I have posted a couple of excerpts from "1984" on the Well and thought I'd also post them here for those who haven't read it and those who haven't read it in a long time. To wit:
"There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place.
Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once,
that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. Winston was taking part
in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment
when it happened. It was night, and the white faces and the scarlet
banners were luridly floodlit. The square was packed with several
thousand people, including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren
in the uniform of the Spies. On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of
the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms
and a large, bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was
haranguing the crowd. A little Rumplestiltskin figure, contorted with
hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the
other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly
above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed
forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations,
lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying
propaganda, unjust agressions, broken treaties. It was almost
impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then
maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and
the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beastlike roaring that
rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells
of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding
for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried onto the platform
and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled
and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his
voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly
the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding
rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next
moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with
which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had
the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein
had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were
ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot.
The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the
rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys.
But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still
gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his
free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech.
One minute more and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from
the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the
target had been changed."
pages 184-185
Osama Hussein? No, Saddam bin Laden. Terrorism? Yes, Iraq."
and:
"I have bookmarked lots of entries before this one, but thought I'd do
this 'cuz power is one of the thinngs I am interested in. This is in
Room 101 and the speaker is O'Brien, Winston's betrayer and torturer:
"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"
Winston thought. "By making him suffer", he said.
"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless
he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and
not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in
tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new
shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of
world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid,
hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear
and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled
upon, a world which will grow not less but *more* merciless as it
refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more
pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and
justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no
emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything
else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the
habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We
have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and woman.
No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in
the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be
taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The
sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual
formality like the renewal of a ration card*. We shall abolish the
orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no
loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love,
except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the
laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no
literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no moore
need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and
ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of
life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not
forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power,
constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every
moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of
trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the
future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever"
Pages 276-277
*cross-reference "Brave New World" for removing the need for natural
birth/removing the parent/child bond.
Not much to say. The last line is, perhaps, where we are. Might be a
good pseud. or tattoo or watch-phrase. I'm sure that when I last read
this in '81 or so, it's one I took to heart. The ideas some people
have of what constitutes power are of grave concern to all of us. All
of us."
