1984 #9

War is Peace

- 3 powers in Europe:

            1) Eurasia (northern part of Europe and Asiatic land: Portugal to Bering Strait)

            2) Oceania (the Americas, Atlantic islands, Australia, southern Africa)

            3) Eastasia (China and countries south of it, Japanese islands, Manchuria,                           Mongolia, Tibet)

- permanently at war, past 25 years (p. 185)

- heinous war acts (rape, slaughter, etc.) are seen as “normal”

- war = indecisive, no power will ever win

- natural defenses (p. 186):

            1) Eurasia (vast land)

            2) Oceania (width of Atlantic and Pacific Oceans)

            3) Eastasia (fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants)

- motive for war = possession of thickly populated area (p. 187)

·         valuable minerals

·         vegetable products (rubber)

·         cheap labor

- “primary aim of modern warfare... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living” (p. 188).

- continue industry without increasing wealth

·         “goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed” (p. 190)

- essential act of war = destruction of the products of human labor (materials that would make the masses too comfortable)

- important to keep the favored groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, to promote scarcity and ensure a distinction between groups (inner party vs. outer party, outer party vs. proles) (p. 191)

- war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest in the Inner Party

- 2 problems the Party is trying to solve

            1) how to find out what someone else is thinking

            2) how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without warning

- all 3 powers contain atomic bombs (p. 194)

- conditions of life in all 3 superstates are the same (p. 196)

            1) Oceania (Ingsoc)

            2) Eurasia (Neo-Bolshevism)

            3) Eastasia (Death-worship/Obliteration of the Self)

- “the war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is... to keep the structure of society intact” (p. 199).

- inner meaning of WAR IS PEACE = a peace that is truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war (p. 199)

Ignorance is Strength

-3 kinds of people: High, Middle, Low

-purpose of Ingsoc, Neo-Bolshevism, death-worship = arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment

·         the High to maintain their power

- totalitarianism foreshadowed the political theory of Ingsoc

- invention of print, film, and radio made manipulation of public opinion easy (p. 205)

- invention of television ended privacy

- as long as the lowest class has no means of comparison, they don’t know that they’re oppressed and therefore don’t revolt (p. 207)

- no one has ever seen Big Brother

- Oceania has no capital, no law

- the masses may have differences of opinion, but the Party members cannot

- Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought- first stage in discipline taught to children (p. 212)

- doublethink = the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them (p. 214)

- re-writing of past

- “world conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it to be impossible” (p. 216).

- Ministries are deliberate exercises of doublethink

- “Sanity is not statistical” (p. 218)