This essay is the third in a series designed to dissect
the totalitarian mentality portrayed in George Orwell's
1984 and to draw parallels to trends in modern
academia and the sociopolitical arena of today. The
following is an index of previous portions of this
commentary:
1. Collectivism
2. Antiprogressivism
3. Relativism - You are here. Read on to
continue your analysis of this topic.
The
tribalist mentality and horrifying consequences of Party
dictatorship having been revealed, there remains a
fundamental matter to address, the means by which
the Party conveys its stranglehold to the masses, i.e.
the dogma employed to institute voluntary
compliance with its self-destructive tyranny. As O'Brien
concedes, this is the primary focus of the Party agenda.
"We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you
have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt
act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely
destroy; we change them. Do you understand what I mean
by that?" (p. 209) It is apparent that even in such a
regard totalitarian collectivism is opposed
diametrically to a capitalist/progressive meritocracy,
which rewards and punishes individuals based on the
desirability or lack thereof within their actions and
actions only. Because, judge the denizens of lands
subject to a meritocratic stricture, the items of one's
mind remaining within it pose no harm to their
particular interests, nor to the interests of the
species in the one world which all inhabit which are
genuinely the composite of all the discrete interests in
existence. The thoughts manifested are displayed in
actions, which possess impacts and can therefore be
objectively evaluated. And this recognition of an
objective external reality is expressed best by a diary
entry belonging to Mr. Winston Smith. "The Party told
you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was
their final, most essential command. His heart sank as
he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him,
the ease with which any Party intellectual would
overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he
would not be able to understand, much less answer. And
yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was
right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to
be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The
solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are
hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the
Earth's center. With the feeling that he was setting
forth an important axiom, he wrote: 'Freedom is the
freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
granted, all else follows.'" (p.69) The Party, quite
contrary to a functional meritocracy, concerns itself
with the deliberate inhibition of individual liberties,
therefore a stifling of any recognition of objective
reality. For if men of erudition and free thought, men
similar to Mr. Smith, had attained the enlightenment of
recognizing that the welfare of the species, according
to objective logic, is undermined by collective tyranny,
the Party would not long have endured in its ironfisted
domination of Oceania. Mass outrage, even from men of
the basest instincts (who would possess still the tools
to realize that mankind's survival had come under
siege), would have removed them from their cherished
power in a grand reformation. "The masses never revolt
of their own accord, and they never revolt merely
because they are oppressed. Indeed, as long as they are
not permitted to have standards of comparison they never
even become aware that they are oppressed. The recurrent
economic crises of past times were totally unnecessary
and are not now permitted to happen, but other and
equally large dislocations can and do happen without
having political results, because there is no way in
which discontent can become articulate." (p. 171) The
converse of our conclusion, then, holds as well. Unless
an objective and functional framework of reality
interpretation and ideal economic and social structure (i.
e. a capitalist meritocracy) would reach members of the
proletariat, the latter would possess no realization of
the consequently more grievous truth that their lives
are being curtailed by the status quo.
The cunning Party officials nevertheless acknowledge the
grave hindrance that objective reality would pose to
their own irrational goal, the infliction of human
suffering. Already the Party belief concerning the
irrelevance of control over external reality has been
revealed. This is due to the fact that, indeed, there is
no such necessity in this mastery for the infliction of
suffering. Suffering is a condition peculiar to the
brutal atmosphere of pristine nature, not manipulated by
man. Only in the acquisition of comfort is external
mastery necessary. Yet, due to their misconstrued aims,
the Party intelligentsia is misled into a philosophical
blunder as well, nevertheless a blunder wholly
consistent with the overall immorality and asinine
stupidity of their structure. O'Brien explains the
essence of the dogma used as a channel of enforcement
for the autocracy. "You are here because you have failed
in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the
act of submission which is the price of sanity. You
preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the
disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe
that reality is something objective, external, existing
in its own right. You also believe that the nature of
reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into
thinking that you see something, you assume that
everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell
you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality
exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the
individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any
case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which
is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to
be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality
except by looking through the eyes of the Party."
(p.205) Does there exist a single shred of rationality
or accordance with any evidence collected by science,
logic, and observation throughout history within that
blathering tirade? Without question, no. Yet O'Brien
assumes yet another ludicrous blunder. "We control
matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside
the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is
nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation--
anything. I could float off this floor like a soap
bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the
Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those
nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We
make the laws of nature." (p. 218) Of yet there has been
no scientific correlation between the perceptions of any
autocratic dictatorship and the external happenings of
the world. If the outlooks of particular individuals are
misconstrued and deviant from the absolute, what basis
exists to assume that a group, a mere compilation of
these outlooks, can possess a proper interpretation?
This is yet another contradiction in Party reasoning.
It is fitting here to present an extraordinarily basic
proof for an objective reality and the existence of the
laws of nature. It is evident that there are in
existence numerous individuals who are not merely locked
within their own minds but are capable of interacting
with each other. This, of course, demonstrates the
necessity of space in which the interaction must take
place, outside the internal content of one's brain, thus
being common to all living entities and all objects, and
existing as an Absolute Reality in which particular
behaviors and physical processes, as well as a language,
mathematics, and the sciences to provide empirical
interpretation and application of these occurrences to
daily life, are present. All these were not originated
in man. They were a discovery unique to man, it is true,
and their formulation was an invention of man which no
previous creature had accomplished. They existed, but
man, in his wisdom, was the first organism to
recognize them, and, furthermore, determine that his
own mind is itself a function of this objective reality,
held together by a more complex level of the same
chemical reactions which alter the world outside him,
his organism composed of a finite quantity of material
originating in the external reality. Man himself, it
follows, dwells entirely within the objective reality
and through science, mathematics, and technological
progress, is able to obtain recognition of it which,
when improved, is proportional to the increase of
quality and length of life, for human life itself occurs
within the one true world. It is this realization of the
one truth that has therefore enabled all ameliorations
of the human condition undertaken since the dawn of our
species! To negate this seemingly self-evident and
logical conclusion is an act of utter buffoonery and,
moreover, genuine evil.
Yet the Party, in the general derangement of its
motives, fittingly adopts the creed of "no external
truth", proclaiming as totalitarian orders do its
ability to determine matter through sheer will. Yet
O'Brien cannot in reality float off into space without
constructing a hovercraft or any other means of aerial
transportation due to the fact that in the external
reality he is, like all other creatures and
objects, affected by the pull of the Earth's gravity. In
order to acquire mastery over external (i.e. all)
affairs one must keep in mind the conditions fulfilling
which the goal necessitates if it is ever to come to
fruition. O'Brien, being the crafty schemer, seeks to
fit this inability into his distorted philosophical
interpretation by stating that it is not the Party's
will that he should fly. It is by the same premise that
a newborn can proclaim that the world exists in its
present conditions precisely because he had ordained it
to acquire such a state and that he would be able to
alter them at will, yet the tyranny of his pacifier
(which is as intellectually competent an object as the
Party) does not condone such an act. Orwell exposes
similar attitudes of the Party which place the oligarchy
in the position of creators of the world, similar to the
assertions of our hypothetical infant. "Nonsense. The
earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be
older? Nothing exists except through human
consciousness." (p. 218) These lies are but a clever
mask for a framework that does not function. "The
belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--
surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it
was false. Had it not been exposed long ago as a
fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had
forgotten." (p. 219) Alas, Mr. Smith had arrived into
Mr. Orwell's hypothetical world when the suppression of
ideas had been of such degree of strength that useful
logical argumentation, in the manner of the chains of
reasoning presented in this work, had no longer been
accessible. Otherwise, this character would have been
aware that the official title of such a fallacy is
relativism, in itself a contradiction as an absolute
rejection of absolutes. On the matter of truth,
relativism rejects the existence of an external world,
resulting in a crippling of the human focus and,
therefore, in human suffering. On the front of ethics,
relativism neglects to recognize the centrality of
individual human life in a moral code of conduct based
on rights.
The basic premise (and another internal contradiction)
within relativism states also that it is an
impossibility for the individual to possess any
knowledge of the truth, and that consequently the
individual must subordinate himself and his mindset to
that of the dominant social order (This conception is
based on the fallacy frequently manifested in the vulgar
tone of the relativists: "Well, you have to
submit to something!"). Because the individual, say
these twisted dogmatists, cannot know reality, he may
well follow the interpretation of whomever exceeds him
in title and authority within a rigidly structured
oligarchic tribe. It is by this premise that O'Brien,
through the infliction of pain, coerces Smith into
believing that two added to two will result in five.
"-'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?' -'I don't
know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that
again. Four, five, six-- in all honesty I don't know.' -
'Better,' said O'Brien." (p. 208) This is a
demonstration of relativism's chief clause, "You
can't know the truth." Such a recognition will cause
the individual to bow before whatever speculation or
deliberate misinformation a so-called "expert" would
present. The condition of not knowing is viewed
as ultimate wisdom by the relativists, for it permits
such warped ideologues to manipulate and destroy those
men who had manifested this trait. On the part of the
target, sadly, a reverence before the "sacred master
from above" is ignited. "The terrible thing, thought
Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said
this he would believe it. You could see it in his face.
O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than
Winston, he knew what the world was really like, in what
degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what
lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had
understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no
difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose.
What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic
who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your
arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his
lunacy?" (p. 216)
Many concerned thinkers of present days had rightfully
labeled this defect of the human condition expertitis,
which is based on the fundamentally flawed relationship
of blind trust, existing outside the absolute and
possessing no verification as to the genuine nature of
the other side's "revelations" or "intentions". Let us
utilize this term in order to more conveniently refer to
such a primary facet of relativism and link expertitis
to Party domination. Such a connection has likely become
evident at present. One who is under the spell of
figures, described by Ms. Ayn Rand as "Witch Doctors"
(also a proper address to apply here), then fully
surrenders himself into their hands because he
believes he does not know reality and thus does not know
the nature of the proper scheme of action in its
applications to his life. This blind trust,
then, presents the Party with precisely the power they
need to inflict their desired torture, persecution and
suffering!
Relativism, to add to the above criticism, is riddled
with anti-scientific absurdities refuted by men as
distant in the past as Herr Copernicus. O'Brien's words
below mimic those of a faith-based dogmatist within the
Holy Inquisition during the Medieval period. "-'What are
the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are bits
of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we
wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the
center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round
it.'" (p. 219) Reader, the relativists attempt to
coerce you into adopting frameworks of interpretation as
retrograde as the geocentric model of astronomy! On
one end of the spectrum of reaction that good men will
experience from this authoritarian clap-trap is a hearty
laugh, as one with which a professional fool or a
ranting intoxicated bum would be received, at the
opposite end there is but sheer horror at this subtle
yet efficient means for the acquisition of ends as evil
and repulsive as can be.
G. Stolyarov II
is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical
essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer,
contributor to
Enter Stage Right,
Le Quebecois Libre,
Rebirth of Reason,
and the
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Senior Writer for
The Liberal Institute,
and Editor-in-Chief of
The Rational Argumentator,
a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights,
and progress. His newest science fiction novel is
Eden against the Colossus.
His latest non-fiction treatise is
A Rational Cosmology.
Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at
gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
This TRA feature has been edited
in accordance with TRA’s
Statement of Policy.
Click here to return to TRA's Issue
XII Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel,
Eden against the Colossus, here.
Read
Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise,
A Rational Cosmology,
explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time,
sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, at
http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/rc.html.
]
|