Heirs to the Wreckage

The first George Orwell novel I read was one of the less recognizable ones, Burmese Days. Admittedly, this was not a novel I would have gone out of my way to read, nor did I even hear of the book (or George Orwell for that matter) until the very day I acquired it. I was 12 (or perhaps 13) and on a family vacation to Myanmar during one of those rare periods when the borders were open. And in the bright riot of one of those outdoor markets that the west simply cannot match in élan, I was approached by a girl who seemed very much my age. I distinctly remember that seeing her with books in hand kindled that sense of unity children feel with each other when they’ve detected commonalities. It was the spontaneity of the interaction (and yes, the fact that the book was named Burmese Days) that led me to buy the book.

It was an excellent read, and quite unflinching given the era of its publication. Many anti-colonial works of today find themselves beset by a cascade of political and social concerns. “How do I still confer empowerment and autonomy unto this oppressed character?” “What is my relationship to political correctness and how much provocation can my audience tolerate?” “What is the narrative I wish to tell?” Orwell quixotically wished to speak on colonialism during a time when not all that many people cared: Myanmar was still firmly under British Rule, and reactions to the book ranged from offense to indifference to mild approbation. Yet, this also meant he was largely unbothered by the culture wars and political conflicts of today, and was able to tell what he simply termed “what I recorded and observed”.

This means that if you’re looking for a reclaimed history of Colonial Burma or a poignant story of enduring hardship, you will not find that in Orwell. You will find what is a subdued, pessimistic and honest portrait of the vices of colonial structure, told through the lens of the English merchant Flory. Flory is introduced to us as a character steeped in self-loathing and uncertainty. A bodily disfigurement makes him socially insecure (a repeating character trait in 1984). He evinces more sympathy towards the Burmese than most Europeans while continuing to valorize Europe—alienating him from both groups. Orwell additionally offers an interpretation of the colonial mindset through his characterization of Flory. Flory knows he is lacking and corrupt, yet through an evasive mental maneuver he attributes this to Burma itself; and constantly fantasizes about a version of himself completed by European validation. 

I would not read another Orwell title until much later, until 2 weeks ago when I picked up 1984. I usually treat classics with some skepticism, but the cultural reign of 1984 is more than deserved. The book is intentionally written as a satire on authoritarianism, where the world of 1984 is so outlandishly, cartoonishly evil to our eyes that it seems out of this world. Concepts such as Hate Week and “Freedom is Slavery” will read as so overtly and unapologetically reprehensible that it seems unlikely any reasonable citizen would buy into them. Yet, the citizens of Oceania (the setting of 1984) do buy into it, and Orwell lays out such clear and coherent logic as to how that could happen. 

The Party of 1984 consolidates control by aiming to destroy truth. The well-known motif of the main character Winston, “freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4”, lies in direct opposition to the Party’s mission of convincing their subjects that 2+2=5 (if they so desired). Their objective is not merely to claim 2+2=5, but to make their subjects genuinely believe it in public and private imagination. If a subject were to so much as entertain the notion that 2+2 might not equal 5, that is what the Party would deem “thoughtcrime”. 

What fascinates me most is Orwell’s brilliant understanding of the role of language. This is manifested in the Party-propogated “newspeak”, a collection of mutilated and denigrated English words designed to communicate the absolute minimum of thought required for daily functioning. Words that convey nuance and subtlety are strategically culled from the newspeak dictionaries, leading to a ruined and one-dimensional speech that Orwell refers to as “gabbling”. Newspeak has the stated aim of reducing the very range of thought of its users. A subject cannot conceive of justice or democracy when those concepts do not exist in language (and never did exist thanks to the Party’s constant revision of history). The very epistemology of Oceania is reshaped to the Party’s liking by base newspeak words like “good” and “ungood”. What Orwell most effectively conveys here is that an unjust order has won when it has successfully conquered all the thinkable; when no challenge can be mounted against it because the very meaning of “challenge” has been erased from daily awareness. 

The newspeak word “doublethink” is key to Party ideology, where it describes the practice of tricking one’s mind into believing the Party’s version of truth. Orwell notes that the use of doublethink simultaneously requires a meta-layer of doublethink to deny that any fabrication of mental reality has transpired. All authoritarian regimes deal in lies and contradiction, the Party of 1984 is the first regime I have encountered that goes so far as to denote an actual model for internalizing falsehood. In short, it requires what Orwell describes as a “controlled insanity” to adhere to and tolerate Party principles. It requires a fanaticism that is self-replicating and retroactively self-presupposing. 

My experience as a reader was going from seeing 1984 as a satire to a credible thought experiment with contemporary weight. For how do governments (especially governments with what we would label ill intent) control their people? They prey on the human capacity to tolerate contradiction. They weaponize narratives and scapegoats as means of distraction and emotional expenditure. They discredit truth and reason until their followers become fanatics who can never renegade on their beliefs in spite of opposing evidence. They invade routine and the day to day tedium of life until authority does not recognize any boundary between public and private. Oceania just happens to perform those functions to the nth degree. 

And the words of the party, “Big Brother is Watching You”. Has there ever been a phrase more illustrative of the lengths a regime will go to indemnify its citizens? 

The ending of 1984 is perfectly ambiguous, and encapsulates its chosen theme very well. The ending either implies the power of the Party is unstoppable and eternal, or that this is a falsehood and it merely seems that way from Winston’s perspective. Or rather, the meta-ending is that we as the reader are ultimately forced to accept the logic of the Party. It does not matter what the truth is and we as the reader will never know, the only ending we get is the Party’s ending.

The undeniable parallels have been discussed to death by the sophisticated of our world, but I think it’s still worth reviewing. For instance, take the Trump regime. There is genuine strategic weight to staggering the release of the Epstein files. Up until now, Trump succeeded in labeling any attack against him or any written evidence as a democratic hoax. A ridiculous assertion at first, but the banalization of it rendered it as truth in the Trumpian collective (much as in 1984). Any polemic, written statistic, report, critical article, can safely be dismissed as a tool of the Trump’s enemies, who is in all this a victim. One sees interviews of Trump supporters during debates who will say, “there is nothing you could say to me that will shake my conviction in President Trump”, which is borne out of the toxic suspicion of evidence and academia built up by Trump. Alternatively, perhaps we’re seeing a precursor to doublethink, where uttering those words is actually a mental commitment to spurn all evidence, even if it is suspected to be credible. Up until now the only items that might have served as irrefutable evidence were incriminating photos of Trump in the Epstein Files. It is obvious these exist, as the DOJ is going to great lengths to hide them. Yet, the true danger is that with the advance of AI, and especiallywith the new partnership of OpenAI and the Administration, Trump can dispute the validity of even those photos. Perhaps the DOJ’s game is to stagger the release with the aims of either never releasing them if public scrutiny subsides, or to release them once they can be safely discredited. The White House has notoriously used deepfakes in many of their social media posts, and we all saw the Seedance.ai Brad Pitt-Tom Cruise fight. It wasn’t perfectly convincing, but it was clear AI image generation had made a substantial step forward. If deepfaking advances past a certain point, there will be no evidence that can’t be dismissed as a fake, and that will take us much closer to the world of 1984. 

Think of the environmental cause and the sustainable transition. I personally observe that there is a parochiality to the way we discuss it in our daily lives, almost as if we’re afraid to discuss it or we simply don’t know how. For sure this is a product of our government and the anti-environmental interests they support. But there is clearly also a lack of political and social imagination among everyday people. We do not reckon with the climate crisis beyond recycling, or volunteering. If a more powerful and productive discourse of the environmental crisis exists among everyday Americans I have yet to see it emerge. Perhaps there is weight to Orwell’s point about daily language, and how this determines the limits of thought. It ties well with the academic insinuation that the route to a sustainable transformation currently lies beyond our epistemology. 

We do not necessarily have a Big Brother that maps as coherently as some of the other points I’ve made. We certainly have cults of personality, America depends on enchanting the deprived masses with celebrity culture. And it’s necessary to have a cult of personality paired with consumption, so that purchase is elevated to a perverse form of community: “The Kardashians are with you, when you buy their sportswear you’re buying yourself a place in their story.” We have Open AI and Amazon, which invade our lives and collect our data through their services, services that extend beyond commodities and become lifestyles: “We will watch you in exchange for services that you need, services that are now irreversibly the bread and butter of capitalism.” 

In any case, I highly recommend both of the aforementioned books. As far as books go these are not too long in length and Orwell’s prose is refreshingly coherent while still preserving thematic complexity. I still spend far too long online watching people tear each other apart in comment threads. Most of the arguments just disintegrate into meaningless rage, from both liberals and conservatives. Perhaps the worst part of this whole affair is that the right wing has successfully pushed us to the same destructive political behaviors of attack and villainize (not that there aren’t cases which warrant those tools). They have nothing more than rage and unspoken bigotry, and we have nothing more than a failing standard of propriety and the questionable claim that the Democrats will do better. 

If I ever have the (mis)fortune to stumble across a dedicated Trump supporter, I hope to engage in true decisive debate. I would not tie their hands with political correctness.

“No, if you’re a racist, debate as a racist by all means, I will not heckle you with trigger words. I want you to be yourself.” 

Because the true intent of any debate should not be to silence conservatism or repress it, it should be to unmake it entirely. Perhaps the Party was correct in that sense…