Meditations on Orwell’s 1984

Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the world wants to hear “yes”.

Only an outsider could depict a totalitarian regime like George Orwell did in his 1984, and it took an English philosopher to honestly develop the idea of communism to its logical conclusion and expose its total abnormality.

The word “God” is only used in the novel twice: when the main character is asked if he believes “in god.” Yes, in the original the word is written in lower case. Its second occurrence is in the title “Power is God,” where it is capitalized.

The author depicted a society with an amputated soul, the only receptacle of religiousness. This kind of society and this sort of people are insane and godforsaken, as they have broken away from the Creator, thus severing a part of their human essence, which alone ensures these vital bonds.

Instead of a God-sensitive soul, a prosthesis was devised, which helped leaders subjugate spiritual cripples.

Where do the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century come from? The answer is that they were created, through appropriate political parties, out of ideas which had become idols. First, an idea was formed on the rational level. Then, it turned into a “material force” when it captured and ruled the masses.

In the practice of actual social and political life, all this was embodied in a relevant form of totalitarianism. However, the underlying reason for the appearance of these monsters is the “killing of God,” which occurred in Europe earlier.

In the past centuries, the process of “liberation from God” has been slower and more superficial in Great Britain than in continental Europe, say, in Germany or France, the ideas of communism, and later Nazism, have had a considerably lesser effect on British society.

A positive role was played here by age-long, deep-rooted religious and democratic traditions of everyday social practices. Respect for the individual, traditions, and the long-established institute of monarchy maintained contact between society and Heaven.

However, in Germany, France, and Russia this contact was lost. The rate of the process and the amount of bloodshed varied from country to country.

For Orwell, the major problem of totalitarian nations lies in the absolutization of an idea, its usurpation by the state, and forced dissolution of the individual in the state. At the level of socio-political relations, this is perhaps true.

Indeed, if, instead of absolutization, there had been a competition of various political ideas and a tolerant, rather than antagonistic, political struggle, there would have been little difference between Russia and Germany, on the one hand, and England, on the other. The world would not have seen the totalitarian regimes engendered by them.

They would have been free, democratic societies.

Why did Russia and Germany sink into totalitarianism, while England did not?

The problem is not related to the intellectual failures of Nazi or communist theoreticians and their followers, who idolized certain ideas. The problem is that they strove to make life fit their ideas and impose them on society by force. They sensed the masses’ psychological susceptibility to those ideas, and in this they perceived their power.

The power, however, turned out to be destructive.

The theorists, especially the top political spokesmen of these ideas, aspired to rise above the Creator: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” (Marx).

Both Hitler and Stalin “changed” the world by means of bloodshed and violence against people. They themselves yearned to replace the Deity.

Why did the West convert to paganism and come to create and worship idols?

Orwell’s 1984 offers a detailed depiction of a society overcome by Satan. Man is dead there. He is completely deprived of God’s “image and likeness.” The power in this society replaces God, and man is afraid of it. Actually, this fear becomes man’s essence. He is completely subjugated to the evil.

Such is the result of man’s and society’s departure from the Lord of Heaven and Earth. What followed was the loss of the fear of God and, consequently, the loss of wisdom. The death of the human soul inevitably follows the death of God in man’s heart, even if the body is still alive. In his novel, Orwell depicted a society of individuals who breathe with death.

Their diagnosis — the loss of vital bonds — explains the reason for the degradation of the communist and Nazi components of the Western civilization. But not for theirs alone.

It is also true for the liberal constituent. The difference is that the communists were doing it (the killing of God) in a proletarian fashion, cruelly and resolutely, shedding rivers of blood. The other, democratic, constituent of this civilization was doing virtually the same, but it was proceeding with it quietly, in an “evolutional” and philistine way. However, all those devilish deeds have one and the same father.

Western intellectuals are very convincing in their evaluation of the socio-political origins and reasons for totalitarianism and in showing the advantages of democracy. Yet the problem of destruction of an individual and loss of one’s own identity persists even in the democratic nations of the West, home to perhaps the best social system of the recent centuries, especially in its British version.

Why did the individual “ego” suffer a destructive attack in the Western democracies as well as in the totalitarian states? The difference between these two types of attempt at the individual is as follows: in one case, the collective (class or race) “ego” ruins the individual, while in the other, the individual, physical “ego” likewise destroys the personality via the institute of state.

The result is the same — the death of an integral individual, even though the methods and forms of attack do differ. In the latter case, they are evolutionary, democratic, without any antagonism and bloodshed. At present, the Western intellectuals have difficulty in persuading their societies in the need to start searching for a radical exit from the crazy environment that brings nothing but spiritual death.

Age-old social institutes and mechanisms and the high level of consumption and comfort have bound individuals hand and foot. Relatively undamaged by the 19th-century nihilism, at one time these nations rejected the amputation of the part of personality responsible for the religious aspect of man’s existence.

Russian society, on the contrary, turned out to be ready. Dostoyevsky’s Demons reflects the general mood and susceptibility to the radical “amputation” of the soul. A similar process in Great Britain somewhat resembles the process of slowly bringing a pot of living fish to a boil.

The fish feel bad; in fact, they are dying, and yet they cannot grasp that it is their own element that is killing them, although the temperature is continually rising and the content of oxygen is dropping.

Why is the term “intellectuals” used? Why aren’t these people referred to as “sages” or “philosophers” in the West? The realization of the necessity to return to God and arguments of God’s “revenge” are actively present in the intellectual space. But the Western society is still captured by the recent centuries’ rational paradigms, materialistic in their essence. Hence it is unable to perceive how real the threat is.

The era of creeping nihilism saw the intellectuals of the West promoting the progress of science and utilitarianism, which essentially kill the human being. Knowledge separated from God is equally far from His creation — integral man.

That is why in the West, knowledge looks at life through the prism of death. This paralyzes the will and the life-giving ability to love which nurtures man. It also ruins man’s integrity and identity. Indeed, individuals and societies with amputated souls now consider it bad manners to even use the word “spiritual.” This word is uncomfortable for the heart. In these circumstances it is no use speaking of wisdom, leave alone holiness.

Under communism, an individual loses himself by dissolving in the messianic solidity. In Western democratic societies, he collapses into his own physical “ego,” losing his personality.

The state machine takes care of that by means of imposing upon everyone the “doctrinal” errors of the body freed from God, rather than the errors born by the God-free mind, as was the case under communism.

It goes without saying that this physical freedom is appropriately disguised by the pragmatic and godless mind, subordinated to physical desires.

The individual freedom has been slowly and imperceptibly substituted by the freedom of “ego” in the recent centuries. The society has degraded from the priority of “being” to the dangerous domination of “having.”

The freedom of one “ego” implies non-encroachment upon the desires of another “ego.” The taboos of this freedom do not extend beyond another’s desires. Liberalism, in its logical completeness, excludes the presence of real interests in such social subjects as family, nation, and humanity. It completely denies God’s interest in people’s fulfillment of His commandments. The freedom of “I” implies that the realization of one’s desires should be constrained by the interests of another “ego,” family, nation, humanity, and Law.

“I” implies man’s completeness and integrity, an ideal which we must aspire for with God’s help.

This ideal — freedom of personality — includes a certain set of taboos, conscious self-imposed bans, or limitations. This set was formed by the religious thinking of humankind. Surprisingly, it is similar in many different cultures.

The specific feature of the Western civilization is the gradual rejection and abandonment of these taboos.

For instance, the parliaments of some Western countries granted people euthanasia, the “right” to die when they want. This “right” cancels such commandments as “Thou shall not kill” and “Honor your father and your mother.” It undermines family and nation, determines whether a person will live or die, and violates one of the chief moral taboos developed by humanity.

Another example is the “right” to promiscuity and homosexual relations: it may spare the interests and rights of other “egos,” but it still ruins such social subjects as the family and nation; it breaks the bonds with God, neglects His Word, and undermines the foundations of social life.

Materialism indeed is at odds with the family and social values. What lies at its core are the cultivation of the “right” to cupidity and boundless consumption, which destroys personality, family, nation, humanity, and the earth.

To remove these and other taboos and keep them from expanding and protecting the rights of “ego” would be a logical and consistent decision.

The dominance of corporal passions over the mind and spirit causes the human personality to collapse into the physical and material, making it dependent and servile. This is how the Orwellian “amputation” of the soul comes about. But in 1984 this occurs through the mind, through an idea, whereas now, in 2009, it goes through the body, desires, and passions. Ukraine is a case in point.

The past millennium can be described as the chronological succession of three main constituents of an integral human being — the spirit, the mind, and the body — in the Western lifestyle. A period dominated by the spirit and religiousness gave way to a period dominated by the mind and the science, which was eventually followed by the dominance of comfort and physical desires.

In other words, this millennium can be described as a gradual departure from God and degradation into various forms of idolatry. Today, it is the body that is in charge. The crippled mind, with the computer as its crutch, and a commercialized form of pseudo-religion serve its passions.

How far can the body take a human being? Until it reaches satiety, madness, and grief. What are the consequences of the obvious lack of balance between the spirit, soul, and body in the West and in Ukraine today?

“If someone violates the laws of proportion and lets something too little carry something too big – too big sails for too small a boat, too much food for too small a body, too much power for too shallow a soul – it will result in total disorder.” (Plato).

The totalitarian power in Orwell’s novel deprived the people of a full-blown life and took away their freedom and their own selves with the support of “the only true” ideology.

In the ideological struggle with communism, the West got the upper hand by defending the individual’s right to freedom. But with time man also came to lose his freedom and personality in the Western democracies under the pressure of consumerism, tempted by the desire to have things.

These are two different roads leading to the same destination, the death of an integral human being, the loss of his individuality.

They originated from an imperceptible and gradual removal of God from various spheres of social life and man’s heart. God’s place was increasingly confidently occupied by the human mind, servant of the corrupt body.

To have in order to be and to be in order to live forever! This is the slogan of the new, virtuous, intelligent human. It must become the slogan of Ukraine. If an individual or a nation chooses “to have” as their priority, they choose death, because they are putting into their foundation the perishable.