In 1984, does Goldstein/The Botherhood exist?

[Quintas]

In your opinion? Or was it all just a tool used by the party? If you buy Christopher Hitchens view, the character is based on Trotsky and therefore exists.

But I find the idea that none of it exists to be more frightening.

Winston: Does the Brotherhood exist?

O'Brien: That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.

[pope_hentai]

at the end, i don't think it did. The brotherhood was probably a creation of big brother, and if it was not it did not matter. It was too easy to find people. Then again i also came to the conclusion that eventually O'brien was going to eventually have to be sent to the thought police too, because even pretending there was resistance to big brother by their command, was thoughtcrime via doublethink. doubleplusungood situation.

[Cunctator]

I assumed that Goldstein and the Brotherhood were invented by the Party to flush out dissidents.

[AClockworkMelon]

I think he did exist at one point. But by the time the events of the book take place it's irrelevant whether he existed or not. It'd be like if I took over the world and warned people that I was the only thing protecting them from Hitler.

[Czarcasm]

Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.

[CalMeacham]

The Botherhood exists as part of the nefarious Winnie-the-Pooh Underground

[FriarTed]

Hell, I wonder if Big Brother exists or ever existed (I suspect he & Goldstein both did but are both long-dead & any present videos are done by actors), or if there is really any war going on at all other than Oceania shelling its own lands to keep the fear level up.

[JRDelirious]

Hell, I wonder if Big Brother exists or ever existed (I suspect he & Goldstein both did but are both long-dead & any present videos are done by actors), or if there is really any war going on at all other than Oceania shelling its own lands to keep the fear level up.

Right: you're left to wonder what IS reality, since MiniTruth has obfuscated it so much. We are even allowed to wonder that it may or may not be 1984 after all. The "wartime" regime has turned into something that as far as almost everyone's concerned, is timeless.

Goldstein, ostensibly, was one of the Founding Fathers of IngSoc who now is reviled as a counterrevolutionary (very much a parallel to Trotsky in the Stalinist period), but even THAT could itself be a fabrication to plant doubt in those who may be unreliable. And I agree with pope_hentai, O'Brien will probably end up being a guest of MiniLove (and he probably knows it).

[otternell]

He existed initially I think. There's a section where they talk about how the revolution was betrayed. I think that's exactly it. At one point, Goldstein was part of the revolution party, but it got away from him and went awry, then he had to become an enemy of the revolution in order to properly subdue the Outer Party and the proles.

And I definitely think Oceania was bombing itself, as were Eastasia and Eurasia.

[Scumpup]

By the time of the events in the book, I'm not sure that there is an Eastasia or a Eurasia. Not only is the war a fiction, the allies/enemies are too.

[Le Ministre de l'au-delà]

I think it makes the entire novel much more creepy if you truly cannot tell whether Goldstein exists or not. I'm much more interested in the level of universal distrust that exists if the Brotherhood and Goldstein may have once existed, but are now primarily a trap for dissidents.

Orwell was not an insider but he nailed the feeling of day to day paranoia, according to people I've met who lived through Soviet Russia. The level of distrust of Government is inconceivable to us in the West.

Without wanting to take us into Great Debates territory, consider it in light of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Every time a new video or audio recording is released, it is examined and declared authentic. But do you know for certain Bin Laden is alive? I don't; I only have the word of experts whom I do not completely trust.

[Nava]

Orwell was not an insider but he nailed the feeling of day to day paranoia, according to people I've met who lived through Soviet Russia. The level of distrust of Government is inconceivable to us in the West.

He lived through the purges and witchhunts of the Spanish Civil War: not only were there witchhunts of each side against the other, but also of parts of the "Republican" side against each other (as far as I know, this last kind did not exist in the "National" side in a systematic, organized fashion). Some of the stories I've heard sound like a really, really bad trip; for example, searching for some information on old family stories about my great-grandfather's relationship with an Anarchist who at one point became Councilor of Justice led me to Andreu Nin (wiki in Spanish (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Nin)). While Orwel's experiences during the war are said to be the basis of Animal Farm, I imagine they also influenced 1984.

[BrainGlutton]

In your opinion? Or was it all just a tool used by the party? If you buy Christopher Hitchens view, the character is based on Trotsky and therefore exists.

Trotsky existed, but the Trotskyist threat of Stalin's propaganda was largely imaginary.

My guess would be, Goldstein was real, but he was shot years ago. The Party keeps him alive as a symbol. The Brotherhood has no existence apart from Ministry of Love fronts. Some dissidents might spontaneously organize themselves into cells and call themselves "The Brotherhood," but in Oceania they won't remain secret for long, and, in the interim, will find it impossible to hook up with any like-minded cells in other cities; any they appear to find will be Ministry of Love fronts, and not even that is likely to happen.

[BrainGlutton]

He lived through the purges and witchhunts of the Spanish Civil War: not only were there witchhunts of each side against the other, but also of parts of the "Republican" side against each other (as far as I know, this last kind did not exist in the "National" side in a systematic, organized fashion). Some of the stories I've heard sound like a really, really bad trip; for example, searching for some information on old family stories about my great-grandfather's relationship with an Anarchist who at one point became Councilor of Justice led me to Andreu Nin (wiki in Spanish (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Nin)). While Orwel's experiences during the war are said to be the basis of Animal Farm, I imagine they also influenced 1984.

E.g., from "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part16) (1942):

I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence. Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously. And stranger yet, at any moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and yesterday's proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has changed.

In the present war we are in the curious situation that our 'atrocity campaign' was done largely before the war started, and done mostly by the Left, the people who normally pride themselves on their incredulity. In the same period the Right, the atrocity-mongers of 1914-18, were gazing at Nazi Germany and flatly refusing to see any evil in it. Then as soon as war broke out it was the pro-Nazis of yesterday who were repeating horror stories, while the anti-Nazis suddenly found themselves doubting whether the Gestapo really existed. Nor was this solely the result of the Russo-German Pact. It was partly because before the war the Left had wrongly believed that Britain and Germany would never fight and were therefore able to be anti-German and anti-British simultaneously; partly also because official war-propaganda, with its disgusting hypocrisy and self-righteousness, always tends to make thinking people sympathize with the enemy. Part of the price we paid for the systematic lying of 1914-17 was the exaggerated pro-German reaction which followed. During the years 1918-33 you were hooted at in left-wing circles if you suggested that Germany bore even a fraction of responsibility for the war. In all the denunciations of Versailles I listened to during those years I don't think I ever once heard the question, 'What would have happened if Germany had won?' even mentioned, let alone discussed. So also with atrocities. The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it. Recently I noticed that the very people who swallowed any and every horror story about the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 refused to believe exactly the same stories about Hong Kong in 1942. There was even a tendency to feel that the Nanking atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them.

And "The Prevention of Literature" (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part46) (1946):

Fifteen years ago, when one defended the freedom of the intellect, one had to defend it against Conservatives, against Catholics, and to some extent–for they were not of great importance in England–against Fascists. Today one has to defend it against Communists and "fellow-travelers". One ought not to exaggerate the direct influence of the small English Communist Party, but there can be no question about the poisonous effect of the Russian MYTHOS on English intellectual life. Because of it known facts are suppressed and distorted to such an extent as to make it doubtful whether a true history of our times can ever be written. Let me give just one instance out of the hundreds that could be cited. When Germany collapsed, it was found that very large numbers of Soviet Russians–mostly, no doubt, from non-political motives–had changed sides and were fighting for the Germans. Also, a small but not negligible portion of the Russian prisoners and displaced persons refused to go back to the U.S.S.R., and some of them, at least, were repatriated against their will. These facts, known to many journalists on the spot, went almost unmentioned in the British press, while at the same time Russophile publicists in England continued to justify the purges and deportations of 1936-38 by claiming that the U.S.S.R. "had no quislings". The fog of lies and misinformation that surrounds such subjects as the Ukraine famine, the Spanish civil war, Russian policy in Poland, and so forth, is not due entirely to conscious dishonesty, but any writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic for the U.S.S.R.–sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be–does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues. I have before me what must be a very rare pamphlet, written by Maxim Litvinoff in 1918 and outlining the recent events in the Russian Revolution. It makes no mention of Stalin, but gives high praise to Trotsky, and also to Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others. What could be the attitude of even the most intellectually scrupulous Communist towards such a pamphlet? At best, the obscurantist attitude of saying that it is an undesirable document and better suppressed. And if for some reason it were decided to issue a garbled version of the pamphlet, denigrating Trotsky and inserting references to Stalin, no Communist who remained faithful to his party could protest. Forgeries almost as gross as this have been committed in recent years. But the significant thing is not that they happen, but that, even when they are known about, they provoke no reaction from the left-wing intelligentsia as a whole. The argument that to tell the truth would be "inopportune" or would "play into the hands of" somebody or other is felt to be unanswerable, and few people are bothered by the prospect of the lies which they condone getting out of the newspapers and into the history books.

The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Among intelligent Communists there is an underground legend to the effect that although the Russian government is obliged now to deal in lying propaganda, frame-up trials, and so forth, it is secretly recording the true facts and will publish them at some future time. We can, I believe, be quite certain that this is not the case, because the mentality implied by such an action is that of a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course. From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments.

Here we see the roots of the "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" theme developed in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

As with everything else Orwell wrote, all this must be measured against the fact that he remained an avowed socialist to the end of his life; totalitarianism was his target, and he regarded it as inimical rather than indispensable to socialism.

[Capitaine Zombie]

He existed initially I think. There's a section where they talk about how the revolution was betrayed. I think that's exactly it. At one point, Goldstein was part of the revolution party, but it got away from him and went awry, then he had to become an enemy of the revolution in order to properly subdue the Outer Party and the proles.

And I definitely think Oceania was bombing itself, as were Eastasia and Eurasia.

Now that's an interesting idea. You mean there's actually no war, just the big three pretending to be at war with each other?

As for Goldstein, more interesting if you dont know. Wouldnt fit the tone of the book, nor be a very interesting point to actually know the truth. I think the same plot device was used in that Ira Levin book, "This Perfect Day", but I read both that and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" years and years ago. Maybe I'm misremembering

[Little Nemo]

The Botherhood exists as part of the nefarious Winnie-the-Pooh UndergroundWe must be free from the tyranny of Big Rabbit!

[Mr. Excellent]

Now that's an interesting idea. You mean there's actually no war, just the big three pretending to be at war with each other?


I don't think there are even separate states in any meaningful sense. There may well be a region of Earth governed by an entity that calls itself Eurasia, one that calls itself Oceania, and one that calls itself Eastasia - but all three are effectively the same state, coordinating economic, social, and military policy (that is, the staging of phony battles and so forth). Earth is goverened by a single state that artificially segments and isolates the population in order to facilitate governance.

[BrainGlutton]

I don't think there are even separate states in any meaningful sense. There may well be a region of Earth governed by an entity that calls itself Eurasia, one that calls itself Oceania, and one that calls itself Eastasia - but all three are effectively the same state, coordinating economic, social, and military policy (that is, the staging of phony battles and so forth). Earth is goverened by a single state that artificially segments and isolates the population in order to facilitate governance.

Actually, I see nothing in the book to suggest Inner Party members are even on speaking terms (beyond a basic diplomatic level) with their counterparts in Eurasia and Eastasia, or that the battles are not real. At any rate, real flying bombs periodically land in London. It's not that the states' leaders are actually in conspiracy, but that they all consciously have the same aims, to keep things from changing; therefore they must all fight the war in earnest, but pull back at any moment that might present the danger of winning it.

[Chronos]

Is the question about a specific, important individual who's actually named Goldstein, or about the existence of a powerful entity actively working to overthrow Big Brother? If the former, it's anyone's guess, but if it's the latter, the answer is emphatically yes: The entity actively working to overthrow Big Brother is Big Brother. The system is inherently self-destructive.

[Mr. Excellent]

Is the question about a specific, important individual who's actually named Goldstein, or about the existence of a powerful entity actively working to overthrow Big Brother? If the former, it's anyone's guess, but if it's the latter, the answer is emphatically yes: The entity actively working to overthrow Big Brother is Big Brother. The system is inherently self-destructive.

How so? O'Brien seems to believe the system is remarkably stable, and we're given no reason to question his judgment. Though the use of agents provocateur, The Party identifies and disposes of dissidents quietly and efficiently. The Inner Party is thoroughly committed to the pleasures of oppression, the Outer Party tightly controlled, and the proles safely isolated from any form of power. The chilling thing about O'Brien's great monologue is that he's right - if there was ever any hope, it's long gone. The future of humanity is a boot smashing a face. Forever.

[BrainGlutton]

How so? O'Brien seems to believe the system is remarkably stable, and we're given no reason to question his judgment. Though the use of agents provocateur, The Party identifies and disposes of dissidents quietly and efficiently. The Inner Party is thoroughly committed to the pleasures of oppression, the Outer Party tightly controlled, and the proles safely isolated from any form of power. The chilling thing about O'Brien's great monologue is that he's right - if there was ever any hope, it's long gone. The future of humanity is a boot smashing a face. Forever.

Of course, if the project of replacing oldspeak with newspeak succeeds, to the point where nobody will speak anything else, then (goes Orwell's theory) there will be no more dissidents, because everyone will find it impossible to express dissident thoughts. And then there will be nothing for the Ministry of Love to do. Which, all alone, might be enough to destroy the system. Because, as O'Brien explains it, the whole system is based on sadism. "How does one man prove his power over another?" "By making him suffer." Take that away, and what fun is it to be an Inner Party member?!

[kaylasdad99]

Is it possible that Goldstein not only exists, but that he is, in fact, the top dog of the Inner Party?

[HubZilla]

Someone had to overthrow the system. Notice that the appendix refers to Newspeak in the past tense. I figured it was the proles; you cannot ignore 85% of the population.

[BrainGlutton]

Is it possible that Goldstein not only exists, but that he is, in fact, the top dog of the Inner Party?

No. It's too collegial to have one. The symbolic Stalin (Big Brother) precludes any real one.

[Alka Seltzer]

Is it possible that Goldstein not only exists, but that he is, in fact, the top dog of the Inner Party?

There is nothing in the text to suggest this, and nothing in the story that requires it.

Given that the revolution is still in living memory, it seems likely to me that Goldstein did in act exist, but has been dead for some time. He probably is a Trotsky analogue.

IIRC, during the Spanish civil war, Orwell joined a pro-communist organistation that was later denounced by the Russian communisists at "Trotskyist". Orwell had direct experience of how Stalin operated, he was in real danger from the pro-Russian communists, despite the fact he went there to fight the fascists.

[Bryan Ekers]

How so? O'Brien seems to believe the system is remarkably stable, and we're given no reason to question his judgment.

Personally, I figure sooner or later doublethink will fail, in the sense that some Inner Party member will look at, say, electrical engineering and since he can't understand it, will declare it "crimethink". If that member can form a sufficiently powerful faction (and the novel vaguely described factional fighting within the Party), electrical engineers will start to get vaporised in a manner somewhat akin to the "Doctors' Plot" insanity near the end of Stalin's rule. As a result, Oceania will lose the skill of electrical engineering, and with it the ability to maintain the telescreen network and other surveillance methods the Party uses to monitor and propagandize the population.

In fact, the increasing rate of decay is noted in the novel ("Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years") and if Eastasia and Eurasia actually exist and have systems of government comparable to Oceania, it'll be a game to see which state's infrastructure collapses first.

[kombatminipig]

Someone had to overthrow the system. Notice that the appendix refers to Newspeak in the past tense. I figured it was the proles; you cannot ignore 85% of the population.

But as Goldstein (or Big Brother, whoever wrote his manifesto) said, that's exactly what you can do. The threat never comes from the proles, but from the outer party. Keep the proles happy and the outer party destitute and in check, and you have a stable society. Looking back at most revolutions, this very much holds true, in my opinion.

[Snooooopy]

The Botherhood is a society dedicated to pulling into that parking space that you totally had staked out, practicing the drums at all hours of the night, going into the 12-items-or-less line with 20 items, always bumming smokes while never buying any of their own and burping the alphabet.

[Bryan Ekers]

But as Goldstein (or Big Brother, whoever wrote his manifesto) said, that's exactly what you can do. The threat never comes from the proles, but from the outer party. Keep the proles happy and the outer party destitute and in check, and you have a stable society. Looking back at most revolutions, this very much holds true, in my opinion.

Actually, the book says: "Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again."

This middle, however, does not automatically correspond to the Outer Party. It may consist of a mix of overly ambitious Inner Party members, energetic Outer Party members and politically-active Proles who collectively, if they could overthrow the ruling IP with the help of the masses, would take command and put the masses back in their place. The Middle is by definition that which seeks to depose and replace the High. Just because Orwell described three political strata (high, middle, low) and three social strata (IP, OP, Proles) doesn't mean a strict correspondence, nor does he imply such at any time. The OP is merely described in the book as the IP's "hands", not its would-be successor.

For that matter, even with the IP are, I'm sure, people who have important job titles but no real power, that being restricted to a much smaller subset (the IIP, as it were) and the struggles over this power is what leads to factional fighting and vaporisations within the IP, notably that of "Comrade Withers, a prominent member of the Inner Party", mentioned in chapter 4.

The stability, if it can be called that, stems from the IP's policy of not letting a new Middle form. Ambitious IP members get promotions, intelligent proles get eliminated.... but there's no effort I'm aware of to pre-emptively eliminate the OP.

[McReady]

I remember wondering if the year were even really 1984.

[clairobscur]

I think the same plot device was used in that Ira Levin book, "This Perfect Day", but I read both that and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" years and years ago. Maybe I'm misremembering

In "this perfect day", the reader eventually discovers the truth.


The "free world" exists, but is arguably worse than the world in which the characters live. Besides, all discreet clues to discover those free areas are deliberatly put in by the government in order to figure out who are the "dissidents" and/or get rid of them by letting them join those "free areas", that are a kind of "safety valve" for society at large.

Ultimately, though, the main plot device is that in fact the most persistent and efficient of those dissidents are eventually coopted by the "rulers", a device I saw being used in 3-4 other novels/short stories, generally with an "unhappy end" (That is, the main character joining the oppresors. Not the case in " This perfect day", though).

[Quimby]

This is a slight tangent but one of the reasons I am leery about the death of print is imagine how easy Winston Smith's job would be if all of their historical news and data was online?

[RickJay]

By the time of the events in the book, I'm not sure that there is an Eastasia or a Eurasia. Not only is the war a fiction, the allies/enemies are too.
Excellent point.

The book is told wholly from Winston's perspective, albeit in the third person.

We don't know if Goldstein exists, or ever existed.
We don't know if Eastasia or Eurasia exist.
We don't know if the world is divided into three countries or thirty or divided at all.
We don't know if Big Brother exists.
We don't know if it's really 1984 (Winston admits he's only guessing anyway)

The only things we know for sure are the events that immediately transpire in the film as well as Winston's rather poor memories of his childhood. So in fact there's no right answer.

Which is, of course, very much the point, isn't it?

[Lumpy]

Goldstein, ostensibly, was one of the Founding Fathers of IngSoc who now is reviled as a counterrevolutionary (very much a parallel to Trotsky in the Stalinist period), Actually, the name is probably inspired by Eduard Bernstein, a protege of Marx and Engels and one of the original leaders of the nineteenth century socialist movement. He was the original "Revisionist", for daring to point out that Marx's predictions weren't coming true and for proposing that working for reform within the existing system was an alternative to the Revolution.

[kaylasdad99]

This is a slight tangent but one of the reasons I am leery about the death of print is imagine how easy Winston Smith's job would be if all of their historical news and data was online?But poor Winston Smith has been through soooo much. He deserves to have something to make his life a little easier.

[Lumpy]

It's necessary to have intelligent functionaries to do the routine work of the bureacracy, but they're the class most likely to foment rebellion. So the Outer Party is best described as a concentration camp for the middle class.

[Bryan Ekers]

But poor Winston Smith has been through soooo much. He deserves to have something to make his life a little easier.

Well, that was Julia.

[Quintas]

I thought my thread had died until i just reviewed my posts.

Thank You.

[Chronos]

Quoth Quimby:This is a slight tangent but one of the reasons I am leery about the death of print is imagine how easy Winston Smith's job would be if all of their historical news and data was online? It'd make his job well nigh impossible. When your important information is in print, you can just burn down the Library of Alexandria, and it's all gone down the memory hole. But let one picture leak onto the Web that you'd rather not let out, and it's going to be passed on from one hard drive to another until the end of eternity.

[kombatminipig]

The stability, if it can be called that, stems from the IP's policy of not letting a new Middle form. Ambitious IP members get promotions, intelligent proles get eliminated.... but there's no effort I'm aware of to pre-emptively eliminate the OP.

As I saw it, elimination of the OP is precisely what is dangerous. Eliminate it and another group has to rise/descend to take its place...you always need a middle class, the middle managers, the petite bourgeoisie.
They are the ones who are dangerous to the powers that be, because they are clever enough to control the masses and turn them. By controlling every aspect of their lives, far more than need be the proles, they are kept in check.

So my take is that the existence of the outer party is vital to BB, because it acts as a threshold to stop an autonomous middle class from forming.

[Annie-Xmas]

It occurs to me that there's a good book waiting to be written comparing `1984 to organized religion. Goldstein is a symbol of God, the three states are three major religions fighting each other, the Party is religion punishing its members for its perceived "sins," the whole "sex for procreation only" belief.

[Illuminatiprimus]

Quoth Quimby:It'd make his job well nigh impossible. When your important information is in print, you can just burn down the Library of Alexandria, and it's all gone down the memory hole. But let one picture leak onto the Web that you'd rather not let out, and it's going to be passed on from one hard drive to another until the end of eternity.On the contrary. Imagine if the ONLY encyclopedia that existed was wikipedia but run by IngSoc and it didn't have a track version function. Facts are editible, truth would be whatever you decided you wanted it to be from moment to moment. At least if you're holding a book you can look at it from day to day and know that what it says hasn't changed. Online, not so much.

[Chronos]

On the contrary. Imagine if the ONLY encyclopedia that existed was wikipedia but run by IngSoc and it didn't have a track version function.Which is not only completely unlike the situation we have, but it's also completely unlike anything that could arise from something like the Internet.

[Der Trihs]

How so? O'Brien seems to believe the system is remarkably stable, and we're given no reason to question his judgment. Though the use of agents provocateur, The Party identifies and disposes of dissidents quietly and efficiently. The Inner Party is thoroughly committed to the pleasures of oppression, the Outer Party tightly controlled, and the proles safely isolated from any form of power. The chilling thing about O'Brien's great monologue is that he's right - if there was ever any hope, it's long gone. The future of humanity is a boot smashing a face. Forever.Realistically I find that unlikely. As Bryan Ekers said, the entire place appears to be decaying. And If nothing else, I don't see such a society producing competent, honest scientists, so they won't deal well with new problems as they come along. A world run along 1984 lines would probably pollute itself while telling itself that the crops had always been black and greasy, wouldn't even figure out that global warming or acid rain existed, and in general would run itself into the ground. And Newspeak if it worked as advertised would make things even worse; they wouldn't even be able to think about new problems much less solve them.

Now that's an interesting idea. You mean there's actually no war, just the big three pretending to be at war with each other?
Or maybe just one world government faking a conflict. Or maybe Oceania is actually just a tiny isolationist society like a more successful North Korea, and there are free nations to flee too - if only the populace knew they existed.

[Lumpy]

Realistically I find that unlikely. As Bryan Ekers said, the entire place appears to be decaying. And If nothing else, I don't see such a society producing competent, honest scientists, so they won't deal well with new problems as they come along. A world run along 1984 lines would probably pollute itself while telling itself that the crops had always been black and greasy, wouldn't even figure out that global warming or acid rain existed, and in general would run itself into the ground. And Newspeak if it worked as advertised would make things even worse; they wouldn't even be able to think about new problems much less solve them.


Or maybe just one world government faking a conflict. Or maybe Oceania is actually just a tiny isolationist society like a more successful North Korea, and there are free nations to flee too - if only the populace knew they existed.In various essays he wrote, Orwell presages many of the themes he included in 1984. For example, the three nuclear-armed superpowers that arrive at a state of perpetual cold war in spelled out in You and the Atom Bomb (http://www.george-orwell.org/You_and_the_Atomic_Bomb/0.html). In the same essay he says Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.Orwell's fear was that the democractic phase of society might turn out to be a short-lived abberation and that the world might be returning to an industrial form of steady-state society, in which the ability to cope with newness isn't important because there would be nothing new (O'Brien says as much towards the end of the novel).

[Der Trihs]

In the same essay he says Orwell's fear was that the democractic phase of society might turn out to be a short-lived abberation and that the world might be returning to an industrial form of steady-state society, in which the ability to cope with newness isn't important because there would be nothing new (O'Brien says as much towards the end of the novel).Sure; my point was that's he's wrong. Not that he likely realizes it; he's the product of a culture that is utterly focused on the political and on the idea that reality is what the Party says it is. Sooner or later some natural disaster or disastrous consequence of their social system/technology will come along (which is why I mentioned pollution), and they won't be mentally equipped to even admit the problem exists, much less solve it. For example, if they produce CFCs, they'll keep on doing so until the ozone layer is completely destroyed; probably without even finding the cause and effect relationship. Or even seriously looking for it.

[Illuminatiprimus]

Which is not only completely unlike the situation we have, but it's also completely unlike anything that could arise from something like the Internet.Not with the internet as we know it obviously, but in the context of the book try and imagine - IMAGINE - an internet controlled by IngSoc. That would be more ephemeral and easy to control than hard copy. We've come to associate the internet with empowerment and freedom through knowledge, but given how IngSoc and the party controlled everything else is it totally beyond belief that they could do the same thing with a tool like the internet? (particularly if it were state run)

[Lumpy]

Sure; my point was that's he's wrong. Not that he likely realizes it; he's the product of a culture that is utterly focused on the political and on the idea that reality is what the Party says it is. Sooner or later some natural disaster or disastrous consequence of their social system/technology will come along (which is why I mentioned pollution), and they won't be mentally equipped to even admit the problem exists, much less solve it. For example, if they produce CFCs, they'll keep on doing so until the ozone layer is completely destroyed; probably without even finding the cause and effect relationship. Or even seriously looking for it.Point taken!

Not with the internet as we know it obviously, but in the context of the book try and imagine - IMAGINE - an internet controlled by IngSoc. That would be more ephemeral and easy to control than hard copy. We've come to associate the internet with empowerment and freedom through knowledge, but given how IngSoc and the party controlled everything else is it totally beyond belief that they could do the same thing with a tool like the internet? (particularly if it were state run)Perhaps we should say "electronic storage of all important data" rather than the Internet. But in any case it's difficult to imagine the sort of digital technology we take for granted being developed in a totalitarian world that didn't already have it.

[Gagundathar]

Not with the internet as we know it obviously, but in the context of the book try and imagine - IMAGINE - an internet controlled by IngSoc. That would be more ephemeral and easy to control than hard copy. We've come to associate the internet with empowerment and freedom through knowledge, but given how IngSoc and the party controlled everything else is it totally beyond belief that they could do the same thing with a tool like the internet? (particularly if it were state run)

I can imagine this if the only access means were through monitored terminals and not PCs with local data storage.

Chilling, eh?

Wait... that was what we had just a few decades ago!
Hmmmmmmm:eek:

[Stranger On A Train]

"The Brotherhood" in Nineteen Eighty-Four exists in the same fashion that "the terrorists" do in Terry Gilliam's Brazil; that is, that if they exist at all at the time of the story, they are benign, but used as a boogeyman for all manner of misdeeds and a rallying cry that outshouts any objections about infringement of personal liberties. That it is also useful as an aid in identifying potential traitors is just an additional benefit. The government in both literary creations is too reactionary and unimaginative to have come up with this on their own.

I personally find the story of Huxley's Brave New World to be more likely and horrifying; a population so compliant and dependent upon privilege of presumed superiority that the concept of independent thought is repugnant, and those so capable need to be isolated for the greater good.

Stranger

[Chronos]

Not with the internet as we know it obviously, but in the context of the book try and imagine - IMAGINE - an internet controlled by IngSoc.With all due respect, that's like saying "imagine a unicorn without a horn but with wings". I can imagine such a thing, but it wouldn't be a unicorn, despite the way it's described. The Internet is more than just a really big computer network: Its defining quality is not its size, but the fact that it cannot be controlled. It's designed from the ground up to resist damage by routing around it, and censorship is treated as damage.

[Illuminatiprimus]

I'm hijacking here but what you're describing is what the internet has come to be known as in reality, not how it is technically defined. Technically, it is just a big network that allows communication between computers, it's what we've done with that that has made it as you have described.

[Bryan Ekers]

In various essays he wrote, Orwell presages many of the themes he included in 1984. For example, the three nuclear-armed superpowers that arrive at a state of perpetual cold war in spelled out in You and the Atom Bomb (http://www.george-orwell.org/You_and_the_Atomic_Bomb/0.html). In the same essay he says Orwell's fear was that the democractic phase of society might turn out to be a short-lived abberation and that the world might be returning to an industrial form of steady-state society, in which the ability to cope with newness isn't important because there would be nothing new (O'Brien says as much towards the end of the novel).

Well, fortunately, Orwell was wrong. It turns out it's not possible to sustain an large industrial society indefinitely through terror alone, or at least the cracks were showing by the real-world year 1984 when the aging Patriotic War veterans were getting too old to handle the USSR. Even in the fictional version, assuming Eastasia and Eurasia actually exist as competitors to Oceania, a small advantage in innovation will translate to victory, while restraining thought will not. Orwell tries to imply that doublethink would allow technological process since the Party members can believe propaganda and fact at the same time, even if they contradict, but what happens when a scientist recites the official party line (i.e. that Big Brother invented the atom bomb and thus it is perfect) but simultaneously realizes that A-bombs need careful maintenance and are thus not perfect? If this scientists encounters a semi-educated but ambitious Party member who warmly embraces the first concept but has no understanding of the second, that scientist can get vaporised on a whim, for no other reason than a Party member accuses him, and once that scientist vanishes, so much for atom bomb maintenance and innovation in Oceania. Which of the three superstates will lose its atomic arsenal first?

Heck, it doesn't even have to be a matter of weaponry - which of the three superstates will suffer a major pandemic first? Sooner or later, one of the states is going to have the advantage of being less unlucky or incompetent than the others. Possibly by then any semblance of industrialization will have vanished, with artifacts like railroads and airplanes being the mysterious work of ancient geniuses - though the words for "ancient genius" will no longer exist, at least officially.