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Comment by petjuh | Hacker News Reader

Orwell's book primary point wasn't about the surveillance (although there is plenty of surveillance there, to be sure), it was about how history is rewritten and people are trained to change their beliefs on command.

It's much more about "2+2=5" than about the Big Brother TV-show with the cameras. I myself thought the book was about surveillance before I read it, mostly because of the "Big Brother" TV show.

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" it was about how history is rewritten and people are trained to change their beliefs on command."

That has been achieved in hyperpartisan US politics already. A lot of people of people will change their opinion and perception of the real world immediately once it's convenient for "their" party.

That isn't remotely new. Just look at English history during Anglicianism's transition.

I think Orwell's point was even simpler: the overriding purpose of totalitarian political systems is power over individuals, "a boot stamping on a human face - forever". The actual ideology and stated goals are just window dressing towards this end.

As O'Brien says:

"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 the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Edit: Personally, it's this self-awareness of their own real motives that make the Inner Party of Ingsoc so scary.

I must be reading it wrong, because I thought it was about how love was the most important and powerful emotion and how the final defeat of the two protagonists was the realization that they no longer loved each other and instead loved the state.

All of the Big Brother, Ministries of Whatever, censorship, and surveillance stuff was just window dressing for the love message.

Even Brave New World, to me, is about love. The society spurns familial love (like between John and his mother) and committed relationships (like between everyone and everyone) and pain or discomfort is a prerequisite for love and the pursuit of happiness has all but eliminated true love from the world. John kills himself because he hurt the woman he loved, he is humiliated for loving his mother, and is frustrated by the fact that the woman he loves can't love him because she is too busy pursuing simple, immediate, pleasures.

At least, that's my recollection of the two books.

> I must be reading it wrong, because I thought it was about how love was the most important and powerful emotion and how the final defeat of the two protagonists was the realization that they no longer loved each other and instead loved the state.

That's...an interesting perspective, but I think the audience is expected to already view love with that importance, so that the love storyline instead underlines the power of the control of the state.

Similarly with BNW. I think you are reading things that the authors perceived and sought to leverage in their contemporary audience with as being instead the message of the work: neither is about love, but the effect the dystopia described has on love is a key part of painting the picture because of what readers are expected to already feel about love.

> I thought it was about how love was the most important and powerful emotion and how the final defeat of the two protagonists was the realization that they no longer loved each other and instead loved the state.

My takeaway was that love was the most important emotion yet the state has the power to control even love. I don't think we're supposed to believe his love for Big Brother is genuine, but rather manufactured much like revisions to history.

> because I thought it was about how love was the most important and powerful emotion

Except that she doesn't love him and she immediately and fully confesses everything and betrays him.

The book is about the political classes, while the majority of the population (the proles) are not discussed a lot, they seem to have simple lives and can love.

You can have a story about love and love not triumph. I'd definitely say that that was a big element of the book. But I'd also include the class struggle and the so called dressing. Calling the setting a dressing seems a bit of an underplay. Settings are really important and generally also hold a message. But then again, I'm confused about why there's so much discussion about "I thought it was about" and not "this element is what struck me". Because 1984 is about ALL of those things.

There's something ironic about this whole comment. If it was intended, then well done.

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