Yeah I mean my take was always that 1984 is this really depressing book because it's all about questions and not answers, Orwell didn't think he had the answers Winston Smith doesn't actually have any tools to resist totalitarianism, no one in the story does
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
I mean that's just it, if you take the book as some kind of manual of resistance, it tells you resistance is impossible Goldstein's book is a trap, Minitru created it, it's just another pathway to loving Big Brother
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
I think on some level Orwell believed something like what Winston says with the 2+2=4 thing but in the context of the novel it *doesn't work* It's a big part of the point that it doesn't work
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
You can say high-minded shit like that all you want, all the Party has to do is have a guy break your leg with a bat Argumentum ad baculum The debate with O'Brien is a joke, there is no "debate", he's in fucking jail The whole book is O'Brien sadistically playing with his food
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
I feel like this theme gets lost frequently The Party *does* know all the "objective truths" Winston thinks were lost The original of the photo Winston doctored still exists, O'Brien has a copy he uses just to taunt him
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
That's what Winston thinks about, in the depths of his despair He can't own O'Brien with facts and logic, O'Brien has the better facts and logic "His mind contained Winston's mind"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
Winston got the arrow of causation wrong, the Party doesn't control truth to maintain their power, they maintain power to control truth They don't need to lie to people to get them to do what they want, they get people to do what they want by hitting them with bats
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
The purpose of the lying is just the exercise of power, it's the end and not the means, get everybody to say something we all know none of us believe just for the hell of it, to prove we can
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
I'm not saying there isn't deep, searing emotional truth to this idea There clearly is It's why we coined a whole term, gaslighting, for it I am saying though that this is more of a painting of a nightmare than a "blueprint of authoritarian rule"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @eggynack and
(Much like Chesterton's nightmare vision of the true anarchists who stand behind real life anarchism and seek to tear everything down for the sake of doing so This is a nightmare of totalitarianism for totalitarianism's sake, when real totalitarians do, in fact, have reasons)
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Like if you actually do believe that knowing truths the authorities want suppressed is harmful to their power and spreading those truths around could eventually lead to their downfall, then you explicitly live in a more optimistic world than 1984
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