I spent the majority of this weekend in the studio (Russian Recording of Nashville, Indiana) once again. It was a tremendously rewarding and frustrating experience. Much was learned. The final product, if I may say so, is the balls. I'm ridiculously proud of it. I'll post some tracks, which you will all hate, soon.
buy symbicort online buy symbicort no prescription
That is my way of apologizing for the lack of research in today's entry.
Inspired by a conversation I had on Saturday evening with someone I had not previously met: why does anyone give a shit about George Orwell? Why do people think 1984 is a good book? And why in the flying hell do people bring it up as an analogy when they're discussing politics? I honestly cannot think of anything less persuasive.
1984 is, in my opinion, a three hundred page straw man. Sure, it probably seemed like a plausible nightmare scenario back in the days of Cold War indoctrination, but in the modern context I can't think of a less relevant social metaphor. I'm hardly the first or best person to compare the two, but Brave New World runs circles around 1984 in terms of relevance as a political metaphor. Where 1984 tries to scare the kiddies with images of book banning, Huxley talks about a world in which the books ban themselves because no one wants to read. Orwell gives us juvenile tales of an all-powerful government that hides information from us; Huxley talks about a world in which the truth is freely available but lost in an ocean of misinformation, spin, and irrelevant bullshit masquerading as news. Orwell told us that a totalitarian state would make social and political change impossible. Huxley drew up a world in which people were too busy being distracted by nonsense to want to change anything.
In short, as a skeptical person with an interest in politics, 1984 is supposed to appeal to me. Too bad it reads as if written by a 16 year-old.
online pharmacy trazodone best drugstore for you
buy zovirax online buy zovirax no prescription
It's a ham-handed boogeyman tale that completely misses any point outside of the context of anti-Communist hysteria. When educated adults actually bring it up in conversation, I immediately knock about 40 points off their IQ.
online pharmacy amitriptyline best drugstore for you
It's the sort of thing that allows really stupid people to convince themselves that we have a terrific system in place – our government doesn't look like 1984, so we must have a healthy, vibrant democracy! I'll take Brave New World and conversation with someone who understands that the people who want to control you will come with smiles and soothing voices, not an iron fist wielded by cartoonish jackbooted thugs.
Chris says:
In 1984, it is possible to overthrow the government: it lies in the common folk. But, like the people in Brave New World, the common folk were too distracted or interested in other things to know their own power.
Both books dumb society down to either satisfying their urges or brute government power. Brutal power is also a lot more complex than you give it; people are basically animals, and this is what power is. Compare 1984 to Lord of the Flies; either too many rules or complete absence of rules display power in its most brutal form.
1984 and Brave New World are basically the same book. An outsider from power meets the person in charge and learns the rules of their world. Very similar to people meeting a God like figure in the world who reveals what life is all about. In both cases, it shows the futility of one person having zero control over anything and the rules aren't as amazing as you thought they would be (they just benefit the person in charge).
In order to truly appreciate 1984, you would have to have been in a Vietnamese prison camp, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, a concentration camp, been tortured, or have committed a crime where you are completely at the mercy of brutal power. I can't think of a worse nightmare, and it is all too possible. This doesn't have to be simply a book about communism; all governments can and do abuse power and their citizens in some way.
JDryden says:
I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of the importance of the novel and the quality of its writing (a 16-year-old would never be able to produce such spare, declarative prose.) BUT–trying to convince someone that a book is great is as futile as trying to convince someone that a joke is funny–instinctive reception can't really be swayed by argument. (I *know*, logically, that LA DOLCE VITA is a brilliant and important film, and still it bores me to tears. Go figure.)
Rather than diatribe away–"You're wrong! You're WRONG!!!"–I will commit a lesser solecism and link you to my own analysis of the work in question, hoping, at least, that you'll at least give some of us back our 40 points of IQ:
http://mid-westnotes.blogspot.com/2007/04/orwellian.html
Ed says:
Balderdash. Tell me. What am I missing? You should not yield the point so easily.
I should clarify the 16 year old statement. I mean that more in the sense of the story. The plot. It's just very simplistic in my opinion. There's a reason it gets assigned to high school sophomores. As far as Mr. Orwell's ability to construct sentences and use the English language, I have no complaints.
JDryden says:
Well, OK then:
On the one hand, yes, it would be easy to lump it in with, say, the novels of Ayn Rand (which "prove" that objectivism will save us all) as a vision of a society that works exactly how a fictional/political agenda dictates and therefore has an artificial quality to it that rankles, especially since, unlike Huxley–who's kidding, most of the time–Orwell is serious.
But on the other hand, I would argue that it's not a political novel at all, and ought not to be read as such–that is, it's not a novel about How Totalitarianism Sucks–*that* is an obvious and unnecessary point to make, and if that were all there was to the novel, I'd agree. Rather, it's a novel about how *people* suck. How we will accept misery as an inevitable aspect of life and either call it 'necessary' or 'temporary' or 'natural', when in many cases it is none of the above.
The idea of using misery not as a means of suppressing the people, but of uniting them–to make them embrace, even love their misery–is hardly an *original* idea–Medieval Christianity couldn't have existed without it. But the idea that it could be used not as a means of reconciling people to their lot in life in hopes of a better world after death, but rather as a means of reconciling them to the inevitable fall of the hammer–of breeding a race not of happy people (as Huxley does) but of miserable people who are pliable *precisely because* they are miserable–the idea that the feelings that are usually associated with the start of revolutions are the feelings that are used to suppress the possibility of revolution–*that's* not a political statement so much as a statement on human nature, and the fact that its fundamental affinity for the path of least resistance, properly encouraged, can ensure an awful but unshakeable social stability.
I guess I see the novel as much less of a 'nightmarish vision of a sci-fi-ed up version of Stalinist Russia' and much more of a Swiftian examination of humanity and how what we normally think makes us human are things we'll not-too-grudgingly sacrifice (love, sex, family, reason, idealism, etc.) while embracing *nothing* as a substitute. Where Swift whittles away human traits until he gets to the irreducable Yahoo, Orwell whittles us down until he gets to nothing. There's no there there. Human nature does not exist.
Scares the hell out of me, at least.
Matthew says:
While I would agree that the dystopia imagined in Brave New World does seem more like the dystopia we're heading towards (in some ways, anyway – I don't think we're heading for children being bred in vats and juvenile sex play any time soon), I don't think that history has proven (or will prove) that one type of societal death is ultimately more likely than the other, all things being equal.
So yes, BNW is more relevant to us now than 1984, but even though America looks like it's killing itself from within by stupidity and sloth, that doesn't mean every society is going to kill itself that way. I think there are a number of countries even in the world today where the kind of threat 1984 poses is more likely than BNW's. (Which is not to say that I think nothing in 1984 remains relevant to us – the requests from Homeland Security for Americans to essentially spy on each other is much more Orwellian than Huxleyan, or Huxleyish, or Huxlike)
I would say that the strongest (and most relevant to us) bits of 1984 are the parts that were basically so spot-on when the book was first written that they don't seem interesting anymore. The way that he treats doublespeak was quite a revelation at the time, even if it seems obvious now. I mean, can you really stomach the naming of the Freedom Tower? That's fucking ridiculous.
As to the relative literary merits of the two books, that's far more relative, and it wouldn't do much good to argue on that score.
Desmond says:
I think it's a bit unfair to call 1984 a strawman when there are, in fact, very Orwellian societies still in existence. Yes, extreme totalitarianism may seem remote to us, but look at North Korea.
Personality cult centered around dictator? Check. Rewriting of history? Check. Violent state suppression of the slightest hint of individual thought and expression? Check.
It is the height of foolishness to assume that such a fate is now impossible for our society. What preserves our freedom is eternal vigilance against the centralization of power. The seductive totalitarianism* of Brave New World that you mention, the smiles instead of the jackboots, may indeed be more relevant to our current state of affairs, at least in the West. But neither does it make 1984 irrelevant.
*And it should also be noted that the majority of the terror in 1984 is directed at the outer Party members, not the proles. In fact, the proles are kept under control by lack of education and free access to things like alcohol and pornography. It is mentioned a number of times that they are technically freer than Party members, but they are kept poor and ignorant. It is also hinted at that if the Proles were ever to stand up to the Party, a revolution might be possible.
Scott says:
Here's my attempt to get my 40 IQ points back.
The important thing to remember about Eric Blair was that he was not an anti-communist, he was an anti-Stalinist. Both 1984 and Animal Farm bear this out. In both novels, the idea that working together for the betterment of society and the economic equality of everyone are completely destroyed by those that want to instill fear. Those that question this idea are also destroyed.
Read in this context, 1984 is not something to be used in order to indoctrinate us into an anti-Cold War hysteria, but as a critique of Stalinism and other forms of totalitarianism.
On the other hand, I do believe that it is not a very well written novel. And while I think 1984 is an important novel, the parallels that some find between the state of Oceania and the United States are complete bullshit.
Brandon says:
Shamefully, it's been far too long since I've read either of these books, so my memory is very unclear. However, while I would agree with you to some extent that 1984 has lost some of its relevance (mainly because it was directed to such a large extent at a political system that has collapsed), I think you take your criticism way too far. To lump 1984 in the same category as hysterical, anti-Communist propaganda? Come on. First, Orwell wasn't a raging right-winger. He initially sympathized with the Bolshevik revolution and wrote sympathetically of the republicans during the Spanish Civil War. At the time he wrote the book, the horrors of Stalinism were not as widely known as you might think, and many leftists still sympathized with Stalin even after the purges of the 1930's, so his critique of totalitarianism didn't seem as generic and rehashed then as it might to some people now. Furthermore, as somebody pointed out, the type of system described in 1984 still has parallels in several extant regimes, namely N. Korea. I think I remember Christopher Hitchens saying once that it seems as thought Kim Il Sung read the novel and decided to try to model N. Korea as directly as possible on the fictional regime described by Orwell. I agree with you, 1984 wouldn't be the first book I'd take off the shelf if I was looking for something more pertinent to modern politics, but if some people continue to derive meaning and understanding from it, more power to 'em. You're right that 1984 is one of those books that people often throw around to sound smart, but I guess that is the price of fame.
Ed says:
I am learning a very important lesson about the nature of commentary here. The more I use sweeping generalizations and hyperbolic criticism, the more responses I get.
So this is what it feels like to be Bill O'Reilly.
I had a lot of hesitation when I pressed "save" on this one, as I know it is a lot more slipshod and poorly thought-out than I prefer things to be. I do appreciate all the comments and I *will* give that book another chance. It has been a while.
I am going to dig my heels in on the point that it is a lot less "relevant" than most analysis claims – and this was true even back in the Cold War days. The threat of a democratic society succumbing to totalitarianism is not, and never was, nearly as great as the threat of succumbing to irrelevance, apathy, disinterest, and distraction. I feel like the 1984 metaphor, and anti-communism in general, are a misguided emphasis on Threats to Our Way of Life in the form of a boogeyman – the barrel of a gun and the end of a billyclub – and we focused so heavily on it that we barely noticed what the man behind the curtain was really doing.
In other words, to put it in Huxley's terms, stern warnings about totalitarianism are just one more distraction. Most of the ends that 1984 warns about have been accomplished by radically different means. Again, banning books is irrelevant if you can use other means to create a society in which 80% of adults claim they've never read a book since they graduated high school. In a free society (obviously Mr. Orwell's intended audience – the west) that was always a much bigger threat than some sort of Big Brother coming along and ripping the book out of your hand.
Ed says:
What I'm trying to say (poorly) is that I don't understand it when someone says, in the midst of a conversation about current events broadly construed, "I mean, dude, this is like 1984!"
No, no it isn't. It really isn't like that at all. Relevant news is available and roundly ignored. People may read whatever they want and they choose to read People and watch American Gladiators. We are not told what to believe, we are lulled into believing things or ignoring them altogether. Our problems are just a lot more about appealing to the lowest common base desire as control than about oppression as control.
Kreggg says:
We have all gotten fat and comfy in the Brave New World since WW2, it is the transition to the 1984 paradigm that that gets everyones feathers ruffled. We don't want a boot stepping on our face! You can Tivo c-span all you want, but I'll be watching dancing with the stars during Armegeddon!
peggy says:
Matthew: …Huxtable?
Ed: I initially read both books and thought Brave New World was better and scarier, and didn't really know why until I saw a similar comparison of 1984 vs. BNW as jackbooted thugs vs. "going to the feelies, who cares about politics?". Both are scary, but I think apathy is scarier.
Although tonight I had the thought that Orwell thought fear without logic or thought would destroy us, and Huxley thought it was pleasure without responsibility or principal, but what I'm really worried about is that we're getting a deadly dose of each. Yeesh.
Cameron was just telling me that one of his friends is afraid that a huge, devastating terrorist attack will be carried off just before the election, resulting in a Repub win and martial law, and perhaps even W trying to stay in office "until the crisis is past." It will, he fears, justify (uh, in their minds) everything the neocons have been saying since 2001.
Stuff of nightmares, man. Stuff of freakin' nightmares.
Desmond says:
Ed, I also think you are giving short shrift to two very important concepts in 1984; first, endless war used for the purposes of keeping the population scared and compliant, and second, the idea of "doublethink", or willful blindness to contradictions in a belief system.
If you ask me, I would say both are very evident in the policies of the Bush administration. Where the analogy falls apart is the fact that Bush is no longer fooling anyone except his most devoted followers on the Right.
No one believes him now when he talks about the grave threat of Iran, or when the terror threat level goes up, and as a means of control, it's becoming a little obsolete, like the boy who cried wolf.
As for doublethink, again, few really believe now that the Clear Skies act will really result in clear skies, or that No Child Left Behind will really leave no child behind, or that invasive security measures really "protect our freedom".
The ideas ARE there, but luckily for all of us, they are not well implemented. The war in Iraq, though a perfect example of Orwellian shifting of enemies (Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia), has been a fiasco, and is now an unpopular fiasco. There has been no domestic terrorism since 9/11. Let's face it, Bush isn't as evil and ruthless as the Party in 1984, which would have carried out the terrorism itself.
He is also an extremely inept public speaker. He has relatively little charisma, and he does not give an impression of being very intelligent. For Big Brother to dominate, he must be a dominating personality. He must be loved and respected as well as feared. Bush is a remarkably poor candidate for Big Brother, but that does not mean that all such candidates are as bad as Bush, nor that 1984 has no relevance when discussing the Bush presidency.
I think that to truly understand the threats that our free society faces, you need to refer to 1984 AND Brave New World. There are elements of both in today's society, even if one dystopia may seem more remote than the other at the present time.
Jeff says:
I agree that both are present in degrees today, but BNW seems to have a larger effect overall. However, that doesn't mean 1984 doesn't have merit.
For example, much of the misery and poverty people in the novel suffer from is self-inflicted. Everyone drinks "victory gin," smokes "victory cigerettes," and puts up with the lack of freedoms because it all must be given up to fight the war. The eternal war is the excuse the government gives the people, and the people give themselves, to lower their quality of life and eliminate their freedom.
Orwell was writing in with the memory of Britain in WWII, where personal and economic freedoms were given up for the sake of survival. In effect, he is arguing that the instinct to live is so powerful men will sacrifice all they live -for-, or all they're entitled to. That sort of logic has been used regarding many of our debates today on civil liberties.
However, economically, the administration has been careful -not- to undermine our quality of life. He knows that if we're not distracted, we're going to be pissed. That is were BNW comes in.
On the other hand, one can see 1984 in the presance of racism and hate as a means of drumming up support for oppressive actions by the government. We all know (or can imagine) someone who if fine with the government taking extreme measures if they use it to "kill a-rabs." In 1984, the 2-Minutes Hate was used as a means of keeping support of the war, with allowed the Part to keep control of so much of people's lives.
Personnaly, the scariest is when the two books mix. Take all the doublethink we see in government. Yeah, we're outraged and alarmed by it, but most people don't give a damn. Doublethink succeeds in our society not because people are too terrified to question it, but because they don't care enough to think about it.
It looks to me that we have Orwellian tactics working in a Huxleyan world. I believe a lot of people who say they oppose the war do so because to them the war has become a headache they just wish would pass, rather than any belief that it's in our best interest or that any good will come out of it. No thought; just a knee-jerk reaction that it should stop, with no understanding behind it. It becomes a mantra people repeat without analyzing it. Honestly, people are becoming as mindless as proles…