Having finished Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in my previous post I argued that we are closer to a softer, genetically engineered form of totalitarianism and that Orwell's hard and brutal controlled state is a unattainable fantastic vision. A BBC video I watched today shocked me and made me think that maybe Orwell was a relative to Nostradamus in some distant way.
The BBC reporter's visit to North Korea portrayed terrible revelations. The planned economy claims to produce enough to feed the population, yet 1/3 of the people do not receive a proper diet, the army has privilege over any food, power shortages are a common everyday, and many citizens live in primitivity and misery. People believe their Great Leader, the founder of the state, is immortal God and rules even from the after life. His son, the Dear Leader, is in charge of running things in this life.I believe that the Dear Leader indeed has Orwell's 1984 on a special place in his library because he has thoroughly applied all the methods of planned economy and brutal totalitarian control in North Korea. Powerful propaganda has taught people to be submissive and content with their life. In the military museum one recognizes Orwell's model of rewriting history. Common people believe that the Dear Leader has provided modern houses and farm mechanization, yet citizens live in primitive and poor conditions and the only tractor one sees is given from the EU. The government has ingeniously realized the need of a hateful enemy to keep people scary and under control. In this case, the "bad guys" are of course the USA. Similarly to Orwell's model, any access to the outside world is strictly forbidden. The population has its own form of intranet, with information the leader believe they should possess. None of them have heard of the World Wide Web or Google. The only leaders citizens admire (after the semi-God, immortal, or whatever Great Leader and his son the Dear Leader) are Stalin and Mao. And the most "real reality" they are exposed to is the US movie The Sound of Music. Great source of reality, indeed...
Judging North Korean people's naivety and ignorance is out of the question. How are they supposed to know if no one told them? How are they supposed to know there is a life outside this planned and controlled state, when they are not allowed to leave the country? As scary as Orwell's novel appeared to me when I read it, I never believed it could actually be realized in our contemporary world. North Korea seems to be part of the 21st century, but it poses a threat to the safety and values of the rest of the countries.
Even children, the most innocent human beings, are under the powerful propaganda as they are made to sing songs about how happy they are with their current life and how they do not envy the West for anything. But how could they envy something they haven't seen or experienced?
The battle between Orwell's hard brutality and Huxley's soft promiscuity continues. I don't know who the winner will be yet but I am terrified if those are our only options for the future - horror, subordination, and control, or sex, drugs, and blissful unawareness. As Huxley said "You pays your money and you takes your choice".
although your points are probably valid, the post sounds one sided. i mean probably you are right, but one can see from the text that you do not know too much about North Korea.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like your style of writing, but your irony of the word Democratic is not very good. Wouldve been better if you mentioned that Democratic, Peoples, and Republic actually mean the same thing (People's) in different languages. Usually, the more a country tags itself like this, the less democratic it is. Think: Republic of Bulgaria vs People's republic of Bulgaria.
Cheers, Jamie
I appreciate your honesty. Indeed, communism and all forms of totalitarian regimes are a touchy and sensitive subject. I do not impose my opinion on anyone; I just share my impressions from the short film and I attempt to connect it to 1984.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I do not know enough about the regime in North Korea. However, if you come to think about it, the best way to understand a culture and its traditions is to visit it yourself. As I have no such possibility in front of me, I judge by the available resources and I form my opinion.
I like your comment about the difference between Republic of Bulgaria vs People's Republic of Bulgaria. As I come to think about it, the more a country is not a democratic one, the more it wants to look like one in order to convince (or manipulate) the world's opinion. In that sense the Korean government uses the term for merely political, social, and economic reasons.
I don't know whether all the media information is true, or a strong propaganda. However, after North Korea left the 2010 World Cup, media coverage shared that the football players are to be sent to mines in order to be punished for their poor performance. As a result, many of the fled South Africa, never returning to North Korea.
yep i generally agree -- and most probably the regime is indeed horrible.
ReplyDeletemy point was that totalitarian orders usually put synonyms of the word "people's" which shows only vain despair. i believe its called "tautology", correct me if i'm wrong.
when i got more time i will check out a lot more of the cool articles in this blog !! j
for christ's sake check this out:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chomsky.info/articles/199312--.htm
We might also tarry briefly on Orwell's core concerns, not given quite the prominence of his critique of the official enemy. In an unpublished introduction to Animal Farm, Orwell wrote that "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for any official ban." The desired outcome is attained in part by the "general tacit agreement that `it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact," in part as a consequence of media concentration in the hands of "wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics." As a result, "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199811--.htm
ReplyDeleteYes, certainly there are counterforces at work but unfortunately, the major effect is disciplinary. This is a point that Orwell notes in works of his that aren't read. Everyone has read Animal Farm, the satire about the Soviet Union. Not many people have read the introduction to Animal Farm, and one of the reasons they never read it is it wasn't published. The introduction to Animal Farm was called "Literary Censorship in England." It wasn't published, it was found in his papers years later.
The point of the intended introduction is that, well, the book is about this totalitarian monster society, but I want to talk about England, a free society, to talk about how opinions are suppressed here, because they're suppressed with remarkable efficiency. He doesn't go into the reasons in any great depth, actually he has two sentences about the reasons. One of them is that the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain thoughts to be expressed. And the other reason is that as you go through a good education - Oxford, Cambridge, that sort of thing--you have instilled into you, you sort of internalize the fact that there are some things it just wouldn't do to say. In fact, deeper: it wouldn't do to think. And you become aware that people who do think those things - now, going beyond Orwell--people who do think those things and do say them tend to elicit a negative reaction, either to be weeded out of the system or to be marginalized or to be punished in some fashion. And the long-term effect is that success is to some considerable extent contingent on subordination to institutions of power, and that that kind of socialization--knowing what it wouldn't do to say--is a good part of our education.
some books about brainwashing in 'the Land of Free':
ReplyDelete1) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media [Paperback]by Edward S. Herman + Noam Chomsky
2)"NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century" by David Edwards
3) "When Media Goes to War" by Anthony DiMaggio
+ John Pilger etc.
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet
http://www.medialens.org/
http://www.newleftproject.org/
http://www.antiwar.org/
http://www.counterpunch.org/
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199811--.htm
ReplyDeleteYes, certainly there are counterforces at work but unfortunately, the major effect is disciplinary. This is a point that Orwell notes in works of his that aren't read. Everyone has read Animal Farm, the satire about the Soviet Union. Not many people have read the introduction to Animal Farm, and one of the reasons they never read it is it wasn't published. The introduction to Animal Farm was called "Literary Censorship in England." It wasn't published, it was found in his papers years later.
The point of the intended introduction is that, well, the book is about this totalitarian monster society, but I want to talk about England, a free society, to talk about how opinions are suppressed here, because they're suppressed with remarkable efficiency. He doesn't go into the reasons in any great depth, actually he has two sentences about the reasons. One of them is that the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain thoughts to be expressed. And the other reason is that as you go through a good education - Oxford, Cambridge, that sort of thing--you have instilled into you, you sort of internalize the fact that there are some things it just wouldn't do to say. In fact, deeper: it wouldn't do to think. And you become aware that people who do think those things - now, going beyond Orwell--people who do think those things and do say them tend to elicit a negative reaction, either to be weeded out of the system or to be marginalized or to be punished in some fashion. And the long-term effect is that success is to some considerable extent contingent on subordination to institutions of power, and that that kind of socialization--knowing what it wouldn't do to say--is a good part of our education.
Eric Arthur Blair or George Orwell; his pseudonym, wrote an absolute masterpiece with this allegorical novella. It's a lesson to revolutions everywhere that power turns people into pigs, and pigs into people.
ReplyDelete