I read the book 1984 once when I was a vitriolic teen and now I’ve finish it again as a cynical, old, shriveled up adult. I remember being so fired up about the book the first time. I was shook! How could this have happened in real life after a guy warned us about it? How come it was happening right now in America? I don’t feel that way any more. Now that I have a mortgage and a paycheck, it seems fine to me. Long live Big Brother!
1984 is a psychological horror in many ways. The main character, Winston Smith, lives with a constant state of paranoia. There’s always someone out to get him, and constantly watching his every move, and listening to his every whisper. He’s constantly afraid that the government will dispose of him, aka, kidnap, torture, interrogate, then kill, and remove all records as if he never existed. It’s a justified paranoia. He lives with a government that has evolved into a Technocratic, Authoritarian, Totalitarian, Welfare – Warfare State. Each gear in the machine powers the other gears. Technology has progressed to an unprecedented level that has enabled the government to spy on every single citizen 24/7. Technology has gotten so good, that they now need to waste the surplus production, just to keep people busy. They waste surplus production with mismanagement, complete welfare, and endless total warfare. The country (“Oceana” is indefinitely at war with either Eurasia (Russia plus Europe), or Eastasia (China, Japan, and the rest). They need to constantly be at war, in order to boost morale, increase comradery, and waste surplus. They need to waste surplus, to maintain totalitarian control. They need totalitarian control to win the war. The government is simply and end to itself. Everything is in service of maintaining the status quo. It is only interested in perpetuating its own existence and happens to help the citizens by accident or reluctantly. Yeah that’s terrifying.
Yes, in many ways, America is this Technocratic, Authoritarian, Totalitarian, Welfare – Warfare State. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. spy on us 24/7 and listen to our every whisper to try to predict our thoughts. We seem to have been at war ever since our founding. The military-industrial complex is as robust as ever. And there seems to be an abundance of desk jobs in America that are fairly meaningless. I’m basing this off of the movie “Office Space,” the comic “Dilbert,” the show “The Office,” and my job when I worked at Chrysler. Media may exaggerate the degree of meaningless jobs, but now we’re just quibbling about the degree. And we also have a cult of personality around our leaders and a demonization of the opposition party leader and dissidents.
But I also found it clownishly unrealistic. You know how some people watch horror movies and find them funny? That’s how I felt about this book. It was just absurd. The premise defies logic and ignores all of human history. Human civilizations are capable of horrific atrocities, but they are never permanent. No civilization has ever lasted more than a millennium, and even if it does, it changes along the way. Soviet Russia is probably as bad as human civilization has ever gotten in terms of a Technocratic, Authoritarian, Totalitarian, Welfare – Warfare State. And it could have been worse, but it still wouldn’t have been permanent. It wasn’t sustainable. Maintaining civilization is like trying to unicycle during an earthquake. It requires balance and changing direction and eventually falling over.
The other part I found absurd was his acceptance of the status quo, and the simultaneous rejection. On the one hand, he knows that he could be caught for something so he lives a quite life to stay out of trouble. On the one hand, he knows that he will be caught for something so he commits all sorts of crimes, since he’ll be caught for something anyway. That dichotomy didn’t resonate with me. To me, a life only has meaning if the choices have consequences. If you eat healthy and exercise and your body gets in shape, that’s a meaningful decision. If you eat healthy and exercise and you still don’t get in shape, then why did you exercise? It’s a meaningless decision to exercise or not, because the result is the same. If Winston knows he will be caught, then why bother acting coy? Why not live life to the fullest and enjoy what you can? I could not relate to the main character. I was disappointed that the main character didn’t do much. Mostly things just happened to him. I didn’t like that the main character had no redeeming qualities, other than a dislike of the government. I was disappointed that his female counterpart was just a brunette with legs. She didn’t have much more personality than a cardboard cut out. Initially Winston wants to bash her brains in with a rock when he first sees her, because she comes off as a prude and a member of the thought police. But when she secretly confesses her love for him, suddenly he falls in love. Does he actually love her? Or does he just want to get laid?
I just so happened to listen to the first third of the of Apology of Socrates where Socrates is giving a speech to 500 of his fellow countrymen. He says, “I don’t care if you kill me. I’m not worried about my body. I’m worried about my soul. I’d rather have a crime committed against me, than me commit a crime against another.” That was reassuring to hear. Compare that to what Winston said when offered a position in a secretly anarchist society. The anarchist recruiter asked if Winston was willing to: kill, steal, throw chemicals in people’s faces, even to innocent people. And Winston gave a resounding yes. He would do anything if it meant bringing down Big Brother. Between Socrates and Winston, who do you think died a good death? Who do you think had more people beside their bed weeping for the loss?
For all of 1984’s faults, it did have some extraordinary writing. It was gorgeous to read. It was like reading poetry. It was very “sensuous” in the sense that there were a lot of sense words. Every apartment smells of boiled cabbage. The cafeteria stew was pink with a metallic taste. A glass paper weight feels hefty and solid and seems to contain all of humanity frozen inside of it. The writing did an excellent job of painting this bleak world in my brain. It felt like I was there.