So I read 1984. Julia and Eddy got me a copy while I was in BG and I read it this weekend, so I thought now I’d write a bit about it and, you know, what it meant to me!

First off, it’s better than Brave New World. If you don’t agree you’re a total delta-minus. And really liked some of the points it made. In fact, they resonate with many of the issues I’ve been looking at at uni. Such as:

a) Isolation. Totalitarian societies restrict public debate in order to impose narrow ideologies and minimise dissent. Paradoxically, then, societies founded on collective unity and anti-individualism tend to place strict limits on public life and interaction between their members. The only space of freedom, as Winston Smith finds out, is in your head. This resonates especially with the political theory of Hannah Arendt, a Jewish thinker who fled from persecution under the Nazi regime and wrote several books on totalitarianism and modern society.

b) The necessity of perpetual war and territorial expansion. A lot of thought has gone into how societies build wealth, but relatively little into how they spend it. Still, for every amount of value accumulated, there must, on the whole, be an equal amount spent. Hence societies have poured their wealth into festivals, monuments and religious sacrifices - all of which have no practical, material value. The dissipation of wealth is thus an end in itself. This has been pointed out by thinkers like Georges Bataille; thinkers who have also argued that, under totalitarianism and conditions of extreme nationalism, the only logical place for excess wealth to be directed is into the destruction of other nations and the expansion of territory. This imperialism is not caused by a conditional desire for more wealth and land that may at some point be satisfied, but rather by an unconditional desire to elevate the state into a quasi-religious entity with infinite power. All surplus wealth must go into the state, and the state must prove itself by destroying everything outside itself. Such is totalitarianism.

c) The absence of law. The danger with totalitarianism is not just that laws might restrict individual freedom too much, but that laws might cease to exist entirely and be replaced by the arbitrary exercise of violence and persecution. At least if the law is in effect, there are concepts of justice and equality at play, whereas, in the 1984 world, the government simply does what suits it best at any given moment. Giorgio Agamben writes about this in his book on the ’state of exception,’ arguing that there is a tendency for modern governments to create zones in which the law does not apply so they can work in secrecy and with impunity. The prison at Guantanamo Bay is one example, but so is the increase in executive power being used by the US government to monitor communications and gather information. In both cases, executive power is freed from the checks and balances normally provided by the legal system, effectively creating a space in which the law no longer applies.

d) The danger of love. On this point Orwell pretty smart. Love is a troublesome thing, politically speaking, and there are three main reasons why. First, love means you don’t care what’s going on outside your bedroom. As Hannah Arendt points out, this isn’t the most politically active state of mind, but it has an upside as well - as we can see in 1984, it is a way of becoming disinvested from the totalitarian political system. If people are free to love one another, the state can never completely take hold of their lives. Second, love is wasteful. If every bit of surplus energy, time, wealth and value is meant to be channeled into the state, it won’t do to have people sitting around looking into each others’ eyes or doing stupid romantic things for each other. In other words, you can’t be obsessed with two things at once. Georges Bataille realised this, and seems to suggest that sex is a much better way to waste your time than conquering people and being nasty. Third, love creates alleigances that can’t be controlled. It crosses boundaries and divides loyalties, destroying rules, conventions and institutions as it goes. The French philosopher Michel Foucault knew about this, and wrote about it in essays like ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’ and ‘The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will.’

So, in short, 1984 was a very smart book. My only complaint is that the torture scenes were too long and there was a lot of redundant information. Oh, and the bit with the crushed flowers was corny.