How would 1984 work? Or: Practical Eastasia. (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
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Sorry if some of these answers are repeats; I didn’t have time to read the whole thread.

I agree with what someone else said far back, through the use of doublethink, crimestop, goodthink, doublespeak the Party has pretty much eliminated any danger of the Inner Party members thinking for themselves. If they do exhibit suspicious behaviour they will be caught themselves because everyone is watched.

The Party is basically trying to create robots, an example of this already is the use of duckspeak where the mind doesn’t worry about what’s being said.

You ask how the Party can function while at the same time stopping every dangerous thought that comes into your mind, and why don’t the people monitoring rebel etc. I think Orwell sort of addresses this. He says that the higher you go into 1984, the more the people are aware of how hypocritical the party is, while at the same time the people are the most war hysterical etc. The people who run the Inner Party are the ones that are the most “crazy.” I’m guessing there is a high turn-over rate here, with more people being executed because it is that much harder to act human.

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The principle of doublethink was explained in detail, and was in fact a kind of acquired schizophrenia. What’s your point?

You’ve never known someone who opposes abortion on one hand because the state has no right to sanction murder, yet endorses the death penalty on the other hand because it does?

Well, since you asked…

I don’t have a lot of patience for metaphors because I’m not interested in peeling away layers of irrelevancies to recover the original meaning. Prose is not poetry; the object is express yourself as clearly and plainly as possible. Sometimes metaphors are useful to that end, but mostly they just obscure the ideas that are wrapped in them.

These aren’t valid objections you’re raising, Derleth, they’re straw men. You’re taking a component of of the whole out of context, refuting it, and then claiming to have refuted the whole.

1984 is one of the finest works in the history of English literature. It was sufficiently well conceived to survive 50 years of analysis with nobody managing to poke any serious holes in its integrity. Anybody is welcome to give it a go, I just think they should do their homework first and put forth earnest arguments in place of slinging whatever they pull out of their ass in order to see what sticks.

Case in point.

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Sketch: Maybe there is a horrendous turnover rate in the upper echelons of INGSOC. But that would negatively affect stability of government, would it not? If everyone were dying off, and if everyone knew that he would die if the system weren’t stopped, what would prevent some of them from joining up and killing the system?

After all, what would they have to lose?

KoalaBear: The book is old and well-respected. I think we all get that. I’ve taken something of a risk in pointing out the flaws of the system it describes, and I accept that.

But if it’s such a great book, why are your arguments supporting it exhibiting an advanced form of doublethink? They accept that anyone who was fully orthodox in INGSOC would be diagnosably insane, and yet they argue that those admittedly insane people would be capable of running a complex, multi-tiered government. Where I come from, anyone irrational enough to survive in an INGSOC system would be incapable of carrying on a coherent conversation, due to the massive cognitive dissonance the doublethink would induce.

Secondly, if you dislike metaphors in prose, why did you waste your time reading Nineteen Eighty-Four? I’m sure you’re aware that it’s a highly allegorical book, and that its whole purpose is to use metaphor (Winston’s relationship with Julia, the journal, the paperweight, and the dreams, to mention a few) to point up the essential contradictions and dangers of the governmental systems Orwell saw springing up all around him.

Finally, that part in the parenthesis was my example of doublethink. I wasn’t being wholly serious: I was giving the kind of irrational non-arguments, rife with direct internal contradictions, someone steeped in doublethink would. Perhaps it could have been more obvious.

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I think we’re perhaps overanalysing something that was, after all, only a vehicle for many of Orwell’s ideas on politics. Doublespeak, for example, was simply a logical extension of his loathing for political language, best expressed in his essay Politics and the English Language (worth reading for the Ecclesiastes bit alone). I don’t think he worried overly much whether Doublespeak was practical or not - he was bedridden with TB, after all, and was doubtless more worried about getting the book finished.
Same with the 3-states-with-shifting-alliances; it was simply what happened at the end of WW2 between the western allies, the USSR and Germany, with Orwell’s angle on the way the public (in the UK in particular) were presented with the “The Germans were bad, now they’re good; the Soviets were good, now they’re bad” idea by the media & politicians.
(Though because of this, I believe that the 3 states did “exist” in the 1984 world, and weren’t simply fictions created by the state)

Basically, I think there are flaws in the systems 1984 describes; I don’t think it matters. But it’s a nice thread to have, so keep it going… :smiley:

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[/quote]
toadspittle: You seem to think people are, at best, half-clever. Anyone high enough up to plan revolution would know that Goldstein was a hoax and that they must form a new group. Hell, O’Brien knew, and he’s never portrayed as especially high up. If O’Brien wanted to create a revolutionary group, he wouldn’t fall for the obvious ploy of aligning himself with Goldstein.

Secondly, they’d also know that the only way they’re going to achieve real power is to kill off INGSOC and establish their own system. Even Stalin knew that much, at least as it related to the Soviet system Lenin established. Someone who didn’t share Stalin’s obvious insanity would go for the next step and actually destroy INGSOC totally, knowing that if he could climb through the endless mazes of INGSOC bureaucracy, the next backstabber could, too.
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Picture this: The richest men in America. They’re on top of the heap. They have luxuries and power that most people never dream of. How did they get there? They worked the American Democratic/Capitalist system. Yet, for some reason, you would have them tear that all down for … for what, exactly? There is a system in place that gives them rewards. People in the lower class know such rewards exist, and hunger after them. They don’t overthrow our system. Why? Because THEY want to work the system and wind up on top of the heap where the tycoons are. That’s the American Dream.

Now, what exactly are the rewards of the INGSOC system for party climbers? Minor creature comforts (coffee, sugar, ability to turn the viewscreen off), plus the sick pleasure of causing other human beings pain. That’s it. That’s all it allows, and that’s all the people who set up the system desire. They don’t want a utopia. They’re sick motherf—ers. Like the Husseins, feeding human beings through plastic shredders for fun. Only there is no one outside of the INGSOC regime who can topple them.

Maybe you say it’s crazy that such despicable pleasures are all that the members of the INGSOC world will strive for. But one could also say the same about our world. The system is geared toward making money, period, damn the consequences. It rewards ruthless capitalists, and does NOT reward those who would cast aside material possessions for spiritual fulfillment, etc.

So it’s perfectly plausible that you could perpetuate a system that funnels human desires into narrow and mean pursuits. It’s already been done.