Orwell’s reasoning goes like this: by
becoming continuous war ceases to exist. War is the opposite of peace and hence
is regarded as an aberration but if war becomes normal then the contrast
between peace and war would be obliterated. But in what sense can war become
normal? It would happen when external pressures would cease to exist. Orwell
says: “Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life—the
need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison
or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like…..Cut off from contact with
the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in
interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which
is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the
Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving
to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to
remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once
that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they
choose.”
The thought here is that a perfect
society with absolute equality and brotherhood is possible only in thought and
in practice societies will always be hierarchical. To elaborate, one of the
reason for wars is uneven resources and insufficiency:
“ ….the fundamental causes of war are
both biological and economic. The more prolific the herds and flocks the more
frequently had new grasslands to be sought for: at any moment a drought might
precipitate an invasion. Similarly the more prolific the city population, the
more food was needed and the more land was necessary for its cultivation. War
accordingly was constant in both civilizations; for stomachs, whether animal or
human dictated its necessity and living space became and has since remained the
one great problem in the struggle for existence.”
—- JFC Fuller
But even if there were enough
resources for everyone and wealth was evenly distributed war would not cease,
it would become continuous where its becoming continuous is as if it ceased to
exist because its character would change. There would be no victor plundering
the vanquished but the ruler exerting power to keep the structure of the
hierarchical society intact. The state would wage war over its own people. It
would not be a physical war but a war over minds of people, as Orwell argues
without the external pressure of reality in form challenges that confront us in
actual life, we would be cut off from all contact from the world and would be
directionless: “Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of
comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.” And: “When
war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical
progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or is
regarded….Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.”
This is the necessary consequence of
a world in self-isolation which lacks an other, a pressure from outside to take
cognizance of what is real or what is true. In its dream world it can disregard
facts but the actual world exists in so far as it is opposed or it exists in
conflict. The daydreamer has to come back to the real world because of conflict
or pressure reality exerts on him. In this world peace and war have become
indistinguishable and in this way Orwell attempts to make us understand the limitations
of our quest for a Utopian society. But then practically the external pressure
of reality can never cease and so hierarchical society can never cease to exist
either:
“But in practice such a society could
not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike,
the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would
become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had
done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had
no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical
society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
If anyone believes that the victory
of an ideology or a sect over another is the way to peace then they are
mistaken. Governments understand power not ideology, as Orwell says:
“What opinions the masses hold, or do
not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted
intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.”
And so governments keep us busy in
endless debates to prevent concerted action. The war is never meant to end
rather is meant to be continuous, it continues in prosperity no less than in
physical war and its purpose is to keep the hierarchical structure of society
intact and so if seen closely even peace engenders war because peace is not
absence of war but an interval between two wars. This does not mean that we
keep justifying inequality because inevitability is not a justification but we
do need to understand that our social fabric rests on a delicate balance
between pressure and resistance and excess of one over another does not make
the society perfect. The police state is the result of absence of resistance and
anarchy the result of absence of pressure. Orwell’s insight is that the two
results are really the same because permanent peace and permanent war are the
same. Imagine what happens when you are in a state of war but cannot know that
you are in one, that your existence is incompatible with Big Brother’s existence
and that either he will live or you will live but you can’t live together? This
is Orwell’s nightmare but reality will get to you sooner or later.
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