1984 revisited

[soubriquet 0]

Theres's a nice essay here:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zi.html

Too long to post, but here's a taste.

 

In the endless corridor on the 145th floor of Truth Tower, Winston Smith compulsively smoothed the tatty blue bib overalls that marked his status as a member of the Outer Party. It was a rare event when he was called out of his cubicle on the 39th floor and sent upstairs to meet his boss O'Brien. Usually it meant trouble. Sometimes it meant a revealing insight into the true nature of AngloSocialism. Occasionally it meant both.

 

Truth Tower stood on the radioactive rubble of Rockefeller Center, but O'Brien's office could have been anywhere in Oceania. Smith had been in dozens of similar ones from Yarmouth to Omaha to Perth. They all had the faded official portrait of Big Brother, the standard-issue UV-yellowed personal computer, the compulsory 2-way telescreen showing the Big Brother Channel (this one had a prominent ON/OFF switch that indicated O'Brien's membership in the Inner Party), and the usual wrinkled propaganda poster.

 

This particular poster proclaimed the Three Principles of AngloSocialism in huge red capitals:

 

WAR IS PEACE

 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

...

"First, 'WAR IS PEACE'. Back in the days of mass conscript armies and thousand-plane air raids, wars and constant preparation for more wars could absorb the economic surplus which would otherwise go to making the proles into literate, middle-class citizens who would demand political rights. Now that wars are fought with smart weapons operated by small forces of highly-trained specialists, they can no longer perform this vital social function."

 

"Accordingly, we have started a whole range of new Ministries whose function is to waste capital, labor, and brainpower on non-productive activities in the same lavish fashion that the military once did. Of course MiniSpace is the very epitome of waste. Who else can build a huge complex craft that costs as much as an airliner or a Floating Fortress, and dump the whole thing into the ocean or shoot it into the depths of space - without any economic return whatever?"

 

"Second, 'FREEDOM IS SLAVERY'. Space exploration is so big that it is inherently a collectivist enterprise. Every space project requires thousands of people working toward a common goal in a strictly regimented fashion."

 

"The Thought Police are constantly monitoring subversive conversations like: 'If the Party can send men to Mars, why can't it solve Problem X?' When these gripes reach a certain level, we 'declare war' on Problem X and set up a huge bureaucracy to fight that war."

 

"These crash programs are always modeled after MiniSpace, and everyone accepts this as perfectly natural, since we have presented space exploration as a string of brilliant successes. The Party is gradually collectivizing and regimenting every human activity, using MiniSpace as our model and justification. If you want a vision of the future, imagine the whole human race sitting in neat rows in a giant Mission Control room."

 

"Third, 'IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH'. A strong space program makes all Oceanians feel that they live in the only true global hyperpower, far superior to mere wannabes like Eurasia and Eastasia. An unbroken record of triumphs in space demonstrates to everyone that AngloSocialism is the best of all possible political systems, far better than Neo-Bolshevism or 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics'."

 

"Of course, our opposite numbers in Brussels and Peking have space programs of their own, but we at MiniTru make sure that no anglophone ever reads or hears anything about them. MiniSpace gives us a vast reservoir of public confidence in the infallibility of the Party - false confidence to be sure, but that is every bit as socially useful as the real thing."