Law of the Highest
It's been over 10 years since I last finished reading George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Books taste different on your palette depending on the age you are. What follows is actually the thoughts I had after finishing the book several lifetimes ago. If I read the book now, I'm sure my takeaways would be starkly different. So, you're about to hear from 20-year-old me. If you haven't read 1984, I suggest you stop reading; my point here is not worth the spoiler.
One of the themes of the book is that as governments consolidate power, there is a tendency to abuse it. To paraphrase science fiction writer David Brin, in a spin on the old maxim: absolute power does not corrupt, but it attracts the corruptible. This aspect of the book is fairly well known; the term "Big Brother" is synonymous with a police state maintained with constant surveillance and thought control.
Less well known, in my experience as a non-literary analyst, are the details behind the novel's ending. The protagonist, Winston Smith, tries to stand up to the totalitarian government. In the latter part of the book, he is imprisoned and tortured in an attempt to brainwash him into compliance.
Ultimately, Winston's spirit is broken, and he succumbs to the authority of the state. They do this, in the end, by threatening him with the thing he fears most. (His biggest fear is rats.) In a panic, he tries to escape it by insisting they inflict the object of his fear on the woman he loves.
What modern civilization has instilled in us so deeply, there is something instinctual that goes deeper still. Call it a primal reaction. All of these are based on the one factor in human nature driving the course of evolution: survival. These fears control us; in their defense, these fears are doing it for our own good, and to some extent, we can control them. But every person has a breaking point.
If this is true, then anyone can be corrupted, and so anyone can, under the right circumstances, abandon their humanity. We can be stripped of our civilized selves. Totalitarian Big Brother may subvert me for his own ends. I might object on moral grounds, but if he can demonstrate to me that I would do the same right back to Big Brother if our roles were reversed, then no one individual can truly claim to be on moral high ground over any other. If I can be corrupted into being a Big Brother myself, then why would I cling to my own ideals?
On the surface, the book appears to decry the existence of governments; referring to a government as "Big Brother" is never favorable. And yet if our animal nature truly lurks just beneath the surface, cloaked only by a civilization that shields us from the threat of death from one another, then submission to some kind of overarching authority is necessary to protect us from ourselves.
For me, this is the dangling question: what is the benefit of a civilization controlled by a government using the laws of nature to subjugate people, over no civilization and no government with a population that operates according to these same laws of nature?
One of the themes of the book is that as governments consolidate power, there is a tendency to abuse it. To paraphrase science fiction writer David Brin, in a spin on the old maxim: absolute power does not corrupt, but it attracts the corruptible. This aspect of the book is fairly well known; the term "Big Brother" is synonymous with a police state maintained with constant surveillance and thought control.
Less well known, in my experience as a non-literary analyst, are the details behind the novel's ending. The protagonist, Winston Smith, tries to stand up to the totalitarian government. In the latter part of the book, he is imprisoned and tortured in an attempt to brainwash him into compliance.
Ultimately, Winston's spirit is broken, and he succumbs to the authority of the state. They do this, in the end, by threatening him with the thing he fears most. (His biggest fear is rats.) In a panic, he tries to escape it by insisting they inflict the object of his fear on the woman he loves.
What modern civilization has instilled in us so deeply, there is something instinctual that goes deeper still. Call it a primal reaction. All of these are based on the one factor in human nature driving the course of evolution: survival. These fears control us; in their defense, these fears are doing it for our own good, and to some extent, we can control them. But every person has a breaking point.
If this is true, then anyone can be corrupted, and so anyone can, under the right circumstances, abandon their humanity. We can be stripped of our civilized selves. Totalitarian Big Brother may subvert me for his own ends. I might object on moral grounds, but if he can demonstrate to me that I would do the same right back to Big Brother if our roles were reversed, then no one individual can truly claim to be on moral high ground over any other. If I can be corrupted into being a Big Brother myself, then why would I cling to my own ideals?
On the surface, the book appears to decry the existence of governments; referring to a government as "Big Brother" is never favorable. And yet if our animal nature truly lurks just beneath the surface, cloaked only by a civilization that shields us from the threat of death from one another, then submission to some kind of overarching authority is necessary to protect us from ourselves.
For me, this is the dangling question: what is the benefit of a civilization controlled by a government using the laws of nature to subjugate people, over no civilization and no government with a population that operates according to these same laws of nature?