic. We are all so concerned about finding novel ways to entertain ourselves. Get a dopamine fix as passively and conveniently as possible. Avoid confrontation and challenge. It's overtaking our natural inclinations to more productive pursuits: To build, to help, to improve, and to solve problems. We're OK to leave that to the few who can then control the placated masses.

[bladefd]

Please do not contribute in this thread.

Did your pea-brain think I support telescreens spying on people? :facepalm

No, the poster said some things expressed in the book, such as telescreens, are silly. That led me to conclude that he thinks they are unrealistic so I asked him to clarify what he meant by silly. I believe that a world like 1984 is very much possible, including telescreens and many of the other technologies defined in the story. They are not silly but very much realistic and something to fear happening.

[Akrazotile]

Did your pea-brain think I support telescreens spying on people? :facepalm

No, the poster said some things expressed in the book, such as telescreens, are silly. That led me to conclude that he thinks they are unrealistic so I asked him to clarify what he meant by silly. I believe that a world like 1984 is very much possible, including telescreens and many of the other technologies defined in the story. They are not silly but very much realistic and something to fear happening.

I was not inferring any opinions from your post. I was asking you not to share thoughts in general about this subject, as I know they will make me cringe.

[dunksby]

Perfect.

Brave New World was written and published in exactly one of these eras as well - during the Great Depression in 1931 and 1932. And of course, similar dystopian ideas are explored.

Share some of your favorite passages from Brave New World.
It's a passage celebrating the power of language and articulation:
[QUOTE]One day (John calculated later that it must have been soon after his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book that he had never seen before Iying on the floor in the bedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Linda was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinking mescal out of a cup. "Pop

[Ben Simmons 25]

December 23, 1913

Yeah, the federal reserve came into existence in its current incarnation in 1913... but it was the same people. The wheels had been set into motion a long time before 1913, people were pushing the idea of central banking almost immediately upon the country's founding... certainly within 5 years of the formation of the country... as such, it is irrelevant that t.w.w.o.o. was published in 1900. It's definitely a commentary on monetary policy and giving the power to the public to control the money supply instead of bankers/elites.

[bladefd]

I was not inferring any opinions from your post. I was asking you not to share thoughts in general about this subject, as I know they will make me cringe.

Please clarify. What do you expect me to say that will make you cringe?

[RidonKs]

It's a common refrain that 1984 was wrong and Brave New World was right. That in fact, we cherish our masters, and resistance to them is preferable to resistance of ourselves. It's a neat dichotomy. These days, in some parts of the world, the only master to resist is ourselves. But that seems to put the cart before the horse. Surely we must overcome whoever made us who we are before we take on whoever we became. Interesting that the former came after the latter... a little less interesting but still relevant that, as Starface said, it wasn't written as well.

Presumably, if you're still searching for answers, it's because you haven't faced your oppressor. Everything is so open and available, you'd have to be psychotic
to be outwardly questioning possibilities when you had the solution all along. Answerable people are introverts.

[Prometheus]

It's a common refrain that 1984 was wrong and Brave New World was right. That in fact, we cherish our masters, and resistance to them is preferable to resistance of ourselves. It's a neat dichotomy. These days, in some parts of the world, the only master to resist is ourselves. But that seems to put the cart before the horse. Surely we must overcome whoever made us who we are before we take on whoever we became. Interesting that the former came after the latter... a little less interesting but still relevant that, as Starface said, it wasn't written as well.

Presumably, if you're still searching for answers, it's because you haven't faced your oppressor. Everything is so open and available, you'd have to be psychotic
to be outwardly questioning possibilities when you had the solution all along. Answerable people are introverts.

Starface said 1984 was more well-written. It appears you had it backwards, but your phrasing is vague, maybe that's not what you meant.

Your second paragraph is very vague, and I wish I knew just what you meant. I think it could be interpreted in a lot of different ways, which I find kind of frustrating.

[RidonKs]

Starface said 1984 was more well-written. It appears you had it backwards, but your phrasing is vague, maybe that's not what you meant.

Your second paragraph is very vague, and I wish I knew just what you meant. I think it could be interpreted in a lot of different ways, which I find kind of frustrating.
Meant -it- in reference to Brave New World.

I get that criticism a lot. I think my point was simple but not well stated: the priority is to overcome political adversity, the enemy of which is the unconstrained totalitarian state. But a small loud minority takes it to hyperbole and, in their advocacy for political reform/revolution, insists it would be a panacea for all our psychological ails too. It wouldn't be, it's just a necessary condition on the way to addressing those deeper roots with better precision.

People who understand this point tend to practice their own form of therapy and mental health seeking quietly and don't turn their solutions into a political issue, because politics first has to focus on shelter, nutrition, communication, access to resources, etc. Losing that battle takes us back to barbarism. The problem that, with our comfort finally settled, we might just sleep easy and enjoy it, or lash out when we eventually find that sort of langour unsettling, is something real that can't be properly investigated and understood and overcome until we reach a critical point of ease.

Cynics and/or realists and/or deeply penetrative psychological and cultural analysts may believe such a critical point is a fantasy, and that competition and inequality will always skew the distribution by concentrating acquisition and access in a few hands. They may even say parity is impossible because it's not what we want: we don't want comfort, we want status, and we specifically want signposts that demonstrate we've attained it, for which purpose what better could serve than absurd wealth? They would further posit that such blatant inequality is exactly what's necessary to raise a paternalistic and condescending aristocracy that is a precondition to their theories of great men. And to them, I can say very little at all.

[egokiller]

China does remind me a bit of 1984.

Unfortunately China is not the only thing that reminds you of 1984.

https://images.complex.com/complex/image/upload/c_limit,w_680/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/fkqvqpi4ogevtkfgltb0.jpg