Contrary to what everyone else keeps saying, I don't believe 1984 is happening now, or could ever happen, in the real world. Granted, hundreds of little aspects and details of 1984 have happened, are happening, and will happen in the real world, but a 95% transparency of the real world to 1984's world isn't good enough. That's no more relevant than saying 1984 is happening because gin exists in 1984 and gin exists in the real world. The Party's power has to be perfect for it to be what it is, it has to be 100%. Nothing is ever perfect in the real world, and that's why 1984 has never happened, isn't happening, and will never happen. The one enduring, eternal truth of humanity is that humanity has never, ever managed to live up to its own ideals or goals whether they be loving or hateful good or evil, as it quickly falls prey to incompetence, miscommunication, and outright hypocrisy and self-destructiveness. We're flawed. Flawedness means you can neither be perfectly good (utopia) nor perfectly evil (dystopia). Any system we create from now to the end of time will be flawed, for we are flawed. If we create computers to compensate for our flaws, they will be flawed because we created them. Today's world, like the world before it and the world to come after it, is rife with crime, hypocrisy, incompetence, idiocy at the highest levels of government and at the highest levels of the scientific and religious elite. All our spy technology which is supposedly going to create some sort of future utopia or dystopia (neither will happen, nor can ever happen) is infected with countless computer viruses, bugs of all descriptions, and subversive counter-spy programs. The wider the bandwidth of spy/data technology, the more spam and disinformation will be generated to fill it and render it no more useful than a pair of binoculars.<br><br>Computer programming is an excellent example of pristine mind control. A computer is a totally receptive controlled mind which you directly insert thoughts into without any concern for actual logic, for a computer's logic can be adjusted in extremely fine increments to suit any specific situation, similar to a perfect application of doublethink. Theoretically, this gives you infinite control over the universe. If you just build enough computers to do your bidding, you can become God, or, conversely you can program the computers to tell you you're God (the 1984 style). Either way, you could achieve eternal power. Or not... The problem is that nothing ever really works. It works for a little while, then it breaks down due to inevitable forces of chaos and entropy. No human has ever lived forever, for the same reason, nor any life form of any species. Our universe won't last forever, nor our sun, nor our life-supporting climate. Evolution on our planet exists for that very reason, the requirement is constant biological change to adapt to a constantly changing unpredictable universe. The essence of 1984, of the Party, of Big Brother, is not just plain vanilla power, it's Perfect Power. Only Perfect Power can be sustained for eternity and not require evolution. But nothing is perfect therefore there can be no utterly perfect power. The individual is obviously imperfect, the book acknowledges that. But the Party is also not perfect, collectivism is imperfect, consciousness, even and especially doublethink consciousness is imperfect, and oligarchy is imperfect. In fact, Control itself is so imperfect it has never lasted for any appreciable length of time throughout history. This truth doesn't however stop some of our current world leaders from trying to act like despots and maniacs for they are truly masters of idiotic doublethink. So we can say 1984 is happening now. And in the future, people reading the book will be able to say it's happening then, and if the book were somehow beamed into the past before it was written, people would also find it familiar then as well. There will always be some overconfident jerk trying to create 1984, he'll always fail because it's permanently impossible.<br><br>What this book really is is a satirical look at what's happening in the world now, has happened in it, and will happen, but as a satire it's meant to serve as an example of what a civilization looks like before it comes crashing down with a noisy avalanche of bricks. There's always an external enemy to test the mettle of any civilization and quickly rock that society's foundations if it's not efficient enough (ie. based upon objective reality which is shared with the enemy), and even if some sort of permanent stalemate were formed with other world powers, there would still be the forces of nature, tornadoes, earthquakes, ice ages, global warming, tsunamis, etc. and the forces of outer space, extraterrestrials, solar flares, supernovae, comets, and asteroids. Who cares if Eastasia and Eurasia can't destroy Oceania? Look beyond the Earth. Space aliens or natural or stellar disasters could destroy the Earth just as readily. 1984 is based on the concept of perfect containment. In a perfect bubble of thought-defined dimensionally and temporally stable zero entropy existence, it's true 1984 could exist. The only place such a bubble can exist is imagination, and that's the only place 1984 can exist.<br><br>In a way, 1984 has always existed and will always exist because there will always be people trying to make it happen because they see it as "progress", and in a way it has, isn't and never will exist. One thing's for sure, that whatever you believe or think about it, doublethink or not, doesn't make the slightest difference to objective reality...If you would like evidence of this, jump over a cliff and refuse to believe that gravity is affecting you....Mind over matter? I think not. Absolutely not.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
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Originally Posted by Darren
