1984: Was Big Brother the good guy?

After watching this movie im a bit torn on whether or not Big Brother was actually in the wrong for doing what they did. All they did was prove a point, the point being that love is a lie. Both Winston and Julia sold each other out when subjected to torture and couldn't even look each other in the eyes when they say each other on the street. Big Brother just made them realize that the love they thought they felt was bullshit, almost doing them a favor in a way.

Not really. Love is very real, and very precious, but it is still constrained by physical laws. Torture would break anyone eventually. That doesn't constitute a 'lie'.

But the torture was psychological in nature, arguably so was the love. When confronted with there worst fears (Winston being rats) the "love that overcomes all" was proven to be a weakness and a fantasy. Both Winston and Julia were set free once they admitted these truths and couldn't bare to look at eachother afterwards. Love and fear came from the same place and fear was stronger

>But the torture was psychological in nature

I read the book a while ago but i remember winston looking like death after seeing himself in the mirror following his torture. Missing teeth, patches of hair, extreme weight loss. I agree that the primary torture was psychological but there was also a lot of physical degradation.

>"love that overcomes all" was proven to be a weakness and a fantasy.

Love overcomes all is a fantasy. We are limited beings, but i find that our virtues can only have meaning if they are by their nature limited and subject to stress. So, yes, that would be a 'fantasy' but its arguably one, at least to me, that makes life worth living.

>Love and fear came from the same place and fear was stronger

Torture, physical or psychological, can eventually overcome (maybe almost ) everyone.

Big Brother is definitely not a good guy for breaking the human spirit. Also, tale it in the reverse: is hate a lie? If i were able to someone's condition someone from a state of rage to happiness does it mean rage doesn't exist or is a cynical ploy? Human emotions are not transcendental but should feel that way.

Interesting that that's what you took from it.

The implication is not only that "Love" is bullshit but that reality itself doesn't real.

"Collective Solipsism" as O'Brian says. He could turn himself into a soap bubble and fly away if he so wished. And he indeed could as far as Winston is concerned.

It's a dark idea, together with the eternal State. Currently reading Plato's Republic and there are many parallels.

>I read the book a while ago but i remember winston looking like death after seeing himself in the mirror following his torture. Missing teeth, patches of hair, extreme weight loss. I agree that the primary torture was psychological but there was also a lot of physical degradation.
ive only ever seen the movie but the missing hair/teeth could be stress induced, and if that's the case I have a bit sympathy for Winston but the point still stands.
>Love overcomes all is a fantasy. We are limited beings, but i find that our virtues can only have meaning if they are by their nature limited and subject to stress. So, yes, that would be a 'fantasy' but its arguably one, at least to me, that makes life worth living.
but the fact love can break means it wasent worth having in the first place and therefore non productive
>Torture, physical or psychological, can eventually overcome (maybe almost ) everyone.

Big Brother is definitely not a good guy for breaking the human spirit. Also, tale it in the reverse: is hate a lie? If i were able to someone's condition someone from a state of rage to happiness does it mean rage doesn't exist or is a cynical ploy? Human emotions are not transcendental but should feel that way.
"breaking the human spirit" got me in the feels desu, this is actually makes a lot a scense. throw love out the window and apply those same tactics to a different emotion or thought, I think the point big brother was actually trying to make now is the they can make you believe 2+2=5. thank you for the thought out answer btw

Love is the law faggot.

Love under will?

george orwell wasn't his real name

he was in british intelligence, had access to inner circles of power, knew the plans

look into it

alduos huxley, brave new world, another insider

i don't think these books are even warnings but rather pre-conditioning

>"Collective Solipsism" as O'Brian says. He could turn himself into a soap bubble and fly away if he so wished. And he indeed could as far as Winston is concerned
you and America kinda had the same point around the end of the argument. but I think he meant its not that it isn't real its that they can make you believe anything hence 2+2=5
>It's a dark idea, together with the eternal State. Currently reading Plato's Republic and there are many parallels
ive never read it but I could guess that's the angle plato leans towards, considering he was a student of Socrates all his work is based of the "dust in the wind" argument

>no link
>reddit spacing

why would you post this shit without sending me a link in all seriousness? so im supposed to go on a wild goosechase to find find info that could very well be bullshit? if you cared enough to redpill me on this you would have given a link, your just being a lazy leaf desu

>Leaf loving totalitarianism and psychological torture

Imajin moy sjoc

>but I think he meant its not that it isn't real its that they can make you believe anything hence 2+2=5

Well O'Brian asked Winston the same thing you are proposing. "Do you think there is some place where past events are stored so they can't be changed". Winston couldn't point to anything other than his memory.

Then about present, he asked Winston whether he can see 5 fingers intead of 4, and eventually he could.

Here's the funny part. You could say "it's objectively real" and that, after all, O'Brian knows perfectly well that he's holding 4 fingers and not 5. But you need to remember the scene where O'Brian burns the "problematic" news article and his infamous statement "I do not remember". How do you know that he really doesn't believe what he says? That he really doesn't see 5 fingers when he points 4? After all, if he wasn't a true believer, he'd be detected just as Winston was.

So if Winston eventually sees 5, O'Brian sees 5, where are those 4 fingers really? Are they any different from your distorted memory of the past? Perhaps the most real thing is the concensus of those willing to dominate and torture, willing to impose what is real by sheer brutality and will.

i heard it on alex jones so i know it's true

>but the fact love can break means it wasent worth having in the first place and therefore non productive

Under this type of though, everything is worthless because everything ultimately decays and breaks down. Love is largely what makes life worth living. I completely agree with you on transcendental, otherworldly love: we humans don't have it, but what we do have is nothing to sneer at either. It would have been better had winston not been broken of his illusions. A certain level of benign naivety is conductive to the human spirit.


>I think the point big brother was actually trying to make now is the they can make you believe 2+2=5.

This is trickier, but while they can make you believe such a thing, had such mathematical law been put into practice Oceania would quickly collapse. Mass delusion does not make something true.

A fucking leaf watches big brother and sides with the government

>had such mathematical law been put into practice Oceania would quickly collapse. Mass delusion does not make something true

My counterargument is "Oceania isn't collapsing. It's doing perfectly well".

Big brother reminds me exactly of what the Jews do in real life. Emmanuel Goldstein is symbolic of controlled opposition

1984 basically is stating that (((they))) control both sides

he's probably young. lacks the instinct for social things and has become withdrawn and logical like a vulcan. but he's still young so his logic lacks depth and he hasn't yet embraced the kind of emotional intelligence that for most people comes naturally.

as he ages he'll become more human, he'll get it one day

The point was that you can torture someone to believe anything,
it takes the notion of solipsism as the antithesis of epistemics to it's logical conclusion. Given a world in which I cannot verify any truth myself, I cannot attempt to verify the epistemological position of solipsism, I cannot verify that I am safe even within the confines of my skull. Worse than that it then injects its own external "collective solipsism", the effective destruction of the individual.

Love is an internally verified state, it may be "bullshit" but it was something that was not created by big brother, big brother simply sought to break all that was not created of itself. Even goldstein, the figment of external distraction, of hope was carefully created and controlled.

If all the inputs are managed then there exists no possibility of thought beyond big brother's collective solipsism, no ability to develop the idea to develop the mathematics and track the trajectory of the constantly raining bombs to see where they come from. The point isn't that humans cannot develop their own bullshit, it was that they cannot develop at all.

Big Brother's sin is that he forces people to cooperate rather than making people see that cooperation is necessary for survival of evolution.
He's got the right ideas but executes them wrongly.

Big brother isn't a person, it's a system.

Everything they did was for the purpose of maintaining the state, and it doesn't matter what may have happened as a result of their tortures, for any good that may have come from it was not the intent. The point they ultimately proved is that people will be tortured until surrender in the event that they break the social order, and attempting to credit them for doing anything else is like saying The Nazis purposefully ended The Great Depression in WW2.

>Here's the funny part. You could say "it's objectively real" and that, after all, O'Brian knows perfectly well that he's holding 4 fingers and not 5. But you need to remember the scene where O'Brian burns the "problematic" news article and his infamous statement "I do not remember". How do you know that he really doesn't believe what he says? That he really doesn't see 5 fingers when he points 4? After all, if he wasn't a true believer, he'd be detected just as Winston was
after you posted this America said that "mass delusion dosent make something real and that oceana would collapse" so I think if that's true then O'Brien, being in the inner circle would to a degree know its bullshit and would need to know its bullshit in order to regulate the flow of info.

That's the doublethink, he can both believe that he has 4 fingers held up, while knowing that some people may think otherwise and require correcting. It's an easy position to draw parallels to; you can know what someone with a certain stance will say in a particular situation, that doesn't make their stance correct just that you can sufficiently model them.

Sup Forums needs a book club

We can only talk about Mein Kampf, Brave New World, and 1984 so many times.

His books stink though

Most of the lies forced on the people were inconsequential to their existence in that they could still function productively while believing them. They concerned history, politics. If everyone in Oceania, including the engineers of the floating fortresses and bombs and guns, sincerely believed 2 + 2 =5, none of those things would function. The result would be ruins.

Leafs are anti torture.

Yes, and people like O'Brian would beat the shit out of Winstons with bats until they believed they live in the same paradise, even if they were all in muds and ruins.

Nigger this is bullshit

We have a detailed history of Orwell, including when he fought in the Spanish civil war alongside Ernest Hemingway. He was no illuminati-man.

so what your saying is that O'brein 100% believes that's hes holding up 4 fingers but can see why people would believe otherwise and correct them. I find that very hard to belive that he dosent know how many fingers he has up. if he understand why people would think otherwise then he in turn would know deep down hes full of shit. if it was a requirement for them to believe what the masses do then I think that there couldn't truly be someone in his position of power

Read the book instead.

You belong in a fucking oven. I was into (((Thelema))) for a long time, but when you learn about the higher rites of the OTO and realize Spirit Cooking was created by Crowley you should immediately lose interest.
The final degree of the OTO literally teaches the performance and importance of butt sex magick.
.t someone whose parents are in the OTO

If thqts true then how come its pretty common to not tell shit when tortured

The interesting element here is "The Book". Interesting becuse it is the ("objective") truth written in form of enemy propaganda. Paradox here is that they are reading enemy propaganda (that one usually considers lies) to find the truth (specifically, for the inner circle, how to rule). Additional layer is that that "enemy" that wrote it doesn't even exist, or more specifically that they wrote it themselves.

I will have to re-read inside-ministry chapter again. I remember O'Brian had a pretty good explanation for your objection. The ability to double-think was a part of it, but how exactly he discards actuality escapes me at the moment.

Ultimately, I think it matters more that there are those willing to rule and do what O'Brian does for there to be rulers, than for them to posses some ultimate truth.

>If thqts true then how come its pretty common to not tell shit when tortured

Torture will break literally anyone. If you "don't tell", you had a "bad" torturer.
Turner Diaries also has a good chapter on this.

so what your saying is if there weren't people like Winston Big Brother wouldn't know how to do its job correctly?

when Winston asks "is there even a resistance" and hes told "you'll never find out" was this because there really is no resistance or that people like Winston is as far as a "resistance" ever gets? keep in mind ive only ever seen the movie, but if that's true then what you said is probably true

Not what I'm getting at, but the statement is correct.

Even O'Brian near the end says that it's all about domination. That Oceania is the eternal domination by the strong over the weak. And that they will always, always find the weak who is the offender. If there is no offence, they will invent it so they can dominate someone because domination is the sole interest of those who aim for rulership positions. They all crave to be the one pressing the eternal boot and without that impulse Oceania wouldn't exist.

It's probably as you say, that it only gets so far as Winston did. Alternatively, if something exist that gives them troubles, it's the proles (as Winston says). I do highly recommend reading the book, I couldn't figure out anything from the movie.

And they will fully embrace it, when they need it to enforce their pronouns.

It isn't common, retard. What's common is for people who don't know anything to make up what they think the torturer wants to hear.

but isn't the whole big brother thing to promote nationality? for instance they have a designated tine everyday to hate another country, so If Obrien admits its about dominating the weak people then dosent that kind of go against everything that makes big brother run? they direct the hate of the people, by letting him know he should hate them dosent that still leave a loose end for a resistance?

Well the love of the Big Brother is a measure of obedience. Those that despise the State will invitably hate the Big Brother and curse him (as Winston's neighbor does in his sleep). Those that love the State (whether ruled or rulers) will truly love Big Brother because everything is already to their liking. These people are in the clear. There will always be those that will rebel, one way or the other.

So no, it's not solely to promote nationality. It's a figure of protector to one and a figure of oppression to another.

But I'm really stretching it from my memory at this point. Just read it desu