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[Mr Tk]

In 1984, they also mention the Capitalists (recognisable by their top hats), and how they were overthrown to bring about "The Party".

Although that could just the Party's 'official' history.

[KaelGotDwarves]

In a Brave New World,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Savage is told that a great war occurred which devastated the population, following which the World Controllers quickly consolidated power and took steps to ensure that no such war would ever happen again. Mustapha Mond was sympathetic but still threw The Savage back to the brave new world as an "experiment" to see what his outside influence would make upon the conditioned people. They couldn't understand him, and after the Savage lost what he perceived was his humanity by beating the girl he loved who just wanted him for sex, and joining them for an orgy of sex and drugs, he "atones"/ragequits by hanging himself.

The population was limited to 2 billion people on earth, the state maintained a close watch but rarely needed to interfere (even their submission tactics involved soma drugs in aerosol form), "art" was subverted, and the population was made happy with their society.

The book was unilaterally criticized when it first came out, but highly praised today. Not too many books from the 30s have gained such popularity or remain relevant to us. It was published 17 years before Orwell's 1984 and remains one of the most banned books around the world.

I quote wiki (and apparently Playboy magazine): Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."

Oh Kurt.

[Strife26]

One thing that I don't like about 1984 or Brave New World (and maybe I missed this), but neither of them really explains how the world got that way.  There's just a big blank spot where the world and the statistically rational and reactive human race vanishes, replaced by the meat robots the premise of each relies on.  I think the transition is at least as important as how they got that way, and would really make each of them much more believable.  But no, the world just went to bed one night full of intellectual conflict and obstination, and woke up doublethinking and being born in test tubes.

I love the thought that the Party managed to take over the US and remove all civie guns in 40 years. How is that remotely possibly?

[Dwarf]

One thing that I don't like about 1984 or Brave New World (and maybe I missed this), but neither of them really explains how the world got that way.  There's just a big blank spot where the world and the statistically rational and reactive human race vanishes, replaced by the meat robots the premise of each relies on.  I think the transition is at least as important as how they got that way, and would really make each of them much more believable.  But no, the world just went to bed one night full of intellectual conflict and obstination, and woke up doublethinking and being born in test tubes.

I love the thought that the Party managed to take over the US and remove all civie guns in 40 years. How is that remotely possibly?

Gun Law discussion inbound!

Uhm... well, you go there, and say, "Hey people. Give us your guns, or you will be shot/imprisoned/whatever". I suppose that's possible with a not-really-democratic government.

[sproingie]

I love the thought that the Party managed to take over the US and remove all civie guns in 40 years. How is that remotely possibly?

They told them if they didn't, The Terrorists Would Win.

You want doublethink, go to any teabagger convention.  This is a populist movement that screams for capital gains tax cuts, an angry mob going after Wall Street who got their marching orders from a tantrum thrown by a commodities trader.

[Servant Corps]

One thing that I don't like about 1984 or Brave New World (and maybe I missed this), but neither of them really explains how the world got that way.  There's just a big blank spot where the world and the statistically rational and reactive human race vanishes, replaced by the meat robots the premise of each relies on.  I think the transition is at least as important as how they got that way, and would really make each of them much more believable.  But no, the world just went to bed one night full of intellectual conflict and obstination, and woke up doublethinking and being born in test tubes.

I love the thought that the Party managed to take over the US and remove all civie guns in 40 years. How is that remotely possibly?

If Oceania's government is sufficiently decentralized, it may not need that...

You want doublethink, go to any teabagger convention.

Doublethinking is not that. From Wikipedia, Doublethink is:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.[1]"

Doublethink also serve a purpose other than deluding the people; it is also useful to delude the government, by allowing the government to learn from its mistakes while believing that it was always right to begin with.

EDIT: Wikipedia claimed that Winston used doublethink in a way to continue his rebellion against Oceania:

Paradoxically, during the long and harrowing process in which Winston is systematically tortured and broken, he contemplates using doublethink as the ultimate recourse in his rebellion—i.e. to let himself become consciously a loyal party member while letting his hatred of the party remain an unconscious presence deep in his mind, and let it surface again at the very moment of his execution so that "the bullet would enter a free mind" which the Thought Police would not have a chance to tamper with again.

The book's ending in principle leaves open the possibility that Winston did manage to do exactly that, and that though the book ends with his mind full of "love for Big Brother", Winston's rebelliousness was still there, hidden even from himself by a supreme exercise of doublethink and ready to surface at his execution shortly afterwards (which it doesn't).

[sproingie]

Wikipedia's speculation about the ending reminds me why I don't read Wikipedia if I can help it.  The folks who edited that article should go back to their lovingly detailed dossiers about anime characters.  He had been crushed.  The end.

The original post was spoilered, but I suppose anyone reading on in the thread should expect them.

[KaelGotDwarves]

You want doublethink, go to any teabagger convention.

Doublethinking is not that. From Wikipedia, Doublethink is:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.]"

BARRAK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST EMPTY-SUIT MUSLIM RADICAL-BLACK-CHRISTIAN FASCIST COMMIE NAZI THAT IS DOING NOTHING AND RUINING THE COUNTRY AT THE SAME TIME!!1!!1!1!

Yeah uhhh, know how I know you haven't been listening to fox news lately?

[LegoLord]

No examples that have been stated as evidence that BNW or 1984 could happen actually exist on a large enough scale, or anywhere close to it, for the situations described in those books to come to be.    And sorry, but "give us your guns or you will be shot!" doesn't actually work.  Wars prove that.  Really, there are way too many people who would remain hopeful even through 1984's world.  And the book assumes that anyone in the Inner Party would want power and serve the party to do so.  It does not account for selfish pricks that would screw with the system.  Realistically, corrupt officials would be bad for a malicious government as well as a good government.  As for BNW, sure the world controllers took over after WWIII, but how?  There was a war, and so they say "we're in charge now"?  How do you even begin to develop a system like that world wide?  How do you get everyone to agree with its establishment, even with diminished population numbers?

And you forget, even today not everyone can get the level of luxury that people in BNW get, and people who like to be more independent are not nearly so harshly cast out from their community, if ever.

Both books take real situations to unrealistic extremes, and that's all there is to it.

[Strife26]

Wikipedia's speculation about the ending reminds me why I don't read Wikipedia if I can help it.  The folks who edited that article should go back to their lovingly detailed dossiers about anime characters.  He had been crushed.  The end.

The original post was spoilered, but I suppose anyone reading on in the thread should expect them.

Major mind screw spoiler:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But the epilogue about newspeak is clearly written in past tense, implying that eventually, Ingsoc falls.

And I, Strife26 of the Bay 12 forums personally guarantees that a demand from the US government to collect all guns would instantly cause most of the military and a fair bit of the civvie parts of the country to declare said government guilty of treason.

[cowofdoom78963]

not if the military and the civvie parts of the country are in on the plan.

[LegoLord]

not if the military and the civvie parts of the country are in on the plan.

And that completely ignores both context and something I had just said.

[Strife26]

not if the military and the civvie parts of the country are in on the plan.

"I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . ."

[Servant Corps]

And the book assumes that anyone in the Inner Party would want power and serve the party to do so.  It does not account for selfish pricks that would screw with the system.  Realistically, corrupt officials would be bad for a malicious government as well as a good government.

Which could serve as a good starting hook for a book set in the 1984 universe.

Strife26, a employee in the Ministry of Love, while concealing his hate for Big Brother and love for treasonous projectile-firing weapons, is assigned a mission to track down corrupt Inner Party members, whose greed has the potential to do more damage to IngSoc than a thousand Brotherhood cells.

[Strife26]

To my fanfic folder!!

Operation Citadel writing commences!