orwell's world and the erosion of factual truth

[seshatasefekht7]

peace and hotep,

A Critical Question    

Is the world of 1984 possible?    

Since its publication in 1949, Orwell's novel has consistently triggered heated debates about whether or not our society has become like Oceania, how accurate Orwell's predictions were, and which  political parties' philosophies most resemble Ingsoc. The political right and the political left have both used 1984 as the basis for any number of attacks upon their counterparts. One should remember, however, that Orwell never tells us whether the Party's genesis grew out of the right or the left. The Party name of Ingsoc bears no more resemblance to socialism than it does to fascism. Even the old man in the bar cannot remember ''whose fault" Ingsoc is. It doesn't matter. While both the right and the left have hailed this novel as exposing extreme intentions of the other political party, the fact of the matter is that Orwell was a very smart man and recognized that dictatorship is dictatorship — regardless of what political creed the government espouses. Never once in the novel do we hear mention of the Party's "uplifting the workers' struggle" or "saving individual rights from desecration by the Huns." There simply are no politics in Oceania. The central idea that Orwell tried to get across (and I think in this sense he failed to get people to realize or people tend to ignore) is the fact that Oceania can spring up from any society or government. Orwell places the capital right in the heart of the nations that most represent freedom and individual rights, the United States and Britain. From a historical context, Orwell looked at the ravages of World War II that had yet to be repaired, and he saw the great powers ready to do global battle again. The greatest pessimism expressed in 1984 is that war will be endless and that society will not recover its humanity. He perceived that the difference between Hitler and Stalin was negligible; a policeman looks like a policeman, and the differences between the East and the West could become non-existent.    

What makes 1984 great literature is this universal applicability. Orwell depicted a personified reality. His imagination crystalizes this reality into tangibility; he succeeds in achieving the willing suspension of the readers' disbelief by giving a substantial basis of reality to his novel. Thus, while some writers, such as Norman Podhoretz in his essay "If Orwell Were Alive Today," maintain that Orwell would support or align himself politically with one political philosophy or party, I would submit that Orwell would remain substantially apart from any group, just as he did prior to his death. Orwell is a socialist at heart, and he was a zealot for democracy in spirit. 1984 is a call for individualism and independence from a government's structural control and social organization. We must vigilantly maintain checks on unbridled power. We cannot rely on the beneficence of the O'Briens  of the world to keep their promises not ''to take us to Room 101"; we must trust ourselves and the power of democracy ruled by concensus.    

Orwell was amazingly accurate in some of his predictions. His perceptions about global political power shifts and the emergence of permanent zones of war have proven to be all too correct. He foresaw a nuclear arms buildup, grossly violent movies, and the use of helicopters in warfare. On other issues, he was partly right and partly wrong. He envisioned the deification of political leaders in the West, and he predicted that television would become the principal means of communication to mass audiences. He underestimated, however, its curbing effect upon audiences exposed to live footage of wars. Such footage has tended, increasingly, to make war less palatable. And Orwell completely miscalculated his prediction that science would stagnate and technological progress would stall.    

Some of the more interesting creations in the novel include: the Two Minutes Hate, letters which can be checked off instead of written, and speakwrite (which has yet to be invented). Orwell's use of acronyms and short-form names for complex ideas and devices, however, (radar, NATO, Superfund, FBI, etc.,) show us how rapidly we have come to rely on new abbreviations for new concepts which we accept as commonplace today. But we have not sacrificed old words to replace them.    

The chief concern of today's readers is directed to the feasibility of the society of Oceania itself. Can that happen here? The technology of Ingsoc is already here with us today. Indeed, we have surpassed it. The internal mental mechanisms of doublethink, blackwhite, and crimestop are the real glue that hold it all together. We use variations of these concepts for everyday occurrences: "I'll pretend I didn't see what I thought I saw" and "If he said it's true, then I believe him." These illustrate that we use self-control devices similar to those in 1984 to alter our perceptions or stop us from doing things we shouldn't do or think we shouldn't do. The difference is that our government does not train us to use this practice every day concerning our political opinions. Nor are these psychological devices directly used to control our political behavior. But they very easily could be. Human beings are extremely susceptible towards certain media, and we tend to believe whatever is said by the media. Many studies show that our political opinions are developed from "opinion leaders" — peers whose  views we accept and take as our own. In our complex society, we are forced to rely on these others (in the media) for information. The risk which we run is that our best interests are not always the foremost concern of those who supply us with this information.    

There are some who take the position that we already live in Oceania and that we are being controlled and ordered about by the powers that be. Others maintain the opposite position and hold that we, as individuals, control our own fate and destiny. Obviously, there is room for innumerable views between these two extremes. Nor is it implausible to use doublethink and believe in both positions concurrently. Evidence supporting both views can be found co-existing practically anywhere. We are free to stand on the street corner and criticize the government, but if we become too rabid or noisy, we will likely be arrested by the police. Some members of our society, because of dress, race, or physical characteristics, bear a presumption of being ''dangerous." People in three-piece suits are seldom arrested for disturbing the peace. This dichotomy of freedom and authority is pervasive in our society. Ideally, there should be a balance for the peaceful resolution of these conflicting demands which would preserve our current system. It is our greatest strength, and if we fail to resolve conflicts peacefully, that would be our greatest vulnerability.    

Orwell's vision is pessimistic, and its plausibility makes us all the more squeamish to look full-face at its possible fulfillment. We look at 1984 and see the price of negligence and unrestrained trust. Oceania, once in place, cannot be reversed. Once we make our great mistake and forget our duty to act for ourselves and watch those whom we set to watch for us, the boot will stamp down upon our faces — forever.    

Oceania relies upon control of reality to maintain its control over the populace. This control is made possible by denying people of Oceania access to the truth. Thus, no one has any idea what is really going on in the world. In the middle of Hate Week (a perverted St. Valentine's Day), a speaker changes from one enemy, Eurasia, to the other, Eastasia, in mid-sentence. His actual speech never changes in substance or form; only one word is substituted for another. Yet the change is accepted by everyone within minutes. The Ingsoc maxim "He who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the future" is shown to be devastatingly effective. As Winston writes his journal, he is not even sure whether it is 1984 or not. It is impossible for him to prove this fact, one way  or another. Yet he daily aids, and sometimes he derives great pleasure, in fabricating lies. His grip on reality is as tenuous as his grip on the glass crystal. The truth has been altered beyond all recognition. As memories fade and written records are destroyed and altered, all touch with truth becomes permanently lost. The Party's truth can be foisted on the populace because there is nothing remotely cohesive or accurate enough to compete with it. Thus, it is no surprise that Julia believes that the Party invented the airplane; in a few more years, the Party can even claim that the Party has always existed and no one can prove them wrong. Winston and those who try to remember have no proof and, if they rebel, they are destroyed.  

Adolph Hitler once boasted that if you tell a lie enough times, people will accept it as being the truth. Truth is a very delicate thing. It is subject to an individual's own perceptions and the perceptions of society at large. In the 1400s, it was not wise to profess to believe that the world was round; that view was considered to be heresy, and heretics were tortured and burned at the stake. There are many people today who do not believe that Neil Armstrong ever walked on the moon. Truth can be espoused by many sources, and each person chooses his own sources in which to believe. Orwell demonstrates the danger of having only one outside source for one's information and facts. The populace comes to rely on that one source as being right — no matter if every word of it is false. The Party will go to any lengths to enforce its version. Since there are no laws or even any objective concern as to what the Party is doing to its own people, the monopoly on truth is unchallenged, and it, in turn, evolves into a monopoly of power.    

Truth is an important tool in the hands of the Party. It is the center for controlling the populace and enforcing its desire for absolute power on the people of Oceania. There can be no resistance to such a system, for the very idea of resistance cannot be formulated. People are forbidden to communicate or are afraid to do so; therefore, any possibility of rebellion is doomed at its inception. The Inner Party members are as badly deluded by their lies as the most stupid Outer Party members. They won't change anything. The proles know nothing and won't change anything either. Worse yet, since the only way to fight these lies is to totally disbelieve them, prospective rebels in a non-existent Brotherhood finally fall into the hands of the Thought Police.

The erosion of factual truth is an extremely dangerous quality in our society. Potentially, our values and knowledge become undermined, and we risk having a ''truth" imposed upon us by an O'Brien or his Party.


1984 : Notes
Cliffs Notes On-- -
by Borman, Gilbert.

Lincoln, Neb. Cliffs Notes, 1999.

ISBN: 0822008998
eBook ISBN: 0585137854
Subject: Orwell, George,--1903-1950.--Nineteen eighty-four--Study guides.


freedomisahapislave

[seshatasefekht7]

peace and hotep,

the lie becomes truth and then the lie, again.......orwell

now what was bushs' reason for war?  

freedumisahapislav

[Ayinde]

by Harley Sorensen

Why mince words? These are the facts:

1) President George W. Bush is a liar.

2) Secretary of State Colin Powell is a liar.

3) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a liar.

4) National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is a liar.

To the above facts we might add these: There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, none were there when our war against Iraq began, and none will be found unless we plant them there.

These are the conclusions one could reasonably reach after reading California Congressman Henry Waxman's web site, the section about forged documents used as a justification for war.

One might also conclude that Waxman has found the smoking gun that could -- and should -- bring down the corrupt Bush Administration.

But, observing the events in Congress last Wednesday, one might conclude further that the Republicans in Congress, by blocking the call for a decent investigation, intend to do their best to see that the Bush Gang is never brought to account for its lying ways.

The sordid truth is that the Bush team lied through its teeth to justify its desire to go to war against Iraq.

This does not surprise me. As long as a year before we started the war, I e-mailed a friend: "Sooner or later Bush will conclude that Saddam has done something horrible, or is about to do something horrible, and the American public will be led to believe we have no choice but to destroy Iraq."

I am not a seer. I have no magical powers that allow me to see the future. But obvious is obvious, and it was obvious long before the war began that Bush would not be satisfied until he could send our young people off to avenge Saddam's attempt to assassinate his father.

The term "weapons of mass destruction" is used these days to cover a multitude of sins. Personally, I believe one "bunker buster" bomb qualifies as such a weapon, or one fighter bomber. But in Bushspeak, a WMD seems to be limited to nuclear devices, biological weapons or chemical weapons.

Before the war, the Bush people sought to provide future cover for their lies by inventing mobile weapons labs. By asserting ahead of time that Saddam's chemical and biological weapons were mobile, the Bushies would have an excuse for not finding them later. They could have been driven off anyway, perhaps to our next target country, Syria or Iran.

Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, cannot be created and then made to disappear so handily, so the Bushies satisfied themselves by "proving" the Iraqis had sought to buy the materials necessary to make nuclear devices.

That "proof" came from our co-conspirators in the war, the British, who said breathlessly that they had uncovered documents that proved the Iraqis had tried to buy uranium from Niger.

So there it was: "proof"! Bush cited this startling "fact" in his 2003 State of the Union address. His merry crew later repeated it and congressmen who believed their president voted in favor of military action against Iraq.

One small problem, however: it was a lie. There was no proof that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents that "proved" it were forgeries, and not very good forgeries at that. (For instance, they were printed on stationery of a previous Niger regime, and "signed" in part by a guy who had been out of government for more than 10 years. They were so poorly done, Rep. Waxman says, that a simple Google search would have exposed their lack of authenticity.)

That particular Bush lie became public knowledge a few months ago. Now that it's well known, the Bush people are blaming their intelligence agencies. They're throwing up their hands in dismay. Tain't our fault, they say, it's that danged old CIA.

Yeah. Right.

Congressman Waxman, a Democrat who's been in the House since 1974, is focusing his search for truth on one small issue: Why did the president, when he knew it to be untrue, cite the phony uranium-from-Niger fact in his State of the Union Address? So far, after months of trying, Waxman hasn¹t been able to get any satisfactory answers to his question.

Bush's reference to the non-existent uranium deal was a classic of presidential duplicity. What he actually said was, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That was technically true, as was, "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Folks, I know we expect politicians to lie to us. There's the old joke: "How can you tell when a politician is lying? … When his lips are moving."

So we expect a little gilding of the lily or shading the truth in an effort to squirm out of an embarrassing situation.

But should we sit back complacently and let politicians lie to us about something as important as going to war? We did that with Lyndon Johnson, and his lies about North Vietnamese attacks on American ships in 1964, and it led to our massive involvement in the Vietnam War with more than 50,000 Americans killed.

It is easy to argue that the war against Iraq was a "good war" because it rid the world of a horrible dictator. In that sense it was a good war, but that doesn¹t justify the lies that led us into that war.

We not only got rid of Saddam with that war, but we destroyed a country and left it in chaos, at a cost of American lives in the hundreds and still rising. Our military is overextended, our reservists are being used as permanent regular troops, and, in a shaky economy, we're putting the cost on credit and hoping our children can some day find a way to pay for it.

Even if you assume all that is good, should we tolerate being lied to on such major issues?

Congressman Waxman is on to something. He's caught the Bushies in baldfaced lies. But even though he's a powerful congressman, he's just one man, and he can be shunted aside.

What we need, I believe, is a hue and cry in this country to match the hue and cry that went up when Bill Clinton lied about sex. We shouldn't leave Waxman dangling out there all by himself. He needs our support.

For the sake of our country's future, we should expose the White House liars for what they are.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and liberal iconoclast. His column appears Mondays.

[Rootsie]

from Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World by Eduardo Galeano

"In the looking-glass school, lead learns to float and cork to sink. Snakes learn to fly and clouds drag themselves on the ground.

The upside-down world rewards in reverse: it scorns honesty, punishes work, prizes lack of scruples, and feeds cannibalism. Its professors slander nature: injustice, they say, is a law of nature. Milton Friedman teaches us about the 'natural rate of unemployment.' Studying Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, we learn that blacks remain on the lowest rungs of the social ladder by 'natural' law. From John D. Rockefeller's lectures, we know his success was due to the fact that 'nature' rewards the fittest and punishes the useless: more than a century later, the owners of the world continue to believe Charles Darwin wrote his books in their honor.

Survival of the fittest? The 'killer instinct' is an essential ingedient for getting ahead, a human virtue when it helps large companies digest small and strong countries devour weak but proof of bestiality when some jobless guy goes around with a knife in his fist.

...When a criminal kills someone for an unpaid debt, the execution is called a 'settling of accounts.' When the international technocracy settles accounts with an indebted country, the execution is called an 'adjustment plan.'

...In the world as it is, the looking-glass world, the countries that guard the peace also make and sell the most weapons. The most prestigious banks launder the most drug money and harbor the most stolen cash. The most successful industries are the most poisonous for the planet. And saving the environment is the brilliant endeavor of the very companies that profit from annihilating it. Those who kill the most people in the shortest time win immunity and praise, as do those who destroy the most nature at the lowest cost.

...Whoever is not a prisoner of necessity is a prisoner of fear, deprived of sleep by anxiety over the things he lacks or by terror of losing the things he has. The looking-glass world trains us to view our neighbors as a threat, not a promise. It condemns us to solitude and consoles us with chemical drugs and cybernetic friends. We are sentenced to die of hunger, fear, or boredom-that is if a stray bullet doesn't do the job first.

Is the freedom to choose among these unfortunate ends the only freedom left to us? The looking-glass school teaches us to suffer reality, not change it; to forget the past, not learn from it; to accept the future, not invent it. In its halls of criminal learning, impotence, amnesia, and resignation are required courses. Yet perhaps-who can say-there can be no disgrace without grace, no sign without a countersign, and no school that does not beget its counterschool."