This is why I never did well on book reports...
So I recently reread 1984, voluntarily, for the first time since high school. I remembered liking it for some reason, although I really didn't remember much about it. And during the reread, I sat there wondering why I liked it the first time, or at least remembered doing so. It's not that it's bad per se, I just wonder how I could've understood some of it way back then, and I wonder why I was even interested at the time. After all, I hated most of the other "literature" they made us read.
Now that I remember what the book's about, I'm struck by how depressing, and yet simultaneously ridiculous, it is. I don't know how a book can maintain such disparate emotional reactions at the same time. I guess anyone who reads it with a mind anywhere similar to my own gets a first-hand lesson in what doublethink is really like.
So the world is all falling apart, and no one's allowed to do the things and feel the things we take for granted (except for the proles, who don't count). No one can ever get razor blades reliably, meaningful relationships are illegal, and there's always one war or another (which may, in fact, have been created specifically to produce the other two effects). Blah blah blah, depressionville, boredomville, paranoiaville.
And yet at the same time, I think: how can a society like this exist without collapsing instantly? For one thing, the general populace wouldn't put up with it for long. George Bush isn't nearly as bad as the government there, and it hasn't taken us long to totally lose any respect for him, even those few of us who used to think he could do no wrong (which group I don't happen to belong to, whew). I know certain governments, most notably the old USSR, managed to keep something like it in place for a while, but you see what eventually happened to them. The only thing that could concievably prevent it from degenerating into constant riots is fear, which there definitely is in the book, but in order to to back up their words with action, the ruling class would actually need to be bigger than the ones ruled. Especially if they're going to spend months torturing one measly thoughtcriminal.
Which brings me to my main point: the ridiculousness of it all. Apart from the ridiculousness of the practical considerations mentioned above, the idea of a government admitting it's evil (even though "evil" no longer has meaning for them) is a bunch of bullshit. I don't know much history, but I'd venture to say no government or political movement in the history of mankind has claimed to be evil. The Nazis were trying to "purify" their country, the communists wanted everyone to be "equal", hell, even the KKK operates on the idea that whites have a God-given right to do whatever they want. This is partly because any government needs to be popular among a certain amount of the populace in order to get off the ground to begin with, and partly because all humans I know of think they're doing the right thing, no matter how wrong it actually is. Criminals usually somehow justify their behavior, and if they don't, they feel guilty about it. Abusers typically think that it's everyone else's fault for "making" them do the bad things they do to their victims. And some people avoid the issue entirely by not thinking about it, because if they don't recognize that they're perpetrating what they consider evil acts, they don't have to feel guilty. The closest I've seen to someone knowingly doing evil with no internal justification and no guilt, are the kids on muds who play thieves or assassins or death priests and go "evil is kewl!" Which is actually very very sad (and scary), that the people who most closely resemble a totalitarian government are kids on some mud.
Of course, it could be argued that their government only reveals that it knows it's doing evil things to people it's gonna kill anyway, so it doesn't harm itself by ruining the citizens' opinion of it. But the simple fact that the agents of the government know they're doing evil and admit to it without qualms is what makes it ridiculous to me. And what they apparently don't realize is that someday when they've instilled the outlook they want in their citizens, they'll be as evil as the government, and thus entirely capable of fighting it on its own terms. Of course they'd replace it with an almost identical government, but there'd be a different Big Brother on the throne, and avoiding that scenario is why the current government acts like it does to begin with.
I'm not sure which is scarier: the fact that I voluntarily read a book that most ppl only read because they get forced to, or the fact that I voluntarily wrote a book report-esque thingy about it. :P
Now that I remember what the book's about, I'm struck by how depressing, and yet simultaneously ridiculous, it is. I don't know how a book can maintain such disparate emotional reactions at the same time. I guess anyone who reads it with a mind anywhere similar to my own gets a first-hand lesson in what doublethink is really like.
So the world is all falling apart, and no one's allowed to do the things and feel the things we take for granted (except for the proles, who don't count). No one can ever get razor blades reliably, meaningful relationships are illegal, and there's always one war or another (which may, in fact, have been created specifically to produce the other two effects). Blah blah blah, depressionville, boredomville, paranoiaville.
And yet at the same time, I think: how can a society like this exist without collapsing instantly? For one thing, the general populace wouldn't put up with it for long. George Bush isn't nearly as bad as the government there, and it hasn't taken us long to totally lose any respect for him, even those few of us who used to think he could do no wrong (which group I don't happen to belong to, whew). I know certain governments, most notably the old USSR, managed to keep something like it in place for a while, but you see what eventually happened to them. The only thing that could concievably prevent it from degenerating into constant riots is fear, which there definitely is in the book, but in order to to back up their words with action, the ruling class would actually need to be bigger than the ones ruled. Especially if they're going to spend months torturing one measly thoughtcriminal.
Which brings me to my main point: the ridiculousness of it all. Apart from the ridiculousness of the practical considerations mentioned above, the idea of a government admitting it's evil (even though "evil" no longer has meaning for them) is a bunch of bullshit. I don't know much history, but I'd venture to say no government or political movement in the history of mankind has claimed to be evil. The Nazis were trying to "purify" their country, the communists wanted everyone to be "equal", hell, even the KKK operates on the idea that whites have a God-given right to do whatever they want. This is partly because any government needs to be popular among a certain amount of the populace in order to get off the ground to begin with, and partly because all humans I know of think they're doing the right thing, no matter how wrong it actually is. Criminals usually somehow justify their behavior, and if they don't, they feel guilty about it. Abusers typically think that it's everyone else's fault for "making" them do the bad things they do to their victims. And some people avoid the issue entirely by not thinking about it, because if they don't recognize that they're perpetrating what they consider evil acts, they don't have to feel guilty. The closest I've seen to someone knowingly doing evil with no internal justification and no guilt, are the kids on muds who play thieves or assassins or death priests and go "evil is kewl!" Which is actually very very sad (and scary), that the people who most closely resemble a totalitarian government are kids on some mud.
Of course, it could be argued that their government only reveals that it knows it's doing evil things to people it's gonna kill anyway, so it doesn't harm itself by ruining the citizens' opinion of it. But the simple fact that the agents of the government know they're doing evil and admit to it without qualms is what makes it ridiculous to me. And what they apparently don't realize is that someday when they've instilled the outlook they want in their citizens, they'll be as evil as the government, and thus entirely capable of fighting it on its own terms. Of course they'd replace it with an almost identical government, but there'd be a different Big Brother on the throne, and avoiding that scenario is why the current government acts like it does to begin with.
I'm not sure which is scarier: the fact that I voluntarily read a book that most ppl only read because they get forced to, or the fact that I voluntarily wrote a book report-esque thingy about it. :P