|
Background
- Utopia and dystopia
- Totalitarian government
- use of force, torture, surveillance, control over media, propaganda
- Why the need for such control? (according to whom?)
- Extreme poverty, inequality
- War (we think …)—a fearful society is a compliant society
- Society make-up
- Globally: Oceania, Eastasia, Eurasia (and the non-aligned states)
- Domestically: Social classes: The Ingsoc party (inner--the ruling class; outer--civil servants; proles)
- Reality—who’s in control of it?
- Influence of the novel (Apple ad; V; Brazil, music videos, etc.)
Some important concepts:
- Doublespeak
- 'war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength'
- ' the'memory hole' (actually an incinerator)
- 'Victory mansions' (really slums), 'Victory cigarettes' and gin
- Ronald Reagan and 'peacekeeper (nuclear) missiles'
- Bush/Cheney White House's 'Clear Skies' program (undercut 1970 'Clean Air Act')
- Obama and the 'Troubled Asset Relief Program' ('toxic assets' become 'legacy securities')
- Spying vs terrorist surveillance; weapons of mass destruction vs smart bombs; How about the 'Active Denial System?'
- Big Brother
- Information control
- 'who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past'
- techniques: Censorship, alteration of history, propaganda
- Perpetual war ('the long war', 'war on terror')
- demons/villains (Goldstein; al Qaida, Zarqaawi, bin Laden . . . . Islam??)
- profiteers (who benefits?)
- fear
Sociological concepts
- Dismantling of social institutions (family, marriage, parent/child bonds, etc.--anything that creates potentially divided loyalties with the state)
- Random punishment (do people know when they're being watched, or do they have to assume they're always being watched?)
- Construction of reality—based on what? How do we know what’s real in 1984?
- How do we know what’s real in 2008??
- Newspeak—eliminating words from the language? Or concepts? What's the point?
- Max Weber and legitimate authority —force is expensive, coercion is expensive—why are people so poor? Inequality? The expense of total social control?
- Dehumanization, desensitization—to violence, sex, emotion, etc.
- Torture, ‘re-education’ (classical conditioning) O’Brien was ‘tormentor, protector, inquisitor and friend’
- Torture of Afghan detainees in Guantanamo Bay—US government 'rendered' them to other countries if ' needed', in other words, 'outsources' torture)
- Social control--Does it have to be at the end of a gun barrel? What if similar outcomes could be sold as 'freedom of choice,' or 'American Dream,' and provide impressive returns for the investor class? Will everyone be well off then?
in the NY Times (2004):
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
reportedly said by Karl Rove, President Bush's aide, in an interview with Ron Suskind.
|