Control through pain or pleasure?

[Nelle Kozera]

http://www.recombinantrecords.net/im...s-to-Death.png

You should read that little comic strip before reading below.

Ok so in my personal project know as SINS, or in full, Sins of the Solar Empires, I’m noticing that tending towards a “Huxley” interpretation of the future where people around drown in a sea of irrelevance and indifferences, vs. forced censorship and other more Orwellian views.


So for those of that have actively written universes and world with dystopian highlights and feels, which do you finding yourself, sliding into or is it something different altogether? Furthermore which do you find more interesting? The Brave new world view or the more Orwellian view…

Now does anyone else see and connections between Orwellian or Huxleyesk themes in modern day society?

[WolfyWetFurr]

Both have been seen around the world and are pretty relevant in every part of the world I think. What do I find more interesting and what do i use? Huxly is kind of dull to just read about. Too much like the life I am familiar with. But good for non tension social rp's. Orwell's method is much more interest because it creates very visible conflict.

[SliceOfDog]

Sorry for the late reply in this topic. It's just up my street, but I was very tired when I first read it and all of my replies made little sense.

So anyway, I gave it a think, and I've come to the conclusion that 'pain or pleasure' is a little misleading of what the differences are, or at least an over simplification. I see the real difference as "not being able to protest" and "not being aware of the need to protest". Allow me to give a few examples (and as such this will contain major spoilers if people haven't read either book yet):

Newspeak: The concept that since language affects thought, restricting language is restricting thought. For those of you who aren't familiar with the language, it works like a minimalistic English. All synonyms are removed, so instead of being able to say that something is great, amazing, incredible, fantastic, or terrible, awful, oppressive, horrific etc, you would simply say "It is good" or "It is bad". If you need to express that Object 1 is good but Object 2 is amazing, you would simply say "Object 1 is good. Object 2 is DoublePlusGood". The additions "Double" and "Plus" can be added for emphasis on anything, so by having those four words (Good, Bad, Double, Plus) you can cover most base emotions without needing so many words. With less words you have less poetry, less writing, and in the end less thought.
The best example is the phrase "Big Brother is doubleplusbad". That statement is, in Newspeak, the harshest possible rebellion. So if one person things Big Brother is oppressive, they can say he is doubleplusbad. But what does that mean? Is he doubleplusbad like missing the bus to work, or burning your toast? In Newspeak all words to suggest oppression have been removed and replaced with the concept of "bad". All words for Freedom and Democracy have not been replaced at all, so it would be impossible to say "Not having freedom is doubleplusbad", because no word to express the very concept of freedom exists.
The ultimate goal of Newspeak is to have the entire English language become a single word, and that word would be a positive affirmation (In other words, "yes"). The concept of negativity itself has been made inexpressible.

Therefore, the citizens are rendered unable to protest against their treatment. The government removes their ability to do so.

Contrast with Brave New World. The government pays its workers in drugs. When someone stops the drug stream (Marx, I think the main character is (hilariously) called) and tries to explain that the workers are being oppressed, the workers don't want to hear it. They want their drugs. They choose to be oppressed because they aren't aware of the alternative. If they were then they would be free, unlike in the 1984 state, to rebel. But they aren't. The entire population is distracted by soma, orgy-porgys and, ah... feelies, were they called? The films they go to see.

Another point: what happens to the people who DO rebel?

1984 - the government actively seeks out protesters by creating false rebel groups. Protesters are then made public enemies, are tortured, brainwashed to think that they were wrong to every hate Big Brother, and finally (AFTER being made compliant with the state) shot.

Brave New World - protesters are sent away to an island paradise.
...
Bit of a difference really.
But yeah, protesters are allowed to live in an entirely secluded intellectual utopia, on the condition that they no longer interact with the remaining citizens. All influences against the government are removed peacefully to maintain the lack of knowledge among the remaining people.

1984 - Enemies paraded through streets in cages.
Brave New World - What enemies?

So in any case, I absolutely love both books, butI feel that Brave New World's approach (that is, a people who don't even know that they're oppressed) is more effective. When I design dictatorships in my fiction, which as I'm sure most of you will know is quite often, they will usually have some form of entertainment that distracts the population. Gladiator games style ones are always nice, although violence isn't necessarily needed. I designed a Monarchy who are very flamboyant, love carnivals and fireworks and masquerades and so on. You can also link it with national pride: the Monarchy feel that they own the sky, so they create lots of airships and so on. Employ lots of people to create a giant airborne flagship (providing jobs therefore money therefore contentment, as well as letting the common person feel that they are really a part of their nation) which can be flown around in flagwaving parades, or flying overhead as armies march to war.

However, Orwell's ideas really do have merit to them, and we would do well to remember the time periods that the two were written in. Huxley wrote in the wake of the decadent twenties, which of course ended with a horrible recession. Orwell wrote afterwards in the wake of Nazi Germany, the near conquest of Europe by Big Brotherian means (of course the Party is modelled heavily on the Nazis) and the subsequent times of hardship for all of mainland Europe and the UK.
So by the 50s, Orwell's theories would be looking pretty damn likely compared to those of Huxley. The wartime propaganda would still be prevalent, and the horrors of the Holocaust would still be emerging (and surely inspired the likes of Room 101 and so on).

It's only more recently that the reverse occurred, and Huxley's world came closer to our own. Perhaps his would make a more successful dictatorship, but that of Orwell is still used to some extent around the world today, and could feasibly occur if some of the many extremist groups in the West made a sudden grab for power (although less likely thanks to the internet).

[Brome Teks]

On the topic of newspeak as a form of control, I actually think that recent trends suggest language is going the other way, and by the trends, control by language seems to be a nigh impossible thing. The English Language is the largest language on the Planet. It recently surpassed 1 million individual words.

The thing about the English language is, is that it is extremely flexible and multicultural. It is the most common second language around. It happily borrows words from other languages, and sometimes simply mugs languages for new words. When an expression or idea doesn't have a word, people just make a new one up and spread it by word of mouth. Controlling the media is not nearly enough power to control language.

And that's why I don't think Newspeak's ultimate goal is feasible. People think. They have ideas. They instinctively want to communicate these ideas. Suppressing this instinct is not within the power of the government in 1984 (but it is in Brave New World, oddly enough). Only teaching them the word "yes" would frustrate them and they'd find a way to express "No". And then they'd find a way to express other ideas and concepts. Language is far too fluid for any sort of dictatorship, even one in full control of the media, to possibly control.

If they did try and control it, it would collapse their system completely. Brave New World needed high functioning Alphas and Betas to make their society work, they needed smart people. The government in 1984 could try to suppress the desires of the people, but we we all know how well that'd work out.

[SliceOfDog]

Hah, well yes, I don't entirely subscribe to the Orwellian ideals (although remember that they too had their smart people on top. The BNW/1984 systems were rather similar if you look from the top down), and I completely agree on the point of language, except that I think NewSpeak is more logical than you give it credit for.
I suppose I didn't put the following point across very well in my previous post, but the idea is that the very concepts of things like "no" would eventually disappear. People would certainly invent new forms of expressing the negative, but it would be entirely individual. I figure the interaction may go something like this:
"Uh!"
"Yes"
"Ba muh!"
"...Yes"
"Gargamuh [Arms flailing]"
"Yes [Listener makes rapid exit]".
It's all well and good that the speaker knows what they mean, but for the listener, the new words are meaningless. And without the language, how do you express what it is supposed to mean? The concept doesn't exist. It wouldn't be like a caveman pointing at a fire and calling it "Ug". What is there to point to, or to reference? You'd just have to hope (which wouldn't technically exist!) that the person you are speaking to has similar feelings to try and express.
Of course eventually you could get your point across, but it would take longer than it would take the ever-observant cameras to spot you making a scene and put a bullet in you.
Which none of the other citizens would have a problem with, since if the State does it then it must be good.
"Yes".

It's highly impractical, simply due to the in-between stages of the transition: there would never be a time where the concept of expressing the negative falls out of use for long enough for old words referring to it to be forgotten. In that time people could say "Blugha!" "Huh?" "It means... uhm... [shakes head, makes sad face]" "Ooh! Blugha!"
And so on.
So yeah, it couldn't really happen, but I do love it as a concept.

[Brome Teks]

Why would it be entirely individual? Humans are fast learners. I'm sure one form of know might be adopted by a few people, then people this group interacts with would adopt it so they could communicate with them better, and it would just spread from there. And that's not even to speak of parents teaching their children language, which is the primary source of language in most humans. "No" could start within a single family and spread to their close relations and descendants, and then spread further from there.

Of course eventually you could get your point across, but it would take longer than it would take the ever-observant cameras to spot you making a scene and put a bullet in you.

In that case, might as well just kill every non-government citizen alive to save time. All of them are going to try it, and if the solution is to kill every citizen who dares try to express themselves, that's basically saying the solution is to kill every human being and numerous families of organisms with rudimentary language. (Seriously, even dogs have more than one kind of bark for expression). Reducing the entire way humans communicate to a single word without lobotomizing the entire population (At which point, what's the point in governing them?) is an impossible endeavor. Human language centers are far too advanced.

[SliceOfDog]

In that case, might as well just kill every non-government citizen alive to save time. All of them are going to try it, and if the solution is to kill every citizen who dares try to express themselves, that's basically saying the solution is to kill every human being and numerous families of organisms with rudimentary language.

You have to remember that 1984 was a reaction to Nazism. It may seem to us that the logical end of the Big Brother policy is for the government to kill every citizen, but you have to remember that this was the first time in (at the time) recent history that democratically elected governments had mechanically and secretly rounded up millions of their own people and developed an efficient regime of death camps to kill them en mass before burning their bodies or using them to make soap and leather. To George Orwell, and everyone else post-Holocaust (and also post-Gulag, although those caused less outrage for whatever reason), this would no longer seem like an impossible suggestion.

And there's nothing to say that Orwell wasn't well aware that it is impossible. His book is set in a stage well before this would take place. NewSpeak has only just begun to take effect in the novel. Perhaps he thinks the exact same as you, but that defies the entire point of the novel. To display a regime that fails to suppress its population is sending the message that people don't need to be vigilant about it, "don't worry, they won't win in the end anyway". But they can still try, and that's the point. Nazism didn't manage to get rid of the Jewish faith, and perhaps it would have been impossible for it to do so. It didn't even kill every Jew in Germany, so how likely is it that they could take over the entire world and introduce a more efficient system than the ones they had in their own nation where they had the most control? It was never going to happen. Does that make the 6 million deaths that they did manage to cause any less lamentable? Of course not. Orwell's point is that we should never let a regime get as far as the One State got in 1984. What happens post-Winston is irrelevant.

[Brome Teks]

Fair point, I guess that's more what dystopian stories aim to do anyways, right?

[Nelle Kozera]