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wingedbeastFirst a quick note, based on some of the comments I've gotten. I know that much of my interpretation doesn't match up to Orwell's intent. I'm taking a Death of the Author approach and I'm outright stating where I think Orwell is wrong.
Now, into the deconstruction.
According to O'Brien, Winston has gone through stage one, learning. The next stage is understanding, which will be the task of the current chapter. The final stage will be acceptance.
The stage of learning included O'Brien's line about meeting where there is no darkness, a line of invitation to the thought that O'Brien is like Winston himself (which he might be). It included giving Winston the book so he could read it. And, it included reinforcing the very same things, via torture, that had been expected of Winston all along.
Now, we get to the question that most plagues Winston.
The point of the book is to verify, with only a few lies, what one already knows. It gives that little bit of sanity validation "yes, I'm not the crazy one for thinking this is happening" without an important answer to the question of "why".
"Why" is, arguably, the most important element of any conspiracy theory. You can have all the working parts of what the chemicals are, why they cause those lines in jet trails, what they do, etc. But, without a motivation behind the conspiracy theory, it's still just crazy. Nobody does it for the evil lolz.
Now, once you have the "why", it's not a certainty. But, you need it. And, O'Brien instructs Winston to take a guess.
Orwell has a long thought process about what he's sure O'Brien wants to hear about why The Party seeks to gain and maintain power, why they go through such efforts. It's the usual excuses you expect to hear. So, he gives what he thinks is wanted.
And, I immediately think something different. This isn't something someone chooses to do out of the blue. This isn't the origin of an organization. People may want power, but even that is usually a means to an end. That luxury and long life and happiness, perhaps, with Winston's guess as a cheap excuse. Sometimes it's for the end of ideological comfort, with another cheap excuse.
To get here, to the point of power for power's sake, sacrificing one's own happiness in the achieving and doing so openly? If you were to start there, you'd have to ask why. What would even be the point, if not your own happiness?
I can see how this would happen, however. I can see, easily, how it can happen.
The answer is that The Party seeks power because that is what The Party does.
People and organizations seek power for various reasons. There are the idealistic reasons of doing good for the world. There are the selfish reasons that can simply involve feeding one's own ego. But, whatever your reasons, the first thing you do is compromise.
It's inevitable. You can't not. If you want absolute control of all the wealth and luxury, you still need the support of, at least, a few key people. Military, wealth, production, they all take a bit of that wealth and luxury in order for you to maintain. So, you sacrifice a bit here, a bit there, etc.
If you want to do some real good by shaping your government to serve all mankind, you have to deal with other people. Some of them have different ideas on how the government should serve all mankind. Some are selfish little shitbags. Some are selfish little shitbags who have managed to convince themselves that their selfish-little-shitbaggery is the key to doing good for the world. So, you have to make compromises in order to get anything done.
In either case, getting even a portion of what you want still requires power. So, you make that sacrifice for that power. And, you make another one. And, you make another one. For an individual, this can become a habit, but eventually, one said individual can question.
For an organization, things are a little different. The Party, by all available evidence in the book so far, steadfastly avoids having the vulnerability of a single leader or council. The various component parts, the people in The Party, are, individually, too weak to challenge The Party so much as to question the motivation.
The Party seeks power because that's what The Party has done. The Party is an emergent entity, composed of people but, in function, far less complex than people. It doesn't, without the people challenging it, have the capacity to question the value of power. So, there's nothing to stop the inertia from just rolling along.
And, O'Brien thinks this is a point of superiority.
Maybe for the communists... I suppose, if you wanted to squint hard and make it fit, you could imagine that the Nazis thought that the remaining people would be free and equal, but even then not so much. That's just an aside.
There is a level of truth to that. It's rarely conscious. But, much as I see being the case with The Party, other organizations and, even people, can reach a point where the maintaining power is the goal in and of itself.
For instance, a while back, I wrote an article about moral hubris as the explanation for the willingness of religious people, believing in the moral superiority of their organization and/or faith, to cover up sexual molestation*. You can believe in doing good with through an organization or maintaining the image of a faith, but when you sacrifice this basic a matter of goodness, in effect, you're maintaining the image to maintain the image. Or rather, maintaining the power to maintain the power.
That's the motivation, however, of the The Party as an emergent entity. What about those individual members?
But, can he? I ask this question of O'Brien. Can he, really, escape his identity?
I don't think so. Because, for all that O'Brien may submit to The Party, he is one of the very people over which The Party seeks power. O'Brien will be broken down again and again. The power is power over the mind and O'Brien has one.
There's a bit of back and forth, that leads to a debate on what stars are, being that they're evidence, from their very distance, of a universe that predates humanity.
This, of course, is about Doublethink. O'Brien is expressing that reality can be whatever is convenient in the moment, due to Doublethink. But, I'll answer his question.
"What of it?"
Well, O'Brien, you can never use another method when navigating the ocean or predicting an eclipse. That's what of it. For all that power of Doublethink to convince yourself, it really is self-delusion, motivated reasoning with the motivation of trying to appease the unappeasable Party. But, you'll never be able to force treating stars as fireflies stuck in the sky at the same time you navigate the ocean.
Still, the point seems to be made. They can't really change what the stars are. But, they can damn well force you to act like they are whatever The Party wants you to act like they are, on pain of a thousand different cruelties.
About those cruelties.
There is more, of course, to this chapter. It all goes to a motivation of an organization that, to my view, is operating more on inertia than choice. But, there's more to explore in that motivation, exploration that I've already started.
Next week, I'll have to ask if O'Brien's belief that The Party will endure forever has any merit. Can Oceana last as it is?
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/25040.html
Now, into the deconstruction.
According to O'Brien, Winston has gone through stage one, learning. The next stage is understanding, which will be the task of the current chapter. The final stage will be acceptance.
The stage of learning included O'Brien's line about meeting where there is no darkness, a line of invitation to the thought that O'Brien is like Winston himself (which he might be). It included giving Winston the book so he could read it. And, it included reinforcing the very same things, via torture, that had been expected of Winston all along.
Now, we get to the question that most plagues Winston.
'As you lie there,' said O'Brien, 'you have often wondered-you have asked me-why the Ministry of Love should expend so much time and trouble on you. And when you were free you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question. You could grasp the mechanics of the society you lived in, but not its underlying motives. Do you remember writing in your diary, "I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. Have you read the book, Goldstein's book, or parts of it, at least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?'
The point of the book is to verify, with only a few lies, what one already knows. It gives that little bit of sanity validation "yes, I'm not the crazy one for thinking this is happening" without an important answer to the question of "why".
"Why" is, arguably, the most important element of any conspiracy theory. You can have all the working parts of what the chemicals are, why they cause those lines in jet trails, what they do, etc. But, without a motivation behind the conspiracy theory, it's still just crazy. Nobody does it for the evil lolz.
Now, once you have the "why", it's not a certainty. But, you need it. And, O'Brien instructs Winston to take a guess.
Orwell has a long thought process about what he's sure O'Brien wants to hear about why The Party seeks to gain and maintain power, why they go through such efforts. It's the usual excuses you expect to hear. So, he gives what he thinks is wanted.
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore---'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
He pulled back the lever and continued.:
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the goods of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
And, I immediately think something different. This isn't something someone chooses to do out of the blue. This isn't the origin of an organization. People may want power, but even that is usually a means to an end. That luxury and long life and happiness, perhaps, with Winston's guess as a cheap excuse. Sometimes it's for the end of ideological comfort, with another cheap excuse.
To get here, to the point of power for power's sake, sacrificing one's own happiness in the achieving and doing so openly? If you were to start there, you'd have to ask why. What would even be the point, if not your own happiness?
I can see how this would happen, however. I can see, easily, how it can happen.
The answer is that The Party seeks power because that is what The Party does.
People and organizations seek power for various reasons. There are the idealistic reasons of doing good for the world. There are the selfish reasons that can simply involve feeding one's own ego. But, whatever your reasons, the first thing you do is compromise.
It's inevitable. You can't not. If you want absolute control of all the wealth and luxury, you still need the support of, at least, a few key people. Military, wealth, production, they all take a bit of that wealth and luxury in order for you to maintain. So, you sacrifice a bit here, a bit there, etc.
If you want to do some real good by shaping your government to serve all mankind, you have to deal with other people. Some of them have different ideas on how the government should serve all mankind. Some are selfish little shitbags. Some are selfish little shitbags who have managed to convince themselves that their selfish-little-shitbaggery is the key to doing good for the world. So, you have to make compromises in order to get anything done.
In either case, getting even a portion of what you want still requires power. So, you make that sacrifice for that power. And, you make another one. And, you make another one. For an individual, this can become a habit, but eventually, one said individual can question.
For an organization, things are a little different. The Party, by all available evidence in the book so far, steadfastly avoids having the vulnerability of a single leader or council. The various component parts, the people in The Party, are, individually, too weak to challenge The Party so much as to question the motivation.
The Party seeks power because that's what The Party has done. The Party is an emergent entity, composed of people but, in function, far less complex than people. It doesn't, without the people challenging it, have the capacity to question the value of power. So, there's nothing to stop the inertia from just rolling along.
And, O'Brien thinks this is a point of superiority.
What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and th Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
Maybe for the communists... I suppose, if you wanted to squint hard and make it fit, you could imagine that the Nazis thought that the remaining people would be free and equal, but even then not so much. That's just an aside.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. The object of persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
There is a level of truth to that. It's rarely conscious. But, much as I see being the case with The Party, other organizations and, even people, can reach a point where the maintaining power is the goal in and of itself.
For instance, a while back, I wrote an article about moral hubris as the explanation for the willingness of religious people, believing in the moral superiority of their organization and/or faith, to cover up sexual molestation*. You can believe in doing good with through an organization or maintaining the image of a faith, but when you sacrifice this basic a matter of goodness, in effect, you're maintaining the image to maintain the image. Or rather, maintaining the power to maintain the power.
That's the motivation, however, of the The Party as an emergent entity. What about those individual members?
Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?'
...
Alone-free-the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.
But, can he? I ask this question of O'Brien. Can he, really, escape his identity?
I don't think so. Because, for all that O'Brien may submit to The Party, he is one of the very people over which The Party seeks power. O'Brien will be broken down again and again. The power is power over the mind and O'Brien has one.
There's a bit of back and forth, that leads to a debate on what stars are, being that they're evidence, from their very distance, of a universe that predates humanity.
'What are the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and stars go round it.'
...
'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilomtres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy?
This, of course, is about Doublethink. O'Brien is expressing that reality can be whatever is convenient in the moment, due to Doublethink. But, I'll answer his question.
"What of it?"
Well, O'Brien, you can never use another method when navigating the ocean or predicting an eclipse. That's what of it. For all that power of Doublethink to convince yourself, it really is self-delusion, motivated reasoning with the motivation of trying to appease the unappeasable Party. But, you'll never be able to force treating stars as fireflies stuck in the sky at the same time you navigate the ocean.
Still, the point seems to be made. They can't really change what the stars are. But, they can damn well force you to act like they are whatever The Party wants you to act like they are, on pain of a thousand different cruelties.
About those cruelties.
He [O'Brien] paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one 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?
There is more, of course, to this chapter. It all goes to a motivation of an organization that, to my view, is operating more on inertia than choice. But, there's more to explore in that motivation, exploration that I've already started.
Next week, I'll have to ask if O'Brien's belief that The Party will endure forever has any merit. Can Oceana last as it is?
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/25040.html
no subject
Date: 2017-08-16 02:12 am (UTC)Why? Because the Party is utterly dependent on things remaining the way they are to stay in power. It would be utterly useless and helpless in the case of what The Culture calls "an outside context problem", aka the kind of problem "most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."
no subject
Date: 2017-08-16 03:07 am (UTC)Still, I have my own thoughts for next week's installment.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-16 12:58 pm (UTC)- A dinosaur-killer meteor (or somewhat smaller) slamming into Earth would be another example of something the Party has no context for.
- Or, the inevitable Milankovitch cycles ticking along and initiating a new glaciation very rapidly (or even something like the Younger Dryas).
- A nasty pandemic, like the Black Death, or smallpox + measles in the New World, that kills off too much of society for it to support itself, let alone the Party.