Posted by Sitting on the remote, harsh, freezing Scottish island of Jura back in the immediate post-WWII austerity, dying of tuberculosis, one wonders how Orwell could have written so wonderfully, in such an effortlessly readable style, let alone have been able to project so perfectly the world we would inhabit today nearly eighty years on.
And yet here we are, just as he wrote it, with the world essentially split between three super powers which are all unconquerable, with ceaseless war as the continuing way to destroy individual wealth, and to silence and control populations. Add to this a society of total surveillance, relentless propaganda and mind control, with most people now unquestioningly mindless and content to simply exist. Top this off with control of each region by a handful of people who have an excessively privileged lifestyle, and you have Orwell’s world of 1984.
The question Orwell raised was: What is it like to exist in a world where no aspect of one’s life is truly private? Where surveillance can penetrate even inside one’s mind. Where escape is simply not possible: There is no escape.
This is the essence of the world George Orwell was writing about, and looms before us now.
At the start of the book, the main character, Winston Smith, whose life we follow through the book, commented: “asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or outdoors, in the bath or in the bed – no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull”.
But by the end of the book, Winston Smith had realised that not even that was his own.
He knew the diary that he was writing would not survive its (inevitable) discovery, and that resistance of any sort to “Big Brother”, the all-seeing eye, the all-hearing ear, of the State, would not just see the annihilation of the diary, but himself too. And his insignificant life and existence would be vaporised from all records. In effect, he would never have been born at all.
There would be no map, word or thought left to warn or guide others who came after him and had similar thoughts about resistance, freedom, and free will: “not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper could physically survive”.
But it wasn’t just annihilation of anyone, or any thought, that did not follow Big Brother’s narrative, it was that the past was annihilated too.
Smith’s job in the “Ministry of Truth” was to amend records from the past so that all records aligned at all times with the Party’s current narrative. That narrative constantly changed too, so the records, the “truth”, was constantly changing. Once the records had been altered, the lie passed into history and became truth.
The Party’s motto was: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”.
Memory becomes irrelevant. Eventually one’s own memory is questioned – was that memory we had faulty? Our memory of ‘the truth’ could no longer be verified. The lie had become the truth.
But did truth really matter? Smith’s girlfriend Julia remarks “who cares?” when Smith questions the lies and changing narratives of the Party. In a fake world, taking “truth” seriously makes no sense. All that is left is moments of happiness, which later are purged from the mind by the Thought Police anyway. They were briefly happy together. But happiness cannot last long in that world. By the end, Smith understands the reason the Party will never be defeated: mind control is complete. There is only loyalty to Big Brother.
This becomes clear after he is arrested by the Thought Police. After weeks of torture he betrays his only love, Julia. How did Big Brother achieve this after weeks of resistance to pain and torture? The answer is by unleashing “Room 101” on him: the room where the threat of his worst fear is revealed. He will do anything, say anything, to stop such a fear being realised [in his case, rats]. That fear is known to the Thought Police through years of surveillance gathering on every person. At that moment, Big Brother, the Party, breaks his resistance; it has finally broken him.
The Party (the Controllers) had four Ministries. The Ministry of Truth, which amended records and history; the Ministry of Love, which punished and vaporised any resistance or transgression of Party requirements (mostly unknown and unwritten); the Ministry of Plenty, which oversaw labour, supply and production (where there was never enough of anything); and the Ministry of Peace, which oversaw continuous war.
But none of this mattered, because no one knew any different. What was there to compare this life to? Nothing. All records of the past had been altered.
But for those few souls who retained some individuality, the “outsiders” who refused to become merged into the herd, (the mass of mindless people), there was always a feeling deep inside them that the way things were was not the natural order of things. But feelings were not advisable. Any indication of individuality or even eccentricity would be noted by the Thought Police, or reported to them by some evesdropper or sneak, and would lead to certain elimination.
Smith is provided with a copy of “the book”, the secret text which explains how control over the masses is achieved. This is given to him by his nemesis, “O’Brien”, the human face of evil, who he unwisely trusts. O’Brien subsequently expunges all individuality and memory from him in the Ministry of Love and Room 101.
The “book” states that the first requirement of control is to put in place, and then retain, a hierarchical (pyramidal) society. This is only possible with poverty and ignorance. Comfort and knowledge will cause the undermining of the structure and running of society, and the Controllers cannot allow this. So how is poverty and ignorance achieved?
The key, as always, is war.
As ”the book” says: “The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous war”.
It goes on: “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in 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. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. In principle, the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population”.
The consequence, and consciousness, of “being at war”, (and therefore in danger), “makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival”. And the desire for survival is an in-built feature of the human being.
This neatly sums up today’s world.
Once one is able to put in place a regime where all citizens are under constant surveillance, one reaches the position where complete obedience to the will of the State is possible, and through continuous propaganda with no alternative source of information, complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects is possible.
Abolition of private property, being replaced by a system where the Party owns everything, controls everything and distributed all products as it sees fit is the ideal arrangement. Again, today this is close to the realisation of what Orwell had propounded.
Any gifted individual who has the possibility of breeding discontent is systematically eliminated. Added to this is elaborate mental training, undergone in childhood, making a person unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatsoever. Anyone stepping out of line at all is reported to the Thought Police and eliminated. Control is complete.
The pyramidal structure set out by Orwell had the mass of mindless workers at the bottom, the small “Outer Party” group as the management of the system, and the (even smaller) “Inner Party” which is the brains. At the very top are a handful of individuals who are the actual Controllers. They are inaccessible.
This control system is basically in place in society today.
Is there any point in living? Around three hundred pages into the novel, as one moves towards the end, the point is revealed. For humanity, the mass of people living day to day, there is no real point. They are captured in an insane desire for power of a small group of Controllers. For the Controllers, humanity is simply a game they are playing. A game of power and control.
The concept of control in 1984 had graduated from the rather simplistic methods of torture utilised in The Inquisition during the Middle Ages, or the Stalinist purges. Control now meant absolute control of thought, not just the body. In Stalinist Russia, or the Catholic Inquisition, the oppressed died unrepentant, still carrying their beliefs.
The “Party” in 1984 took destruction of their enemies further: O’Brien says “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us. So long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him”.
He continues:”It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. We make the brain perfect before we blow it out with a bullet”.
Then finally O’Brien answers the question about the point of existence. He says:
It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
And then the absolute truth. O’Brien says:
“How does one exert his power over another, Winston”?
Winston says: “By making him suffer”.
O’Brien says: “Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them back together again in new shapes of your own choosing”.
And in case anyone is in doubt about the motive for existence of the Controllers, O’Brien sums it all up with the famous expression that is quoted regularly:
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 – for ever”.
This is the true meaning of life in this world, the true purpose of living in a human body: We live for the enjoyment of someone else.
We live in a state of suffering, with small moments of relief when we come up for breath. This is why the search for the exit door from this world for our essence must go on.
The Controllers can control our body, our mind, our thoughts even, but can they control our soul and spirit? The move to a world of transhumanism is the Controllers attempt to achieve this – the total control over mind, body and spirit.
This is where the fight really lies.
9 July 2025
Piers Morris Blogspot 