1984 - George Orwell

[HuckfromScandal]

Quote from 1984

“Every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.....history has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.”

Would quite like a thread of quotes that sum up life in 2020 based on George Orwell’s 1984.

Please add the ones that resonate with you.

@KayakingOnDown

Thanks for this thread. I think about 1984 very often and how prophetic it was and so much of it has come true.

The Telescreen - spying on Winston at home. (Amazon Alexa, Google/ mobile phones listening to our conversations)

Hidden cameras everywhere - (CCTV and human facial recognition technology).

Re-writing history - literally Winston's job. (photoshopping, deleting Tweets, re-naming companies, editing out stuff)

The dismissive and superior attitude to the 'proles' (aka traditional working class)

Denouncing people. Being forced to say what you don't believe. Expressing your own thoughts in a diary being a rebellious act in case someone finds it.

Even Joe Wicks and the millions watching him made me think of Winston's morning workout in front of the Telescreen.

I agree with this. The absolute contempt for the working class, particularly among Oxbridge 'journalists' post Brexit has been something to behold.

@KayakingOnDown

Alexa, Google and Twitter etc are not state-run, but they are the technology that Orwell imagined, that didn't exist when he wrote and now do.

Facebook is already developing a programme that reads minds. Artificial intelligence is being developed and improved all the time.

They are the technology that could be taken over by the state and seamlessly create the world of 1984.

Already these companies are practising censorship.

They're not state-owned here but they (or their equivalents) are in China, which is much closer to 1984 than we are in the west.

Yes, people are now happy to pay to be spied on! And lots of people don't think there's anything wrong with that

As an aside, in the Guardian book section today, Robert Webb says 1984 was a book that changed his life: "It made me notice the importance of language and of noticing attempts to control it."

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/19/robert-webb-ive-given-graham-swifts-waterland-to-at-least-two-girlfriends-and-david-mitchell

@KayakingOnDown

Alexa, Google and Twitter etc are not state-run, but they are the technology that Orwell imagined, that didn't exist when he wrote and now do.

Facebook is already developing a programme that reads minds. Artificial intelligence is being developed and improved all the time.

They are the technology that could be taken over by the state and seamlessly create the world of 1984.

Already these companies are practising censorship.

They're not state-owned here but they (or their equivalents) are in China, which is much closer to 1984 than we are in the west.

I'm not suggesting this is a better situation, but it's a different one in ways that may be important.

The state is not telling us we want these devices. The state is not canceling people. The state is not orchestrating pile-ons on Twitter. The state is not creating or enforcing Newspeak.

Who is doing these things - other citizens generally, sometimes alone, sometimes through lobby groups or NGOs, sometimes through corporate activity.

The clap for the NHS felt alarmingly similar to the two minute hate, especially when things like "good turnout on Maple Drive" would then appear on Facebook, with the underlying message of woe betide anybody who did not take part. Also the way that people tear strips off their neighbours on Mumsnet .

The Lego Movie is very like 1984: the constant surveillance, the supposedly benevolent dictator (Lord Business/the Man Upstairs), everybody made to conform by being glued in place.

Lego Movie: All I'm asking for is total perfection!
1984: You are a stain in the pattern that must be wiped out.

Every day now is like 1984. The doublethink, the Newspeak, the Two Minutes Hate, the Ministry of Truth. 2+2=5 reminds me of TWAW.

Sorry if it’s already been mentioned as I only read page 1 so far but this is my favourite quote and what I try to cling onto in the madness where I feel
I am just yelling into the void

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

I studied 1984 and Brave New World for my O level in, yes, 1984. As examples of futuristic dystopia. Depressing to see so many aspects of both books coming to pass.

Denouncing people. Being forced to say what you don't believe. Expressing your own thoughts in a diary being a rebellious act in case someone finds it

This is really interesting because denunciations, particularly in the current climate, are presented as evidence of moral righteousness. I think the reduction of language, adjectives, in Newspeak to a word and its opposite expressed by a prefix, is reflected today in the idea that there are no shades of meaning or opinion. There is no nuance in the increasingly totalitarian mindset of the 'progressives.'

In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?

One possibly controversial question that really interests me is that we do have quite a few surveillance systems that we value very highly: CCTV, criminal records, DBS checks. Certainly, for upstanding members of society, the systems exist for a very good reason, and almost all of us would be up in arms if they were abolished; if anything, many people say these systems are not powerful enough, and the clever criminals can play the system for a long time before they are caught. If you think of crime gangs, it's often very difficult to catch the leader, because if he knows what he's doing, he never does the dirty work himself; sometimes even the police know who the local drug baron is, but they can't do anything about it. A truly Orwellian system of reading minds would solve this problem, and we would not even need DBS checks; stick the crook in jail, job done. It's interesting that we value our own civil liberties enough for criminals to be able to do this, along with "innocent until proven guilty".

In a way, the system oppresses the non-criminals more than the criminals who believe they won't be caught: you hear people say "I would make an angry protest, but I need a clear DBS check", or "I would apply for the job, but I'm worried about that bit of shoplifting I did as a teenager". For some people, not having a clear DBS check is more of a deterrent than a fine or prison sentence: DBS checks keep the people who need them in their place, just like the Party members in 1984 are kept in their place, unlike the "proles". At the moment, it's not compulsory for anyone to have a DBS check: if you have something to hide, you need not apply for jobs that need them. But if you think about it, the system could easily be tweaked slightly so that DBS checks are compulsory for everybody just to leave their homes; the technology is there.

George Orwell novels truly terrified me when I read them as a teenager and I've often said recently how much of them is coming true now. Scary stuff. Thanks for this thread - making me want to read the books again now although not sure if I'll find it too depressing.

The state is not canceling people. The state is not orchestrating pile-ons on Twitter. The state is not creating or enforcing Newspeak.

Parliamentary representatives have used abusive terms to refer to people who disagree with them. Mhairi Black is an obvious example, but there have been others involved in Twitter pile-ons.

Maria MacLachlan was compelled by a judge in a court of law to use female pronouns when referring to her male attacker.

Public sector employees have said they fear that they might lose their jobs if they speak out.

The state is very much involved in this.

@OldCrone

The state is not canceling people. The state is not orchestrating pile-ons on Twitter. The state is not creating or enforcing Newspeak.

Parliamentary representatives have used abusive terms to refer to people who disagree with them. Mhairi Black is an obvious example, but there have been others involved in Twitter pile-ons.

Maria MacLachlan was compelled by a judge in a court of law to use female pronouns when referring to her male attacker.

Public sector employees have said they fear that they might lose their jobs if they speak out.

The state is very much involved in this.

Yes, but to a large degree the state being used by these other actors to accomplish their goals, pushing it in one way or another. Pushing through laws and regulations, giving training, calling the police to make complaints.

It's a significant difference to 1984 which is much more like what we saw with state socialism. What we seem to have is the flip side of that, kind of a democratic/capitalist market-driven version of the same thing.

The question of where power resides is important and in our situation I don't know that it is the state that is the driving force.

Some people think Brave New World is a closer fit to what we see- there is a good Neil Postman quote about this:

"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 our fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us."

I think that both visions were valid, in the sense that their stories depicted opposite sides of the same coin.

Scary @Goosefoot

Uh, a coin doesn’t have two opposite sides...but you know what I mean...

There are certainly many truths in each vision. I see our current jostles for power as the death throes of a decrepit civilisation, which brings to mind another quote which is on the tip of my tongue but I’ve lost it.

In short, Orwell feared that our fear will ruin us

People are frightened. For good reason. Wrongthink gets people sacked, denounced, cancelled. For saying things that were uncontroversial five minutes ago. Look at Maya Forstater. There is a concerted attempt to promote a one dimensional, 'progressive' political view. Tech companies are at the vanguard of this. Do a search for 'women killed in 2020'. What do you notice about the results? Do a search for 'straight couples.' What do you notice about the results? The latter example is from Douglas Murray's section on The Impact of tech in the Madness of Crowds. People assume search engines are neutral. They are not. Orwell, writing in 1948, got so much right about how technology can be used to control and manipulate. He was right.

Fucking hell, I've just searched for Women killed in 2020 & it's all transgender women! How the fuck does that happen? This is shocking & without Mumsnet I wouldn't even know it was a thing!

What do we do to counteract this? How?

@InvisibleWomenMustBeRead

What do we do to counteract this? How?

By understanding that it is happening. By understanding that tech is not neutral.

@InvisibleWomenMustBeRead

What do we do to counteract this? How?

It's really quite shocking, isn't it?

Just as I was going to leave MN, as it was getting so bonkers, along comes a brilliant thread like this. Thanks everybody.
I've stopped using Google since reading 'Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jared Lanier.
I now use DuckDuckGo as my search engine, which doesn't show the same TG-slanted result as Google. It works as well as Google, and doesn't sell my data, so I'd recommend it.

The state is not orchestrating pile-ons on Twitter. The state is not creating or enforcing Newspeak

What do you think 'enemies of the people' was all about?

All these thought terminating clichés:

'Let's get Brexit done'
'Stay home, save lives'
'Trans women are women'
'Strong and stable'

There will be another along shortly to deal with exit from transition.

They are everywhere in politics. Both from the state and from the incumbent party and opposition parties.

The idea the state isn't doing it, is a bit naive. Especially when instruments of the state are being used to run a party political campaign (when they aren't allowed to, but are ignoring the rules and doing it anyway).

Thursday clapping

'The horrible thing about theTwo Minutes Hatewas not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.'

I would not do the clap.

After studying propaganda it always felt uncomfortable. And that's with family and close friends working in the NHS saying they disliked it.