Book 1984 George Orwell

“There was truth, and there was untruth. And if you clung to the truth, even against the whole world, you were not mad.” 1984 by George Orwell is one of the most impactful books ever written. It has been widely used and misused in political discourse by all kinds of ideologues. Into that discourse, it entered terms like Big Brother, thoughtcrime, Doublethink, Newspeak, Thought Police, and Orwellian, strangely enough, as a synonym for the very thing that the author, Orwell, was against. It’s been translated into over 65 languages, has sold over 30 million copies, and has been banned in many countries, especially authoritarian regimes. It was banned under Stalin, and as recently as 2022 in Belarus. In this video, I’ll give a quick summary with spoilers and a few takeaways. World of 1984

I’d like to try to make it somewhat interesting to people who both have and have not read the book. Let’s see how it goes. The world in the book 1984 is a dystopian future society, a nation, maybe you can say superstate named Oceania. It’s fully controlled by a totalitarian political party called Ingsoc. It’s led by Big Brother who, as we might discuss, may or may not be a real person. He might just be a symbol used by the party. The party wants only to increase its power, also something we might talk about. It uses technology, telescreens, for mass surveillance. It’s creating a new language called Newspeak, which removes words from English that could lead to rebellion.

It uses Doublethink to control thought by, perhaps you could say, forcing you to hold contradictory beliefs and accept them as true. If not, the Thought Police arrest you for committing a thoughtcrime. Examples of Doublethink are “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.” And finally, the party constantly rewrites history. As the quote goes, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” There are four ministries. The Ministry of Truth is responsible for propaganda and, like I said, rewriting history. The Ministry of Love is responsible for brainwashing people through torture. The Ministry of Plenty is responsible for rationing food, supplies, and goods.

And the Ministry of Peace, of course, is responsible for maintaining a constant state of war. Society is divided into three levels: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. The term stands for, I guess, proletariats; it’s the working class. The Inner Party’s tiny. The Outer Party’s a little bit bigger, and the majority of the people—I forget what the percentage is, maybe 80%—are the Proles, the working class. There are several key characters. Winston, the main character, is a low-ranking member of Ingsoc. He works at the Ministry of Truth where he rewrites history. Julia is a girl who Winston falls in love with, and she with him.

They have sex, and this is maybe a good place to mention that love and passionate sex are forbidden in this society. “Goodsex” I think is a term under Newspeak; it’s the kind of sex that leads to procreation, which is the only kind allowed and the only kind that’s “good.” O’Brien is another central character. He’s the member of the Inner Party that convinces Winston he’s part of the Brotherhood, which is a lie, and he eventually is the man who tortures Winston and breaks his mind, breaks his heart. Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein are these symbolic characters that we never actually get to meet. They may or may not exist.

Big Brother is the head of the party Ingsoc, and Emmanuel Goldstein is the leader of the so-called Brotherhood, which is this mysterious group that lurks in the shadows and works to overthrow the party. Again, they may or may not exist. We’ll maybe talk about the importance of that in a totalitarian state. So, a few key takeaways. I’ll try to do my best—I have disparate notes that I took for myself—to integrate them together to make some cohesive thoughts. Part of the reason I wanted to do this is that while I have read 1984 many times, and many of the books on the reading list I’ve read many times, I haven’t often really concretized my thoughts about them.

I just take the journey and let the thoughts wander around in the background as I live my life. I wanted to put them on paper and maybe share them with others to see what they think my concrete takeaways are from the book, if I could try to convert them into words. So the first one for me, especially later in life as I’ve been reading this book, is that when everything else or most things that make you human are taken away by a totalitarian state, the last thing that’s left, which is the most difficult to take away, is love. Love for other human beings, love for life itself. That’s the little flame from which hope springs. The key revolutionary act is the act of love.

So when the ability to speak is taken away, when the ability to think rational thoughts is taken away, the last thing that’s left, and the thing that ultimately gives hope, is love. That’s a big takeaway for me. The note that Julia gives to Winston reading “I love you” is the kind of revolutionary act that leads to a society beyond the one they exist in. I think a lot of the book has an interesting hypocrisy to it, where the main character, Winston, is almost in an animalistic way obsessed with destroying the state in rebellion and revolution. But I think love is the thing that allows you to believe in a place beyond the state, in believing that you can build something better, versus just destroying the thing you’re in.

I think you have to be careful as a revolutionary not to obsess 100% with destruction. Because beyond destruction, there could be chaos that leads to something much worse. I think love is the basic human thing that connects all of us, the messy thing that connects all of us, that allows you to build a better society after the totalitarian one is overthrown. What else did I want to say? There’s an interesting tension there between love and lust. I think there’s a quote that pure love or pure lust was impossible or forbidden. “Pure” here meaning unadulterated, uncensored intensity of feeling, maybe intimacy.

And there was an interesting question raised by the book, both by Winston and Julia: what is ultimately the most powerful act of rebellion? Is it between us humans when everything is forbidden? Is it animalistic like sex? Just lust for another human? Or is it love? The kind of love you have for a romantic partner, but even love for family and love for friends. I don’t know. I think the book almost claims that it is sex, but I think what the book also shows is that if sex is your manifestation of rebellion, that ultimately leads to something that doesn’t last. That ultimately leads to a focus on destruction versus building beyond the horizon when the state falls. So, some quotes from Winston on this.

“The more men you’ve had sex with…” Julia admitted to having sex with quite a lot of people. He says, “The more men you’ve had sex with, the more I love you. I hate purity. I hate virtue. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bone.” This kind of rubbed me the wrong way because, again, this seems to be obsessed with the hatred towards the state versus a longing and a hope—which I think hope is really important here—a hope for a better future beyond the state. Again, another quote from the book: “Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.” So there, again, I think sex is seen as a political act of rebellion. I think that’s not the deeply human thing here.

The deeply human thing is, again, the act of love. It’s a source of hope; it’s the catalyst for building a better future beyond the revolution. An interesting side note here—and there could be a million interesting side notes, and I’m desperately trying not to go on a million tangents, to hold myself together and stay focused—is on family. There’s all kinds of love, and I think family love is a really powerful bond that connects us, and that’s one of the things that totalitarian states really go after.

And I should mention, I’m loosely using the terms authoritarian and totalitarian here. To me, authoritarian means there’s a government with complete centralized control of political affairs. A totalitarian state is beyond that; it is complete control of not just politics but also social, economic, everything. Nazi Germany is an example of that, I think, where there’s just complete control of every single thing, from the war effort to social interactions, the rules that govern social interaction, the press, all that kind of stuff.

So I think this book is more about, at least in my definition of the term, totalitarianism. Anyway, as I was saying about family, I think the way they destroy family is, one, of course with your romantic partner by forbidding passion—passionate sex, but really just passion and longing for another human being in that romantic way. And they also really reward and encourage children at a young age; they indoctrinate them to turn their parents in for thoughtcrime, whether real or not, which of course is a silly notion because there’s no nature of truth. You can just accuse anyone of anything and they’re guilty just by existing. So that’s a way to attack the family.

And I should also have mentioned on the topic of love that I think the goal of the Party, the final destination as described by O’Brien through the process of torture, is to break your mind, heart, and soul completely so that the only love you can have—and it could be felt as a pure love—is for Big Brother. This is the kind of thing you see in North Korea, where the only love you’re allowed to have, the remaining inklings of feeling that might still exist in you, you can channel only not towards family, romantic partners, or friends, but towards this leader, this godlike messianic figure. In this case, one who may or may not exist.

In all cases, that figure, while there is a human associated with it, is really much bigger than the human, and that’s the only love you’re allowed to have. So the other takeaway I have is on the topic of hate. I think all humans have the capacity, almost an animalistic craving, for hate of the “other,” the enemy. Whether it’s individuals like Emmanuel Goldstein or nations like Eurasia and East Asia—which are the two other superstates described in this book—they’re constantly at war with each other. Again, the fascinating thing about the way this book is written is you don’t know if Eurasia or East Asia even exist. You really don’t know what is true beyond the local interactions of the main character.

And that, I think, is the point. When you don’t really know, there’s no steady footing on which to construct a worldview from which you can have hope for a better future. This animalistic craving for hate, especially when we’re in crowds, is most powerfully illustrated in the “Two Minutes of Hate” practiced by that society. The quote is, “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes of Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” That’s the point: you get the crowd together, and you get them to hate Goldstein or Eurasia or East Asia. You get them to hate anything. And that feeling, that drug, that mass hypnosis, can be directed by the state in any direction.

And because you have complete control of history, you can direct it on a day-by-day basis towards any target. As long as the hate is catalyzed through these kinds of rituals, it can overpower the individualistic feeling of love we have for each other. So that hate is a more animalistic desire. I don’t know what to make of it. And of course, it’s also important to say that this book was intended originally by Orwell as a satire, although a satire that has quite a lot of torture at the end and doesn’t seem to have much humor. But I think if you read it as a satire, that’s the best way to understand its relevance in our society today.

Because a lot of things, like the Two Minutes of Hate, are almost a caricature of what hate looks like in a mass gathering. But if you take it as a caricature, it can reveal some of the elements that already exist in human nature that we should be very cautious about. It reveals the very thing that, if not monitored by ourselves, can result in a slippery slope that leads to tribalism, the destruction of other groups, and then control of the collective intelligence of our species through a totalitarian state. I think there’s elements of this under illustration in social media today, though I don’t want to overstate it.

I think just like comparing things to Hitler, comparing things to 1984 is a reach in most cases. But social media does reveal this kind of mass hysteria, this capacity of humans to be outraged based on tribalism. So we have to understand it. We have to resist giving into it on the individual level. And I do believe we have the responsibility to create technology that helps us resist it, that incentivizes us not to be cruel to each other just because the people in whatever tribe we define ourselves in are being cruel to a particular person or group. Another takeaway I have is about power. Ingsoc, the totalitarian state, wants only one thing, and that is power. Power is both the means and the end. Absolute power.

As O’Brien describes in the torture part of the book: “The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but power over men. Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” This, of course, is another aspect of human nature: the will to power and the tendency of that power to corrupt.

O’Brien says also, “The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.” Through the torture and breaking of the individual, the individual doesn’t matter. What matters is the organism. There’s been a lot of brilliant comments throughout social media and on Reddit—I just want to highlight something about this because I had the exact same feeling as I was rereading it. There’s a comment from a Reddit user whose name is BraveSky6764.

He said the conversation between Lex and Michael Levin, who is a brilliant biologist and engineer, came to mind when O’Brien made an analogy to an organism which survives even as the individual cells pass away, and the great purges are analogous to the cutting of a fingernail. If you see society as an organism—which I think is the way a totalitarian state sees it—then the destruction of a large percentage of that society, the murder, the torture, and all kinds of atrocities and genocide become “justifiable” as long as the organism flourishes. That’s how you get to the ideas Stalin had: it’s okay to break a few eggs to make an omelet. This devaluation of a human being as having fundamental importance in a society…

is a slippery slope into atrocities. It’s not just deeply unethical from our understanding of morals and ethics; it is also very unproductive. It destroys the human spirit, and the human spirit is essential for building a great society of constant progress. I think that’s also one of the other messages of the book, is about utopia—that totalitarianism results when you chase perfection, when you present this idea of utopia. There is no utopia; there is no perfect society. I think, at least for me, that’s the takeaway. I think the optimal state of being for an individual and for a state is constant change and constant turnover.

In the case of a state, it’s a constant turnover of leaders and ideas, always hopefully making progress towards a better world. But it’s always going to be messy. Perfection only exists in an oppressive state. Perfection only exists when you remove the basic humanity of the individuals that make up that state, when you destroy the human spirit or suppress all freedoms. Freedom is going to be messy and chaotic, but that freedom, ultimately, in the long arc of history, is going to create progress.

So yes, as the Redditor BraveSky6764 says, that does give you a perspective of a biological system made of living organisms. Each one of us is made up of living organisms, and we take for granted all the “atrocities” happening there; we don’t seem to give a damn. I think that’s a good metaphor. If you want to put yourself in the mind of the Inner Party, of Big Brother, or the people in power, I think most, if not all of them, see themselves as doing good for society. They are able to justify things the way we justify the death of different cells in our body.

You don’t even think of them as worthy of consideration. You don’t think of them as living beings having the same value as you. That’s one of the really powerful ideas at the founding of the United States: that all men are created equal, that there’s an equal worth to a human being no matter who they are. That idea, as flawed as its implementations have been, is a really powerful and non-trivial idea, and it resists the drug of totalitarianism and power. I do believe that on the topic of power and politics, 1984 has been misused by political ideologues.

I’ve seen it, for example, when conservatives in the United States have used 1984 to call left-wing policies “Orwellian.” I think that’s an overstatement, of course used for dramatic effect, but it should at least be said that Orwell was a democratic socialist. 1984 is not a criticism of socialism; it’s a criticism of totalitarianism. I think the point is a warning that all political ideologies can succumb to the allure of power and be corrupted by it. People on both the left and the right in the United States can be corrupted by power. This one-way criticism of policies as Orwellian is a convenient shorthand, but the reality is all politicians are capable of…

creating an Orwellian world. And I think one of the things that is highlighted in the book very well is the hypocrisy of Winston. When O’Brien asks Winston what he’s willing to do to overthrow the Party, Winston admits he is willing to commit atrocities. He’s willing to do evil unto children, to commit murder, anything. This is a powerful illustration that both the totalitarian state and a blind, immoral rebellion against it can be evil. This is where I return to love as the thing that carries hope for a world beyond this battle for freedom. You have to have that.