THE NEVER-ENDING NIGHTMARE

Nineteen Eighty-four is one of the most intelligent and terrifying dystopias ever created. Personally, I cannot imagine a worse society to live in. George Orwell's vision will probably always be the dystopia of all times.

A truly horrifying aspect is the complete implementation of totalitarianism. Ingsoc, personificated by Big Brother, is omnipresent and omnipotent. The state utilizes total control over and demands total commitment from the citizens. Basically, the citizens are supposed to devote their entire lives to the cause. The individual is insignificant in comparison to the state, which basically equals the Party, and can be abused or sacrificed without limitations. Whether the citizens want it or not, the will of Ingsoc becomes the purpose of their lives. O'Brien, discussing with Winston in the Ministry of Love:

We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature.

Another horrifying aspect is the systematic and effective oppression. In Oceania, the price for dissidency is too high to pay for any human being, however high the moral stature. The terror is not only a means to enforce Party hegemony, but a goal in itself. The citizens always live under the threat of constant surveillance, nocturnal arrest, electric torture, concentration camp imprisonment and summary execution. The system is designed to create hate, fear, bigotry and paranoia in the citizens, thus making the oppression easier. Even more horrifying is the constant escalation of the terror; it is almost becoming random. O'Brien articulates Ingsoc's strategy plainly:

The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.

The most horrifying aspect is probably the stability of the system. As the system is pseudo-collective and counteracts individual power concentrations, the oppression becomes faceless and rebellion difficult. Systematic propaganda, war efforts, frequent purges, rumours of spy rings etc. keeps the people in a state of carefully controlled confusion; as no-one can say for sure what is true and what is false, the very act of dissidency becomes complicated. Furthermore, the system is designed to withstand any kind of internal decay; leaders may come and go, member cadres may be wiped out and replaced, but Ingsoc will remain, just like the Catholic church. Potentially, the totalitarian terror can go on for centuries, theoretically forever. As O'Brien puts it:

Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The party is immortal.

The whole system is basically based on one single principle: the hunger for power. The privilige to exercise power over other people will ultimately be the only remaining pleasure in Big Brother's land:

Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.

Or perhaps O'Brien is lying, like so many times before? Perhaps the truth is more trivial and embarassing than that? Milan Simecka, a dissident in communist Czechoslovakia, suggests in Our Comrade Winston Smith that the fundamental principle of totalitarian systems may be another: the hunger for the fruits of power. Comfort, luxuries and other expressions of simple materialism have always been the engine in societies throughout history, be it Ancient Egypt, The Roman Empire, Medieval England or why not The United States of America of today. Why should a human being change in Oceania? Why should a human being be more complicated in a totalitarian state?

Note: My appologies to Czech and Slovak readers for misspelling Simecka's name. I simply don't know how to make special symbols work in all browsers.