"Do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?" A question that Winston asks one of the Paroles in a pub, the same people that he believes hope lies with. However, the prole doesn't quite comprehend the question. Irving Howe uses this frame to observe that the "one of the most terrifying things about totalitarian society is that it systematically destroys social memory, first through forced disintegration of individual experience and, second, through the complete obliteration of objective records." It could be argued that this is something our current society does to itself with or without an overt totalitarian setting. Either through the proliferation of technology and an ever shrinking discourse or the demands of an ever-growing population obscures our memories and people learn less and less from our history (records). Orwell asserts in the novel that annihilation of collective memory makes people more susceptible to propaganda and more willing to fall in line with whatever the "party" tells them. Howe ties this "destruction of social memory" to technology and seems to understand that people can be willful slaves to the comforts of their prefab lives. In Oceania, personal property is highly restricted and surveillance breeds fear, but the Big Brother system of 1984 is not so different from our current democracy. Parallels such as, the rampant surveillance, the thinly veiled militaristic and nationalist agenda or even the two-minute hate (cable new. However, by indulging competition for money and power within the classes, the propaganda inherent in our system can be better camouflaged and we are still allowed the illusion of free speech given to pacify a willfully ignorant population. Take it or leave it, there just as many differences to Orwell’s predictions, but the ones that came true are much more frightening. Howe seems to agree with others that state Oceania can arise through either fascism or socialism alike, or as Chomsky puts it, "Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism."
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Thoughts on Irving Howe "Utopia Reversed"
"Do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?" A question that Winston asks one of the Paroles in a pub, the same people that he believes hope lies with. However, the prole doesn't quite comprehend the question. Irving Howe uses this frame to observe that the "one of the most terrifying things about totalitarian society is that it systematically destroys social memory, first through forced disintegration of individual experience and, second, through the complete obliteration of objective records." It could be argued that this is something our current society does to itself with or without an overt totalitarian setting. Either through the proliferation of technology and an ever shrinking discourse or the demands of an ever-growing population obscures our memories and people learn less and less from our history (records). Orwell asserts in the novel that annihilation of collective memory makes people more susceptible to propaganda and more willing to fall in line with whatever the "party" tells them. Howe ties this "destruction of social memory" to technology and seems to understand that people can be willful slaves to the comforts of their prefab lives. In Oceania, personal property is highly restricted and surveillance breeds fear, but the Big Brother system of 1984 is not so different from our current democracy. Parallels such as, the rampant surveillance, the thinly veiled militaristic and nationalist agenda or even the two-minute hate (cable new. However, by indulging competition for money and power within the classes, the propaganda inherent in our system can be better camouflaged and we are still allowed the illusion of free speech given to pacify a willfully ignorant population. Take it or leave it, there just as many differences to Orwell’s predictions, but the ones that came true are much more frightening. Howe seems to agree with others that state Oceania can arise through either fascism or socialism alike, or as Chomsky puts it, "Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism."
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