1984: Heavy is the Cost

1
1984 Heavy is the Cost

• Feraco
• SFHP/Myth/Sci-Fi
• 27 April 2009

2

• Lets look at what it means to live in Orwells
  universe
• Nothing comes for free
• The cost of loving
• The cost of believing
• The cost of living

3

• Well tie those costs to issues of power since
  that seems to be one of the books focal points
• How many of you would like to hold power at some
  point in your lifetimes?
• Which kinds of power will you pursue?

4

• External controls
• Boss ? Employees
• Parent ? Children
• Why is this type of power important?
• Protect those you care about
• Protect yourself (not everyones an angel)
• Perpetuate yourself/your legacy

5

• Internal controls
• Be your own boss
• Intelligence/Emotion ? Control the direction of
  your thoughts, independently reach conclusions
  and make choices, and feel secure with your
  own/collective identity
• Physical ? Freedom to choose independent action,
  establish roles, and provide for immediate
  security

6

• Two Questions
• Why arent the internal controls supposed to be
  attractive if applied externally? (i.e. Why
  shouldnt we seek to manipulate others emotions
  if we seek to control our own?)
• How do you frame/express what you want? Do you
  express yourself in terms of what you dont want
  vs. what you do?
• These discrepancies highlight the two ways people
  can sustain power through either negative or
  positive consequences and the vast differences
  between the approaches in terms of relationships
  and sustainability

7
Character Relationships Type 1

• Negative Consequence
• Established in terms of what you dont want to
  happen
• This can be framed positively (Protect) or
  negatively (Avoid)
• Grants influence and power to elements out of an
  individuals control in order to provide
  motivation
• Relationships based on fear, mutual harm, and
  deficiency

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Character Relationships Type 2

• Positive Consequence
• Established in terms of what you want to happen
• This is difficult to frame negatively
• Grants influence and power to elements that
  remain in an individuals control in order to
  provide motivation
• Relationships based on loyalty, respect, and
  consistency

9

• Heres a fascinating quirk you establish truly
  positive relationships when you have the luxury
  of survival
• If you arent assured of survival, virtually
  everything youre doing is a buttress against a
  fate youre trying to avoid (i.e., death)
• Its the difference between tossing a cupcake to
  a starving man, who eats it without hesitation
  without thought because he instinctively avoids
  oblivion, and tossing one to someone whos
  well-fed and therefore can make an intelligent
  decision regarding the cupcake
• In this sense, the things our characters convince
  themselves they need tend to influence negative,
  powerless approaches to existence rather than
  positive, proactive ones they stunt their own
  growth

10

• Youll find that both are important over the
  course of your lifetime and that some of your
  relationships are harder to classify
• Lets say negative-consequence relationships
  belong more to the province of macro
  relationships bonds between nations, between
  companies, between people who compete for
  leadership positions, and so on while
  positive-consequence relationships will tend to
  be the friendships you pursue consciously
• The key, then, is to prevent your friendships
  from becoming negative ones I hang out with
  Person X because its easy vs. I hang out with
  Person X because I dont want to face the
  consequences of not being with them

11

• Winston, interestingly, seems to have hybrid
  relationships!
• You can say that hes loyal to Julia because he
  loves her, but he never states it
• You can say that he wants Julia to happen
  because he desires her physically
• But its also easy to see how Winston treats
  Julia like the starving man treats the cupcake
• She gives him a reason to live, implying that
  without her, hed go back to the slightly
  suicidal pattern of behavior hed established
  earlier in the book
• Does Winston keep spending time with Julia
  because he loves her, or because he cant bear
  the thought of being alone again after hes had a
  taste of the good life as its defined in
  Orwells universe i.e., life as an actual human
  being?

12

• The fact that we even consider this question is a
  testament to how badly the Party warps human
  beings
• The Party operates based on a series of negative
  consequences obsessively repurposed as positives
  to the point that history must be changed to
  justify the lies the Party tells
• (Well wonder about whether Orwell argues that
  positive-consequence or negative-consequence
  relationships last longer at the end of this
  section)

13

• Orwell then goes on to make a comparison between
  approaches to maintaining power since that
  seems to be the Partys endgame, regardless of
  whether its a fundamentally positive or negative
  one from different periods of human history
• Party vs. Inquisition vs. Totalitarians

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• Inquisition
• Created martyrs
• Thou shalt not
• Actions No
• Thoughts No
• Building a Better World

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• Totalitarians
• Avoided creating martyrs (except when doing so
  served a greater purpose)
• Thou shalt
• Actions Yes
• Thoughts No
• Building a Better World

16

• Party
• Avoids creating martyrs (except when doing so
  serves a greater purpose)
• Thou art
• Actions Yes
• Thoughts Yes
• Pulling Heaven Down

17

• The Partys behavior suggests a extremely cynical
  view of humanity that while we profess to be
  positive and outwardly-focused beings, at our
  core were willing to surrender everything just
  to stay safeor even just to survive
• Moreover, we cant bring ourselves to recognize
  this independently because we prefer to think of
  ourselves differently
• Therefore, the Party frames things in language
  that expresses itself in terms of what we want to
  want positive things while reducing us to our
  basest desire (self-perpetuation, even in the
  negative abstract) and sparing nothing else

18

• Its interesting that the desire for
  self-perpetuation so powerfully independent
  is nurtured and used to sustain the Party rather
  than eliminated
• But this points back to a realization Winston
  reaches about the Partys attitude towards the
  things it cant kill
• It cant kill human sexuality so it makes it
  toxic
• It cant kill the desire for family life and
  family structure so it subverts its original
  purpose and turns it against itself
• In this same fashion, it cant kill the human
  desire to survive so what does it do?
• It reshapes it

19

• OBrien describes relationships between people
  and bodies (think the Brotherhood or the Party)
  in terms of cells and organs
• This gets down to the foundation of
  individualism, for a cell doesnt desire
  existence over the organ and that attitude has
  to be conditioned into a human being
• If it can convince you that the Party is more
  important than the individual that life is
  impermanent and the Party is immortal then it
  wins

20

• What the Party ends up doing is removing the
  conscious desire for survival by shoving it into
  the unconscious/subconscious/instinctive part of
  the brain
• This means that, in essence, the Party can never
  kill it because its now out of reach
• Simultaneously, the Party replaces the conscious
  desire for self-perpetuation in people like
  Parsons with the conscious desire for the Partys
  self-perpetuation

21

• You convince yourself a) that sacrifice is noble,
  b) that youre making a sacrifice voluntarily for
  the good of the whole, and that c) this therefore
  confers individual nobility upon yourself
• In actuality, the Party has made you into a being
  whose every action somehow perpetuates the organ
  while starving the cell repurposing the
  survival instinct to fuel itself rather than its
  population

22

• Its not a flattering picture of humanity, and
  many people resist the idea that theyd react in
  the same way
• One wonders if these things Orwell writes about
  are really at the core of who we are if the
  Partys behavior is accurate or if human beings
  are fundamentally better, or at least more
  complicated

23

• For this, we have to look at what threatens the
  Party
• Compassion seems to be a threat to them, as
  indicated by Winstons experiences in the
  Ministry of Love and while love and sex are
  obvious threats for the reasons Julia describes,
  compassion is somewhat trickier

24

• Why kill compassion if it helps perpetuate the
  workforce?
• Perhaps the Partys attitude reflects a belief
  that compassion is fundamentally ingrained in
  human beings, just as the aforementioned desires
  for love and sex are but while the other two
  can be repurposed to serve the party instead of
  killed

25

• In this sense, the Party reverts to
  Inquisition-level tactics Thou shalt not
  which indicates that this truly is one of its
  weak spots
• Its the secret to why the proles need to be kept
  as stupid drones because they feel, and the
  Party lacks the power to kill feeling on that
  large a scale
• It can only use ignorance as a stop-gap measure
• As long as the proles are willing to be stupid
  it is easier in the short term the Party is safe

26

• Ironically, the thing that would inspire the
  proles to rise up is if they felt aggrieved is
  if they realized what was being done to all of
  them, and reacted
• As a result, the Partys minimal interventions in
  the lives of the proles serve a dual purpose
• They remove dangerous individuals in a precise
  and surgical way, which allows the Party to avoid
  over-extending itself (relative to its resources)
• They dont seem to be a big part of the proles
  lives, and therefore avoid the anger that the
  commoners re-direct at each other

27

• Ultimately, arguments about human beings as
  fundamentally bad run into the gray areas of
  instincts that run the gamut from base to noble
• Caring is a reflex. Someone slips, your arm goes
  out. A car is in the ditch, you join the others
  and push...You live, you help. Ram Dass
• Even in the Ministry of Love when humans are
  reduced to the lowest of the low it takes a
  long time to break compassion prisoners even
  instinctively seek it in their captors
• So perhaps were better than the Party gives us
  credit for which is why it has to try to ruin
  us in order to stay in power

28

• Since the Party cant fully ruin human beings, it
  seems content to force them into a fundamentally
  awful choice obliterate yourself as yourself,
  or survive as something unlike you
• Intelligence and Emotion
• Survival vs. Oblivion
• Parsons
• Winston
• Is it worthwhile for Winston to keep breathing
  once hes sustaining a body instead of a soul?

29

• Lets look at some necessary conditions for
  survival
• Ability to think
• Ability to feel
• Sustenance
• Air
• What else?
• Watch as the Party strips these away, one by one
• Were not left with survival (meaningful
  existence), but survival (self-perpetuation of
  cells and organs)

30

• Ultimately, were confronted with our three
  concerns from the beginning the costs of
  living, believing, and loving
• We see that theyre deeply interrelated, and that
  each of them comes back to issues of internal
  power vs. external controls (i.e., how much
  control youre willing to surrender in order to
  get what you want)

31

• The cost of loving here may be survival or
  control
• Are the benefits worth the sacrifice?
• The cost of believing here is control and
  philosophy
• Are these the components of the human soul?
• The cost of living here is control and belief
• Are the benefits worth the sacrifice?

32

• Its hard to tell how Orwell wants us to think
• Thats probably best, for its time we looked at
  other conditions for survival
• Certainty?
• Truth?
• Is it more important for things to be true, or
  for us to believe they are?

33

• Pyrrho was an ancient philosopher, one of the
  forefathers of modern skepticism
• He avoided stating that anything was inherently
  true, consistently advocating contrary positions
  as an intellectual exercise
• He saw both sides more realistically,
  multiple sides of everything
• In other words, he avoided the concept of truth
  entirely except, perhaps, to state that the
  only truth in the universe is that nothing is
  black-and-white true

34

• Is he crazy? How can a person lead such a
  skeptical existence without exhausting himself?
• Theres a certain certainty in a system
  predicated on chaos
• After all, is Pyrrho far from the truth by
  proclaiming there is none or has he found the
  only thing we can count on?

35

• Orwell isnt necessarily following the Pyrrhonic
  tradition any more than I do
• At the end of a day spent urging you to consider
  all sides before making an ultimate judgment
  itself a violation of Pyrrhonic thought I
  usually pick a position I like best, although I
  often try to make sure I understand the opposing
  position(s) thoroughly
• Orwells writing follows the same pattern

36

• Perhaps theres another condition necessary for
  survival
• Memory
• A great fear the loss of memory ? the loss of
  self
• Does the past exist?
• Can we have anything without the power to think,
  learn, remember, and grow?
• Is the freedom to think, then, the highest of all
  human freedoms?

37

• You must surrender those freedoms in order to
  survive in Oceania
• Its a truly evil bargain, and theres not an
  easy choice
• Either waythe cost is heavy