The most telling part of “1984″ is the appendix | Hacker News Reader

The most telling part of “1984″ is the appendix

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214 pointshermanywong136 comments

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

~ Neil Postman

It's a popular quote, but not one I find very accurate according to my interpretations of the two books. For example, in 1984 the government did a lot of censorship, but it's also true that there were very few people who would want to know the truth. This is why Winston is so alone. Presumably the censorship efforts would no longer be necessary if the government's goals of spreading Newspeak and eliminating the few remaining Winstons were accomplished. 1984 also featured a population "reduced to passivity and egotism" and truth was also drowned in a sea of irrelevance (namely, the persistant and perhaps partially fictional global war). A few of the differences are real, but most of the main points are false dichotomies.

But these are closer to end results. The contrasts being drawn between Orwell and Huxley are about the means toward those results -- fear, force, violence vs. drowning entertainment, drugs and distraction.

I think the point is that if we can recognize which is which we're better able to resist going down a dark road.

I think that governments in Western society do use a lot of fear, force, and violence, and I also think that the government in 1984 used entertainment and distraction (drugs not so much, unless you count the rationing of cigarettes and victory gin).

Note that at the time Orwell was writing, the only epidemiological research linking lung cancer and heart disease with smoking had been carried out by doctors working in Nazi Germany -- research which was tainted with guilt by association. (It took epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll another decade to independently make a conclusive case that the lung cancer epidemic was the result of smoking.) Smoking was tending towards a habit shared by 50% of the male population of the UK Orwell lived in; it was as unexceptional as tea or coffee.

Alcohol is a depressant and exactly the sort of bad habit a dictatorship with an unhealthy interest in its' subjects mental states might want to encourage. Think too much: anaesthetize yourself! It's also very hard to clamp down on bathtub distilleries.

Reading your comment, I was reminded of the hypothesis that the 17-18th century cultural shift from alcohol to coffee was a contributing factor in the Enlightenment.

Also note that drinking one of small beer or coffee (substitute tea to taste) was a great way of ensuring that your fluid intake wasn't contaminated with viable cholera bacilli. Adding alcohol or boiling water would kill them before they killed you. Which, before the discovery of the germ theory of disease and the development of sewage treatment farms, was pretty important.

In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison – a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all – a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence – shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought-world without risk or eros. ... America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. — Hakim Bey http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html

Thanks for reminding me about Hakim Bey. Fun fact: (may not actually be a fact) Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first).

>Richard Stallman and the whole idea of copyleft, is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey (which is where I read about it first).

>Richard Stallman...is borrowed from the works of Hakim Bey.

I find it somewhat funny that Richard Stallman stole the idea of himself from someone else.

(Also, who you're referring to as Hakim Bey, is in fact, Peter Lamborn Wilson, or as I've recently taken to calling him, Peter Lamborn Wilson plus anonymity.)

For those that don't get the last part, I'm pretty sure he's referencing Stallman's spiel about "GNU plus Linux"[1].

[1]http://ohinternet.com/Richard_Stallman

I highly recommend people who find 1984 and Brave New World interesting also read Jules Verne's lost novel "Paris in the 20th Century". It's dystopian in an entirely different way. It talks not about the extremes of state-based censorship from 1984 or of the indifference of the blissed-out citizens of Brave New World but the far more realistic likelihood of rampant self-censorship. Of culture which willingly bends itself to what amounts to the same thing as oppression.

From the plot summary on Wikipedia: "Michel discusses women with Quinsonnas, who sadly explains that there are no such things as women anymore; from mindless, repetitive factory work and careful attention to finance and science, most women have become cynical, ugly, neurotic career women."

Is the novel really that off-putting or is the character holding this view an anomaly? From what I can find in reviews, it sounds like the book predicts women will become better educated and career-oriented, and depicts them as acting and appearing masculine as a result. If so that reads to me as pretty shallow dystopia - a lack of understanding of human nature and a lack of imagination (as evidenced by simplistic views on gendered traits) do not compelling speculative fiction make

Doesn't make me have the intellectual hots for the work.

It was written in 1863, you can't expect the author to have the same view on women that we have today.

But that's my point: If you're trying to write about the future but are getting held back by the narrow views of your present, you may at best produce an entertaining curiosity, but not something of lasting use. The other works discussed here have prevailed because they contain still-valid insights on human behavior and do a pretty good job avoiding falling into period-conventional thinking.

That said, I actually think not being sexist in storytelling is pretty easy, it's about thinking about people instead of genders, and good writers have known that at all times and put characters first.

Basically, I'm not saying Verne's views (or perhaps that character's views -- I'd like to hear more from someone who's actually read it) can't be explained in context, I'm saying if that's representative of how the work tries to extrapolate into the future I'm not getting the vibe it's any good at it and actually still relevant today.

You should read the book. It might challenge your world view, which is entirely the point of reading in the first place.

It would probably be worthwhile to remember that Vernes was living in a time when the definition of "woman" is a very different thing than today. Of course, you don't have to excuse the sexism - merely understand it in the context of the book, with the purpose of gaining some insight into the points the author is trying to make.

Try not to be distracted by the sexism, is what I mean to say, while you are reading a book written over a hundred years ago..

Well said. I can't imagine a synopsis that would entice someone to read Huck Finn if they were similarly predisposed to disregarding works based on racial comparisons, but Huck Finn's 'dust jacket' description is a far cry from its sum.

That's why I initially asked if the example was representative of the book or not -- it's not like I didn't give room to the possibility that it's not. I've tried to explain why it raised a big red flag for me. It's not about sexism so much (I think I'm getting downvoted because people believe I'm trying to show off my PC-ness or something, or perhaps just because the subthread doesn't add much to the topic, admittedly) as thinking that if it's shallow about that part of human nature, it might not be doing a good job as speculative fiction in general. Wouldn't you agree that 1984 and BNW avoid similar pitfalls and that maybe it's no accident they don't?

It is not at all shallow, but rather quite representative of the thinking of the period in which it was written, and in that light should definitely be considered a valid endeavour.

But, are you not at the very least intrigued by the irony in your expression of political correctness? This is, after all, newthink.

You should read the book before forming an opinion of it, the parts you seem to be focusing on aren't an overpowering element of the book as a whole.

This is a great example of the modern form of liberal censorship. We won't learn from the political debates around the founding of the United States because the men involved "were slave owners". We won't read fiction written before 1960 because the writers were "sexist" (dear friend, I suggest you avoid the Iliad!).

Meanwhile, if the equalitarian dogma is false, we'll never know it. Because suggesting any challenge to the dogma will cost you your career.

Oh come on, that's hogwash. I asked a question about the book, I didn't urge anyone to stay away from it. For all I know, it's a view held by a character in the book, that doesn't mean it's a prevalent sentiment of the text in general, or of the author. I did however speculate on what it would mean if it were, and I still think that would make it likely to be less than useful as compelling, lasting speculative fiction. Even then that doesn't mean it can't still be an interesting historical artifact though (keeping the focus on this one element, e.g. on gender attitudes of its time, or in the history of its genre). Of course we should be reading historic works, examine their context, and the path from there to here.

But what if modern liberal ideology is wrong and human beings do exhibit sexual dimorphism? Will we ever stop firing researchers who hypothesize this long enough to find out?

You can't even bare to read an old book where someone might disagree with you. There are millions more like you, and together they wield a lot of power.

Actually I probably am going to read the book, because at this point I'm curious enough to find out what's really up in there, and because I have eclectic reading habits in general. Why would I avoid reading a book I think I might disagree with, after all? If that's how it turns out I'd still rather know an opposing viewpoint well.

Nor have you pegged my attitude towards genders correctly, by the way. I'm not closed to the idea of sexual dimorphism - but I think the significant variance between specimen of either gender possibly makes a strong argument for designing systems not to necessarily differentiate based on gender, so that they not ill-serve the individual.

I do think it's silly to say that being educated and career-oriented is in conflict with central "womanly qualities" or that such women automatically exhibit masculine traits, though. So I find that character's take on it pretty darn silly, aye.

But as far as being alarmist goes, I think you're blowing the horn a lot harder than I did.

But what if modern liberal ideology is wrong and human beings do exhibit sexual dimorphism? Will we ever stop firing researchers who hypothesize this long enough to find out?

I dunno. Will the so-called "researchers" ever stop coming up with hypotheses about gender that are so culturally specific and downright [WEIRD](http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/...) that a second-year anthropology student can refute them?

Before the PRISM leak, I hadn't realized that both Orwell and Huxley could very well turn out to be right.

They're both books about vast conspiracies that control the masses. Reality is worse than that, there is no conspiracy, just a bunch of well meaning people that think they are doing the right thing.

Of course, reality is also better than that. Many of the people that would ostensibly be equivalent to the party members in 1984 are the ones that are making noise about the dangers of what the government is doing. And the fascist hell hole aspects of Brave New World are certainly not our everyday (society more or less treats excessive use of things like alcohol and marijuana as serious problems. More so for individuals with higher levels of civic engagement...).

Neil Postman misses the point by a mile. BNW and 1984 were effectively written about different countries, it's just a curious accident that both are set in London. BNW is a first-world dystopia, 1984 is a second-world dystopia. (While Huxley was living in Hollywood, Orwell was fighting in the Spanish civil war for the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification.) Go visit the Checkpoint Charlie museum in East Berlin and then tell me 1984 is "less true". It fucking already happened there. Just like BNW is starting to happen in Western countries now.

People love this quote and the comic that goes with it, but its much deeper than most are willing to take it. For the intrepid I recommend: "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control"

I don't get the fascination with mapping 1984 onto current events when Brave New World always seems to fit so much better: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2010/07/amusi...

Sure, we're all talking about PRISM now but give it a month or two.

How about Fahrenheit 451 or We? Almost every dystopian novel shares something with the world.

Fahrenheit 451 is primarily about censorship of information, although government surveillance plays a small part.

Well, yes, censorship via disappearing history and feeding the masses a steady stream of meaningless entertainment to keep them complacent and detached from each other.

Fahrenheit 451 is primarily about self-censorship, born of a desire to avoid causing offense.

Or, if you believe Bradbury, it's about Television Is Evil and nothing else:

http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenh...

> Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.

[snip]

> Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

> “Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.

Because we live int this shiny Brave New World in sea of irrelevance and nobody knows/cares about We.

And because BNW is clearly plagiarism of We, that adds another quite ironic dimension.

I don't really see how BNW maps better. 1984 was about surveillance, oppression, and central control of narrative of life. BNW is about the choice to surrender to comfort - certainly applicable in this day and age, but not onto current events, I'd say.

The two themes are not incompatible. Brave New World is about the carrot, 1984 is about the stick. In 1984, the upper classes which controlled big brother would've been true believers who led comfortable lives and had better things to do than mind the surveillance. In BNW, those who refused the distractions and instead put their energy into undermining the system would've been discovered and remedied somehow.

Agreed. And building on that analogy, Animal Farm would be about the stick holders.

"My fellow mobile tethered sheep(See image-Wired <1>), ask not what your country can do for you, and don't even think about asking what the long term storage of your private metadata can do for security-cleared high-salary retires' revoving door into fear-mongering intel private enterprise, isn't it simply much more pleasant to just eat, keep oogling 'metamedia', and consume more? Ain't it great being a sheep"?

Munch, munch!

Please herewith be guided accordingly;

John F. Alexander

<1> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metada...

"Oogling", eh? I like that! A combination of ogling and googling.

I'm pretty sure it is because of two reasons:

1. More people have read 1984 than have read Brave New World.

2. Brave New World is so ridiculously accurate that most people are too afraid to think about what this means.

We fear 1984 while living (for the most part, the only real difference is that we don't have, or need, a direct controlling force) Brave New World.

Brave New World is a much more ambiguous dystopia. Many people could read it and say, "Hey, everyone's happy with their lot. They are conditioned to love their work and the entertainment's great. What's the problem?". That's a much more subtle kind of situation to grok.

I remember struggling with this idea, I think my conclusion was that in brave new world people are given happiness but deprived of choice, understanding and meaning.

    "We fear *1984* while living *Brave New World*".
    -- run4yourlives 
    %

went straight to my fortune cookie quote file.

It depends on the country. Sure most people in the West live in Brave New World, but in places like North Korea, those people are definitely living in 1984.

1984 has world wide surveillance and control through the media. Can you not see why people are using these reasons to bring up 1984?

From what I remember, Brave New World centers largely around the use of drugs to regulate the populace, so while it might fit the debate with current day mood stabilizers, it's nowhere near as much about surveillance and a police state. It's like the opposite, regulation through conditioned happiness rather than suffocating oppression, with a similar loss of liberty. So the surveillance part resonates with PRISM.

A similar mismatch with 1984's also smoothed also as well, in my opinion: I found one of the most oddly salient features of that society was the absent (the "free"d) proletariat - even as far outnumbering those of perceived relevance as they might be. As it is they're still swept into our rhetoric: a far more interesting equivalence needs just a bit more time for the status quo to establish itself.

>Brave New World centers largely around the use of drugs to regulate the populace

Drugs are NOT central theme in BNW it's just simply a metaphor. Super king burgers, reality TV, NFL, wrestling, facebook, MTV, in essence all pop culture is SOMA of nowadays

"Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"

Bill Hicks

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.”

― Bill Hicks

God I love Bill Hicks.

Ah, nothing like a PRISM article to bring out the nerds circle-jerking about how the stupid things they like are so much better and more important than the stupid things other people like.

Oh well, at least it's not RationalWiki /trollface.jpg.

Ah, but what is freedom if I can't watch American Gladiators because I want to?

Or, in my case, what if I want a grilled cheese sandwich with tater tots instead of filet mignon and caviar? I hated Sundays on the boat because that was always "Steak & Lobster" day, and I was the one asshole who didn't like steak and didn't like lobster.

I agree that people should probably take an interest in civics. I agree that people should have the information needed to care deeply about civics, if they wish. I don't agree that people should feel compelled to care civics or anything else that Bill Hicks or any other self-righteous prententious jerk tells us to care about, any more than we should be compelled to care about what the government tells us to care about.

If the freedom to do as we please leads to people actually doing as they please, and that offends you, then perhaps freedom isn't what you were looking for in the first place.

>Ah, but what is freedom if I can't watch American Gladiators because I want to?

Nobody would want to watch American Gladiators if they were not made to do so. Not directly told to, but somehow... maneuvered into it. Not quite the same as the grilled cheese sandwich!!!

Is that really what you tell yourself? "The people aren't really that stupid, they're being influenced to watch this filth?".

And what makes you think that the same hidden influence by others isn't why I like grilled cheese?

You put words in my mouth, I never said stupid. If you believe that you have to be stupid so you may be influenced by other people, you have a flawed view of human mind based on XVIII century philosophy. And it is not an opinion, it is a neurological fact.

And of course you (and me) like grilled cheese sandwiches because of influence, but it might be a different kind of influence. I remember the sandwiches from my childhood and they had nothing to do with the gross multi-pound monsters presented in (sorry) Man vs Food and other glutony glorifying TV shows.

No matter how high your IQ, if you think yourself immune to any sort of influence, you have proven yourself a mark. But if you recognize the possibility of influence and learn at least a bit of the compliance techniques, you make yourself at least partially resistant.

> I hated Sundays on the boat because that was always "Steak & Lobster" day, and I was the one asshole who didn't like steak and didn't like lobster.

You aren't an asshole; you're a vegetarian. I hear that's quite respectable these days. Myself, I'll have your steak and lobster - thanks!

I am 100% not a vegatarian. But I don't like steak, and the only seafood I like comes in pre-frozen sandwich-sized squares. Do enjoy the steak and lobster though, and let me know if you want to trade it for some pizza rolls!

Pizza rolls in exchange for steak and lobster? My good sir, I will give you a fine deal, and trade you twice the weight in pizza rolls for weight of steak and lobster!

This is the worst discussion on HN I have ever seen.

Well, Mr. 95 days of being here, you haven't been here very long, so let me be the first to tell you that your comment added nothing to this conversation.

I'd downvote you if I could... but I think that's why you replied.

I commented to tell you my observance about your conversation in hopes that you wouldn't post more similar ones. That is what my commented contributed towards.

Everyone here created an account at some point. This one was created by me about 95 days ago. I see you have observed that. Very nice I guess.

> I commented to tell you my observance about your conversation in hopes that you wouldn't post more similar ones.

observance Noun

* The action or practice of fulfilling or respecting the requirements of law, morality, or ritual.

* An act performed for religious or ceremonial reasons.

> That is what my commented contributed towards.

Well, actually, you failed in your observance of the guidelines[1] of this website.

* Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

I doubt you'd have said that to me in person. You can claim on here you would, of course.

* If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

Your account is less than a year old, which is a threshold of some merit here.

* Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

I assume this applies to comments as well as submissions.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Jesus wept!

But isn't that the whole point? That we're so easily distracted by objectively useless entertainment? I spent hours this week looking at pictures of cats and viewing videos of cats jumping. It was a poor use of my time.

I would argue with "objectively useless". We are not just labor for the entrepreneurs.

You think there are objectively useful uses for your time? I mean, ok, profitable sure, but objectively useful? That one's a religious argument.

Super king burgers, reality TV, NFL, wrestling, facebook, MTV, in essence all pop culture is SOMA of nowadays

soylent, youtube, hacker news, reddit, 4chan and other internet pop culture, some of which are actually made in SOMA nowadays.

Of course, just different variates of soma: one for omega, other for alpha. And other varieties of soma for all people in between, nothing new here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_Market,_San_Francisco

I would to a lot of soul searching if you even imagine that the alpha of this world is "HN, Reddit...".

Try Delta+ Gamma-. A well kept secret by Condé Nast is how young / low on the wage curve their readers are compared to others in the same professions.

Alpha ‎(“the upper class”)‎ ‎Beta ‎(“the second upper class”)‎ ‎Gamma ‎(“the middle class”)‎ ‎Delta ‎(“the second lower class”)‎ ‎Epsilon ‎(“the lower class”)‎ ‎Double-Plus ‎(“the superior subdivision among Alphas”)‎ ‎Plus ‎(“the superior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas, but inferior to Double-Plus”)‎ ‎Minus ‎(“the inferior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas”)‎ ‎savage ‎(“a person outside the integrated portions of society, and therefore separate from all classes”)‎

Since we're referencing Huxley, I'd recommend "Island". And for everyone jumping on this dystopian bandwagon, I'd recommend "Stand on Zanzibar" as far more accurate.

I guess Epsilon reads something like Yahoo! Answers or celebrity tweets? What do Alpha or Beta classes read?

AOPA magazine. Maybe The Economist at the lower end?

Funny how you said "day mood stabilizers", when marijuana would fit so much better. Except the roles are reversed - people want it, and the authorities are forbidding it.

I would have thought prozac was closer.

Been on Prozac?

I haven't, but I'm on another SSRI now, and I can't begin to see this as a drug useful for placating the masses. If anything, it's increased my motivation to fix things that are broken. It's replaced apathy with a wide range of sometimes intense emotions.

Some people call them happy pills, but my experience is they're something else entirely.

Actually I haven't. Alcohol is my drug of choice and now that I think about it, in terms of use is probably the closest thing we have to SOMA.

I live in a medical marijuana state, but I think alcohol is still more of a controlling factor. However, I think weed is replacing it in the younger generation. This is especially true for the "just out of college" population. In this group you have a lot of people with degrees, lots of debt, etc. who are working crappy jobs they hate that are often unrelated to their education and who are getting paid close to minimum wage. I know quite a few people like this who are big into weed, and the first thing they do when they get up in the morning is smoke a bowl. I can't fathom getting high at the start of my day. I'm pretty liberally minded when it comes to parting, but I used to wonder why anyone would want to dull their senses and numb their mind when they are doing their job and going about their day. Then I realized if I was massively in debt and/or stuck in a dead end job, I might turn into one of those people too...

Is there any reason we can't be living in both? They both lump everybody on the planet into one of two categories - rule through fear or rule through pleasure. Both are distractions that are equally effective, for different people. Some of us are living 1984 AND Brave New World, some just one or the other and some are living something else entirely.

I'm personally favoring things going more like a slow-motion version of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (the interesting half of which is what Orwell kinda ripped off writing 1984 - it's sort of a spiritual prequel).

To wit: launching a grand patriotic endeavor with much fanfare and overwhelming public support (exploiting a sense of national unity and purpose fostered by the recent war), having that endeavor set up a secret parallel justice system answerable to nobody, indefinite detentions...

oh, and the ensuing clashes between the wronged and the merely indifferent... the lowly everyday employees in the terrible scheme for world domination who wish they could get out of it, or do something about it, but fear for their lives and their futures...

(Postscript. Then there's a bunch of Christian allegory tacked on inelegantly, which, as Orwell pointed out, undermines the dystopian horror - c.f. http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ )

The reason That Hideous Strength is a better blueprint for what's happening than Brave New World or 1984 is that its focus is on the intersection of communication, government and human behavior, rather than on a dystopian future enabled by new technology. Instead of trying to paint a picture of the future it deftly holds a mirror up in front of us, one that reflects just as well in any era.

Another virtue of That Hideous Strength is that Lewis is good at blurring the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys". Instead of Thought Police, he shows Mark Studdock and Feverstone doing evil things out of ordinary motives that we all share.

To continue your metaphor, when it holds up a mirror, we can all see our own faces.

It makes us consider how little it might take to turn us into collaborators in such a future. That might be a useful thought for tech companies right now.

Orwell owes more to James Burnham's non-fiction book The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World. Orwell's pamphlet-within-a-book in 1984 "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" is more or less a condensed version of Burnham's thesis. Orwell even reviewed Burnham's book when it came out: http://www.george-orwell.org/James_Burnham_and_the_Manageria...

I think so far 1984 is a much better match. Not perfect, but so far better than BNW.

How about Player Piano? In my mind this book really speaks to the root cause of what's causing divides and imbalances in the modern world, in a way hackernewsians might relate to:

"The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. " -wikipedia

Perhaps because the world is not a hard dichotomy and people can see elements of both stories in current events..? Add on top of that the current popular story of persistent surveillance via the NSA, and it's not huge leap to get from NSA to Big Brother to 1984.

There are lots of similarities with 1984:

Eternal war against an ill-defined enemy

The perversion of everyday language in order to hide the truth

Rewriting history frequently so that what becomes important is allegiance to the party rather than the truth (first Obama opposed mass surveillance, now he's for it).

The impression of ubiquitous surveillance, and the use of technology to control the masses, even if its not clear just now much there actually is (NSLs etc)

Two minutes hate, where hatred is channelled at an arbitrary, abstract enemy (talk radio)

Indefinite and secret detention, and of course torture

Information strictly controlled and the truth at a premium (this one is more like Kafka I guess)

I admit there are elements of Brave New World that fit very well too (particularly those highlighted in that cartoon), but lots of other predictions of 1984 do chime quite nicely with the current situation in the US (even if the society depicted is absolutely nothing like the current US in many ways).

I strongly disagree with this. 1984 fits much better and is much less far-fetched. The society in 1984 is very similar to real-world society at the time; the only real differences are the ubiquity of government propaganda, rationing of resources, the state-sanctioned class system, and telescreens, and even all of these are already present in lesser ways and could conceivably be intensified to 1984 levels in five or ten years. I frequently experience things that are virtually identical to events in 1984 (e.g. government lies that society immediately accepts, people regurgitating pro-government phrases that are hammered into children's brains in public school, justifications for war and militarism, demonization of political dissidents, the newly-prominent surveillance, etc.).

The society in A Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction fantasy world that is a far cry from any society that has ever existed.

I think both books are good and offer important warnings to society, but 1984 is simply a much more grounded and realistic view of a conceivable totalitarian state in the near future.

>The society in A Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction fantasy world that is a far cry from any society that has ever existed.

Could you justify this further? I'm curious as to your reasons for writing off Brave New World. I just recently finished it (I've read 1984 a few times already too), and I found Brave New World to resemble life in America a lot more than 1984 did, at least based on my personal experiences and not what I hear on the news. However, before I go and write up a bunch of stuff, I am interested in hearing your view.

I agree. I read A Brave New World as a kid, but being relatively young (22) it wasn't that long ago (maybe 7 years ago?) and it was post 9/11. It blew my mind how closely the culture of the society in the book resembled society today (at least in the USA).

Another book that I read around the same time as A Brave New World was Fahrenheit 451. Of course, people always associate that book with censorship issues, but there were also similar themes to A Brave New World, in respect to society being distracted and not caring about important stuff etc. There were a lot of interesting predictions in the book too. Whenever I see someone walking around with headphones on blocking out the world, I am always reminded of Fahrenheit 451 (especially when it's me!).

EDIT: some predictions in Fahrenheit 451: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/06/ray-bradbury-dead...

To be clear, I'm not "writing off" either book. I don't think either author was attempting to make literal predictions about what society will or might look like, so I don't consider it at all a failure if things are different. I just can't understand how Brave New World could be seen as more accurate than 1984. For example, if you wanted to film a 1984 movie, there is very little you would have to do other than go to some place with urban decay, throw up some Big Brother posters (perhaps placing them over the existing billboards encouraging police/soldier worship or admonishing "if you see something, say something"), put telescreen props in plain apartments, and throw in some extras in the right clothing. The actual palpable differences are quite small, because they mostly exist inside the minds of the average citizen.

For Brave New World, you would need strict population control (mandatory sterility), mass manufactured test tube babies with hatcheries and conditioning centers, working class castes that are chemically stunted, near-mandatory government issued hallucinogens, far less chaste sexual mores, etc.

Like I said, it is a science fiction fantasy world with a multitude of plot-significant fictional technologies. Even the human birthing process is far more unrealistic than the entirety of 1984. The only science fiction I recall from 1984 were artificial foods, telescreens, voice recognition, and some military equipment, all of which are quite realistic today (and were mostly so in real-world 1984).

Brave New World is an allegory. Though the literal counterparts to the more extreme story elements are obviously absent in modern day society, their analogues are certainly not. Especially if you relax your focus a little as you take a look around.

it's probably because she is not completely inaccurate with her analysis. but that is also why the whole concept of peace in star trek was based on the fact that everyone was speaking one language, dressing one way etc. it took me over ten years after growing up with star trek to actually realize how poisonous those thoughts are.

I also counted the amount of cameras between green park station and victoria, just walking through the tube one day. I think the number was something around 30, but it's been a while.

They address different parts of society. I wouldn't say either is more or less likely as they could both end up being true or neither.

I have always thought that the most enlightening aspect of 1984 is its commentary on the ephemeral nature of rationality, and it disappoints me how often overlooked this theme throughout the novel is. There is an overwhelmingly mainstream misconception that our modern western use of rationality and empiricism is inherent to human thought- in reality, it isn't even universally applicable to our own "enlightened society".

One of the climaxes of the novel is when Winston finally believes that 2+2=5, and he does so because Big Brother says it is so. In general, we tend to believe that belief is something which must inherently rise out of empiricism; all of us reading this believe 2+2=4 because we have seen and understood the mathematical and logical reasoning behind this. However, the spectrum from daily emotional irrationality to politics to religion tells us that human beings do not base a large number of their beliefs in empirical reasoning, but in something unscientific entirely.

Thus, the most important part, in my opinion, of 1984 is not about authoritarian censorship or surveillance, but rather the creation of a delusional society. This is also, even in light of the recent scandals, far more applicable to our society today, when modern conservativism is both willing to be ignorant of scientific and social evidence, and willing to lie to the degree that they have believed their own lies.

I'm amazed that Quartz is still in business. Whilst on a desktop it's just horrible to use, on my Android it flat out doesn't work. The comment thing covers the whole screen and I can't see any content. How difficult is it to make a website that works on modern browsers? I wanted to read this, it looks interesting.

Can't speak to android but I love their site on my desktop and love the articles I have read there so far. So, I guess I might be the reason why they are still in business.

Somehow the site manages to break almost every method of scrolling in opera. I can't use the scroll wheel on the mouse, nor arrow keys, nor page down, nor spacebar. I have to scroll by grabbing the scroll bar.

Wow yeah, firefox here on a desktop - they moved the browser's scroll bar from the far right to the right of their content (the middle of a 1920px wide browser). I was clicking where the scroll bar would be to try to scroll - and what that did was for every click I made (on a blank background), when I clicked "back" to get back to HN after I read it, it cycled me through as many different stories as erroneous clicks I made before allowing me to back all the way to HN. (basically spamming 3 different stories I didn't want to read instead of "back" button functionality)

Terrible UX.

Edit: additional paranthetical

I love their content. So far, it browses fine for me in chrome and on iOS. I'd be fine with a simpler presentation, though.

It is certainly no OnSwipe, crasher of browsers.

1984 and other works of science fiction were always used to represent these psdeu-truths to me growing up. It would range from why socialism was bad, to why America was good, to why reading was important, etc. etc. But it's just a book, it's just a series of thoughts put into a really compelling story, but that doesn't mean it's true, probable, or even possible.

It's a reference to our collective consciousness and contains some potentially key insights, but whenever something REMINDS us of 1984 we're all still like "HOLY SHIT IT'S LIKE 1984 THAT MEANS BIG BROTHER IS TOTALLY GONNA HAPPEN!"

It doesn't mean that at all. This Snowden business is massively disturbing, but our ability to collectively disseminate and digest information about it is encouraging, something that wasn't remotely possible in 1984. People make jokes about their tweets being censored by PRISM, and they're funny because it's not happening.

Freedom of speech is so important.

Edit: not saying a 1984esque future is impossible, just that the book being written doesn't make it any more or less possible.

"Edit: not saying a 1984esque future is impossible, just that the book being written doesn't make it any more or less possible."

The book is hyperbolically over-referenced in pop culture, in internet arguments, in OpEd pages, and so forth. I'll grant you that. Chances are, PRISM is not the beginning of a steady march toward a fascist police state. Far from it.

But that's not the point of this article. The author isn't claiming "a 1984esque future" is in the cards. Rather, she's drawing comparisons between a particular aspect of Orwell's concept -- that of linguistic manipulation for political ends -- and the tactics being used in actual politics today. The playbooks are similar.

The fact is, we've sacrificed quite a few of our freedoms in recent decades in service of a vaguely defined "War on Terror," and it's highly disconcerting. It doesn't mean we're ready to put Big Brother in office, and drastic hyperbole to that effect is indeed silly. But it does testify to the power of language to bend a population toward an agenda.

Agreed. I agree with the thesis of the article whole-heartedly. I'm adding some context of my thoughts, not a counter-argument. That the meat of the book, not the "words and the ability to think will keep us free" message the underlies it is annoying to me, and it's been used that way my entire life.

Chances are, PRISM is not the beginning of a steady march toward a fascist police state.

But it is certainly a precondition. Just like "free speech zones" after the Iraq war and during the run up to the 2004 presidential election.

Let's not kid ourselves: we won't awaken in a fascist state. It will be like the frog boiled alive, the ratchet will be turned ever so slowly, but the march is definitely in the direction of fascism. How long will it take? Will it ever happen? We can't say now, but the last 12 years have had an alarming number of movements in the wrong direction.

We need only consider the difference in freedom between now and before 9/11. How many more attacks or Bushes before 1984? It's a finite Number, and on my opinion low.

That's funny...the part about language and how it can be used to limit thought was the most memorable part of 1984 to me today (well, besides the rats at the end)...but I hadn't interpreted to be written from the perspective of someone in a post-Big Brother world.

It was one of the most memorable parts for me, too, and I don't remember interpreting it that way.

I just pulled out my copy of 1984 to check the article's interpretation. Through most of the appendix, the tense is a bit ambiguous, but there's a line that seems to indicate Ingsoc didn't prevail in the book's world: "It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050."

Because it's not. The interpretations of Ms. Frost are wrong. The narrator talks to the reader reading it in 1949, using the language from 1949 but talking about the future as if he had a vision of it. That's it. He never claims that Oldspeak won or anything. He had a vision of future in some particular moment, 1984 and explains the plans of the ruling party regarding the Newspeak as of 1984.

I thought that before re-reading the appendix. But take a look at this line: "It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak...by about the year 2050."

Why not just "It was expected that Newspeak would finally supersede Oldspeak..."? The author seems to go out of his way with the tense he uses to convey the future interpretation.

One could argue against the article writer's conclusion, but after re-reading the appendix, I think there's some compelling evidence for it.

EDIT: At least for the bit about it being written from an Ingsoc-free future.

Couldn't it just be playing with the fact that text describing Newspeak is written in Oldspeak? Pointing to the paradox that the very book would be impossible in Newspeak? More like "we're lucky we're not them" than "and the wolf was shot and they lived happily ever after"? I posit Orwell wanted to keep the book gloomy enough. It was not to be a fairy tale but the warning.

Is there any explicit statement of Oldspeak actually winning in the alternative universe we're reading about? Or the reasons for winning as declared by Ms. Frost ("it's da language")?

Sure--the perspective of the appendix seems open to interpretation, which is great. The very fact he chose such a strange tense, though, leads me to believe he wanted you to at least wonder about such a thing.

I only looked to see whether there was a basis for the claim that it was written from a future in which Ingsoc didn't prevail. There's definitely a basis for that claim in the text. Whether there's a basis for her other claims, I'm not sure--I'd have to read again.

It sounds like you're misinterpreting the grammar of that sentence (namely the "would have" verb). It might not be "correct" usage according to prescriptive grammar books, but I immediately interpret as meaning that they are expecting a future event.

Are you basing that on a reading of the appendix, or just on the sentence I excerpted? It's not really clear from the sentence itself, but in the context of the paragraph, it makes a lot of sense.

Pay close attention to what's cast in the subjunctive throughout the appendix, and this reading, or at least the ambiguity, seems intended.

Another good example is "In 1984 [the year, not the book], when Oldspeak was still the normal means of communication, the danger theoretically existed that in using Newspeak words one might remember their original meanings. In practice it was not difficult for any person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished." The consistency seems more than accidental.

It has been many years since I read 1984 or its appendix, so I was basing what I said mostly on my recollection of it and the sentence you quoted. But having just now rescanned the appendix, I think it is written from the perspective of someone in the real world where George Orwell and the novel exist, not someone from the future in the fictional world of the novel. See for instance the sentence

> Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly-created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day.

I presume that "our own day" refers to real-world 1948 when the book was written. If my interpretation is correct, it explains the usage of the past tense, which is often how we refer to fictional worlds in books or movies, even if these fictional worlds are set in the future. We would say "Captain Picard lived many years after Captain Kirk," even though both characters are set centuries in the future.

That's how I originally read it, and I think that's a valid reading. I think Orwell probably wanted readers to get that appearance. But the use of the subjunctive "would have" suggests--though doesn't prove--something more.

Your example explains the past tense but not the subjunctive mood. For example, would one say "Captain Picard would have lived many years after Captain Kirk"? To use the construction "would have" in this way casts the event as something that could have happened, but didn't. Similarly, Orwell's constructions paint the events after the publishing of the "perfected" Eleventh Edition, some time after 1984, as events that were planned but that never took place. If it were just anticipation of a future event that wasn't yet in the fictional timeline, I would expect "would" or "may have".

It's ambiguous, but it seems to me like he went out of his way to leave both readings open.

> For example, would one say "Captain Picard would have lived many years after Captain Kirk"?

Not for that specific example, but one might certainly speculate "Picard would have retired to his ranch in Marin County after retiring from Starfleet" (I'm guessing the later years of Picard's life have been covered by the fiction, but let's pretend like the series just ended and we're speculating about what the Picard character's later years were like.)

All this having been said, I do think there is supposed to be some ambiguity, or at least some missing information, about what happened to Ingsoc.

I must admit, I always interpreted the appendix to be a note from Orwell to the reader, not a document from a later date within the novel's world.

I'm surprised at the claim that many readers skip the appendix. Is that really the case? I read 1984 in 7th grade, and the appendix was one of my favorite (or at least most memorable) parts. It's like the maps in some publications of medieval fantasy novels—I would be very surprised if a significant number of readers skipped it.

Fun fact. Bjarne Stroustrup indicates the appendix of "1984" as a source for an interpretation of the name C++. http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#name

Just came across it in the Fourth Edition of the C++ Programming Language book that was just released, in fact.

You're wrong, Snobby Quartz Writer Snob. That appendix is my favorite part of the book, and it's responsible to a large degree for my sensitivity to corporation's attempts to change language (Me: I like a cheese burger and a small fry. McD's counterguy: cheeseburger and regular fries. How irritating.)

But worse than the English-teacher-vogueing, is that the snobbery gets in the way of a really good point.

You actually wanted just one fry?

The title is total linkbait, but very well done. I'd be willing to bet that 90% of 1984 readers go on to read the appendix, so Quartz's title immediately draws in everybody who did.

Has anyone ever noticed Scientology tends to use a type of Newspeak?

A lot of acronyms and initialisms and other obscure, the article states the appendix of 1984 “The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” It will render dissent “literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

I wonder if old L Ron was a fan of 1984?

Do you have any examples of newspeak in their literature?

I had a cousin "fall prey" to the organization. I don't know what went on internally, but he was forced into, what I colloquially call a re-education camp (I'm not sure what they called it), for two weeks. They took his phone away and had him break all contact with the outside world, even with his girlfriend at the time. 2 Weeks later, he pops up and says he's moving to California to be a part of the church.

It was pretty creepy to be honest.

Point being, I find the mechanics of the church to be interesting.

See also: "Politics and the English Language", Orwell, 1946. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

When I was in high school my teacher made us read this portion of the novel. I appreciated it after and took away many of the same points you made here. At this time there was no issues with NSA to relate to though so thank you for this comparison.

"At this time there was no issues with NSA to relate to though so thank you for this comparison."

When were you in high school?

Heh, good question. The NSA, and it's predecessors (SIS, etc.) have been snooping since the days of the telegraph!

I just hope everyone learns their lesson, starts being careful about the digital trace they leave behind, and that years ahead the current Big Brother has been reduced to civil servants still miserably analyzing the bulk of data from the 2002-2013 era.

Finally! Someone other than myself recognizes there is an appendix to 1984, and that it (the appendix) is an instruction manual.

No, it's about what Orwell saw around him in the UK in the late 1940s, working in a government propaganda office.

I guess the HN admins have read that chapter very carefully. Anybody who dares to express an opinion against the elite here is immediately hell banned.

> “The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” It will render dissent “literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

If this worked, we would have neither the word 'antibiotic' nor the drugs we classify under that name, because we didn't have the word until after we invented the substances.

The Sapir-Worf Hypothesis is interesting but Newspeak takes it too far and turns it into self-parody; the fact languages can develop new words, and new meanings for old words, gives the lie to the whole idea of taking it that far.

This seems to me a rather pedantic objection to a moral structure for a theoretical language... it's worth noting that both "anti" and "bio" existed as parts of language before antibiotics. The word antibiotic has a general meaning because it is made from known parts, and was used as the best fit for something which was discovered.

Also worth noting is that scientific research is heavily controlled in the world of 1984 for the reason that it brings novelty, advancement, and change of thought patterns.

It's not pedantic if it goes to the very heart of the concept.

> Also worth noting is that scientific research is heavily controlled in the world of 1984 for the reason that it brings novelty, advancement, and change of thought patterns.

It was heavily controlled in the USSR, too, but that didn't prevent the Gulag Archipelago novels from being written, for example.

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