How Far Does the Description of Totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four Fit Reality - Assignment Example

How far does the of totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four fit reality? Thesis: Similarly to the society in G. Orwell’s “1984”, nearly all modern societies can be classified as “disciplinary” societies, “discipline” being a type of power, a technology penetrating all possible institutions, connecting them, prolonging their existence, stimulating their convergence and exposition in a brand-new regime. A) What is “disciplinary” society? M. Foucault’s “panopticism” principle and its application to G. Orwell’s “1984” and modern society A quarter of a century ago, Michel Foucault wrote a book about the history of European prison – “Supervise and punish”. This book became one of the basic sources of the new philosophy, which allowed reviewing the problems of delinquency and criminality. The philosopher describes the so-called “panopticism” principle. Jeremy Bentham who lived in the XVIIIth century, called a prison, where it was possible to keep an eye constantly on the prisoners, “a panopticum”. However, Foucault sees this concept not only in prisons, but also in all other social institutions: a ward in a hospital, a class in a school, a corridor in a university. The principle of “initial” panopticum is as follows: there is a building which has a circular form (a ring), and in its centre there is a tower. The tower has big windows which face the interior side of the ring. The tower standing against the light, the prisoners’ figures can be seen clearly. An individual is an object of information, but is never a subject of communication. If there are criminals in the cells, there is no danger of a plot, if there are ill people – there is no danger of spreading infection. If there are insane people – there will be no risk of mutual violence; if these are schoolchildren – they will never be able to cheat; if workers are kept there – there are none of the pleasures which can keep them away from work. (Foucault 1999, pp. 292–294) Michel Foucault defines panopticism either as a concrete light organization which is characteristic for a prison, or as an abstract principle, a certain “mechanism” which is able to penetrate into all functions and structures, all sides of human life. An abstract formula of panopticism is, therefore, not “to see without being seen”, but to force a certain type of behaviour onto any number of people, any society. This social group should be reduced, placed into an enclosed space. A certain type of behaviour is enforced by means of relocation in space, classification in time, arrangement in space and time. Power is not necessarily a centralized power of a state. According to M. Foucault, the State itself emerges as a result of cooperation of numerous mechanisms and centres, which are situated at a different level and independently form the microphysics of power. The reason why we are talking here about M. Foucault’s concept is that the panopticum described in his philosophic words is very similar to the society in “1984” by George Orwell. Which is more, all modern societies can be classified as “disciplinary” societies. Army, schools, hospitals, and other institutions have more and more widely used such mechanisms of power illustrated by Bentham’s “Panopticum”. The spread of these mechanisms led to creation of the “disciplined society”, in which the “visibility” of the minority by the majority was gradually forced out by the “visibility” of the majority by the minority”, and the spectacular character of sovereign power – by the power of a series of intent glances. (Grachev M., 2001, pp. 99 – 100) Michel Foucault’s point of view as for the development of forcing and controlling mechanisms of the power is of course relevant to internal affairs, military, tax, intelligence and security services. Still, terrible as it may sound, our society is also entirely panoptic. Panopticum is the universal model of potential realization of political power. Panoptic society is an extreme degree of panopticism. Such society may seem ideal, but is it really? This society allows to supervise – no, not lunatics, or delinquents, or naughty schoolchildren, but ALL citizens. (Otstavnov, M., 2000) Supervision, or surveillance has become a core concept of nowadays society. Howard Rheingold opposes surveillance to literacy and erudition. According to him, Michel Foucault examined social institutions, by means of which powerful people supervise “potentially rebellious masses”. These technologies can easily be used for seizing power. 2) Political system of the modern societies and their connection with the Orwell’s anti-utopia. Is democracy possible? Panoptic society is not only a society where all of us are viewed. It is a society where power can be grabbed by a tyrant. He or she should be charismatic and know the depths of a human soul – then he will succeed in such a society. Many tyrants in the history of humanity have manipulated the crowds in order to reach their goals. Some Germans say: if it had not been for the Munich beer, there would not have been a Hitler. Adolph Hitler started his propaganda in beer-halls (Hofbräuhäuser) alone, but later gained popularity among the illiterate attendants of those places. If anyone disagreed with his opinion, he would come at this person, often using a beer mug as a weapon. And it was that very illiterate crowd that contributed to Hitler’s further rise to power. The regime can control the citizens, confuse them and supervise them. It means, it can do with people whatever it wants to, provided that it has decent means of supervision. Subconsciously, people want to be supervised. Conformism (longing and readiness to comply with the opinion if an authority of the majority) is of course not a vice, but a misfortune of many humans. It is a well known psychological phenomenon (a series of experiments with groups of people were carried out in the United States of America in the 1950s). The less a person knows, the less he or she is educated, the more he tends to conformism, and consequently, the easier it will be to supervise him. Mass media is perhaps one of the means to control people, especially in non-democratic societies. I would even say, the effect of the media is greater in pseudo-democratic societies. My point is: if there is no democracy, people - with some exceptions – are sure to understand that sooner or later. They will not easily believe anything written in a newspaper or said over the wire. They will “screen” the information and understand it sometimes in quite a reversed way. If a state claims its being a democracy, the situation becomes much worse. Nobody will ever make head or tail, who is right, which newspaper says the truth and which broadcasting corporation is worth while listening to. At the same time, it is most likely that in such a country NO MASS-MEDIUM is right and truthful. All of them back the policy, or position, or person not on the basis of their personal sympathy or journalistic ethics, but being guided by quite mercantile thoughts: who will pay more? What the editor told me to write or to say? Will I not be fired if I stick to this or that point? George Orwell in “1984” assumes that “men all over the world, unless the course of history changes, may lose their most human qualities, become soulless automatons, and even not be aware of it.” Erich Fromm, speaking about the 20th century, believes that people’s hope for social or individual progress was many a time broken by the insanity of both the first and the second World Wars, Stalin’s betrayal of the socialist hopes, the upsurge of barbarism in Germany, and the use of atomic bombs. The development of the thermonuclear weapons at today’s appalling pace poses a threat to the civilization. Yet many people do not realize it. Many argue that even if several dozen million people were killed in a nuclear war, life would go on as before. (Fromm, E., 1984, p. 259) Guy Debord, French theorist of art, film director and artist had created a concept of “the society of spectacle” which is based upon the panoptic principle. A spectacle is viewed by him as a tendency to present the world which can not be comprehended directly, via different specialized mediators. Sight is claimed to be a privileged human sense. According to Guy Debord, all bourgeois society is built according to the principles of quasi-revolutionary ideals, and it gives birth to a primitive spectacle of totalitarian bureaucratic society. G. Debord considers proletarians only spectators of the revolution which was declared to have been made for the sake of these proletarians. People cannot be conscious and active agents of the revolution. (Usmanova, 2001, p. 195) Such appropriation of people’s “votes” by a small group of “representatives” created once the greatest illusion in the history of humanity, a fictitious world of “the state of workers and farmers” (i.e. Soviet Union) The power has never represented anyone but itself – though it may seem that the principle of representation creates a basis for any political system, as the authorities should defend the interests of the people. As Guy Debord puts it, in reality any political system aims at falsification of the social life. A question appears: is there a real democracy? The answer is – democracy is, first of all, an outward of democracy, its simulacre. A spectacle and power are interrelated categories. The authorities taught themselves to manipulate vision and make excessive use of it. Martin Heidegger in his work “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and Time”) never claims that the world is positive. The everyday world (das Man) is interpreted as a world of non-Self, non-authenticity, groundlessness, dispersion, dissolving, being lost in publicity. All these characteristics are covered by the term “das Man” which is an impersonal pronoun, and is usually translated and understood as “they”, a ruck. But in reality it cannot be translated at all – das Man is an anonymous world, a world with no freedom and responsibility. (Semenova, V., 2001, p.99) This world does not have any agents, nobody makes any decisions, and thus does not bear any responsibility. “Das Man” is not “this”, and not “that” – the anonymous character of “das Man” makes a person reject his or her freedom and become “just like everyone else”. “Das Man” is per se a crowd. The world of “das Man’ is built according to the principles of alienation and unification, in this world each and everybody is “another”, and even to himself a person is “another”. The personality is dead. The individuality is dissolved by the average nature of the world. That is the main power that rules the world – the power of “another” people, who are in reality the same as we are. We ourselves provide them with the power to control and supervise us, because we belong to them, and therefore strengthen their power over us. Friedrich Nietzsche in one of his works “Vom Nutzen und Vorteil der Historie fuer das Leben” (“Of use and harm of the history for the life” claims that there is only one condition which makes happiness possible for a human being: an ability to forget, to feel “non-historically.” For the philosopher, studying history is only significant for determining one’s life objectives. F. Nietzsche sets up three theses which reveal contradictions between life and wisdom: 1) when there is an abundance of history, a human ceases to be a human; 2) history as a pure science destroys life; 3) the basis of history is life itself, but the life also needs history. There are three types of history: monumental (singling out famous people and events), antique (helps people preserve and respect the past, the history of his folk, to become an integral part of the society) and critical (the power to break the past, so that to have the possibility to continue living). Thus, antique history distorts the past, as he feelings of one separate person, one community, even the whole folk is still a very small world, and one cannot peer behind its borders. Nietzsche considers all the modern society to be “spoiled by history”. The abundance of history brings to the delusion that the present epoch is better that all the previous ones. Thus, all people’s instincts are broken, separate individuals, “Selves” cannot form. On the basis of this abundance, belief that the humanity is old appears. Moreover, the epoch becomes ironical towards itself, which leads to cynicism, which, in its turn, contributes to the development of “mercantile egoistic practice” paralysing vital energy. Thus, F. Nietzsche comes to the conclusion that “modern man suffers from the weakened self.” The suppression of the instincts by the history turned people to shadows which are afraid to expose their personalities. 3) Psychological attacks in the modern society. Terrorism and its connection to panopticism Terrorism is also based upon panopticism principle. Terrorists also try to enforce a certain type of behaviour upon the society. It is indeed hard to comprehend who embodies “a watchful eye” in the case of terrorist attacks. On the one hand, the terrorists seem to represent “supervisors” in this system, as they try to make us behave in a way that is beneficial for them. On the other hand, it is primarily we who see the terrorists and the results of their actions. The system seem, to work in a reversed way – we see, but we are not the Power. They are being seen, but they seem to represent the Power. Unless they are being seen, there will be no use of all their attacks: Terrorists only terrorise those who see them. It is our fears and frights, our pain of death that make them powerful and encourage them to continue their actions. It is not the hostages themselves who are terrorised, but primarily those who are the spectators, who are to comply with the terrorists’ demands. The direct victims are not in contact with the offenders. It is a very philosophical question, and I am not sure that I can answer it on the spot: who suffers more – those who are being terrorised, tortured and killed, or those who are doomed to live in constant fear for themselves, their relatives and friends? As it goes, the expectation of death is much worse than the death itself. Terrorists’ real victims are all of us; they make suffer cities and whole states, not just individuals and families. Unless people teach themselves not to be afraid of terrorism – which is not at all an easy task, of course – there will always be sense in what these delinquents are doing. The vicious circle. The more Governments around the world fight against terrorism, the more large-scale their activity becomes. The point is, that trying to eliminate terrorism, the so-called democratic states, primarily the United States of America, resort to absolutely undemocratic means. If you bomb those who disagree with you, burn their houses to the ground, and slay their nation with weapons of mass destruction, you should not be surprised at any hostile feeling towards you in those who survive. The more Arabs are killed, the more of the rest of the Arab world will stand up united against the offender, and the more American and European families will live in constant fear for their lives. One of the main jeopardies posed by terrorism is that it is moat likely to turn people to a crowd. Thus, there will no more be any talk of “the Self”, the individuality. When people are afraid they act just like animals do – they stay together, and moreover, they think, do, and speak the same. If anybody begins to claim that one should not be afraid of terrorism, that our fears is the terrorists’ most deadly weapon, he is looked down upon as a freak. Let us also consider the semantics of the word itself: “terrorism” and “terrorists” have the same root – “terror”. They are not simply “killers” who deprive people of their lives. They are vampires sucking vital energy out of their victims – and a victim is everyone who sees them and is afraid of them. Their aim is obvious – all the same, it is to flare up fear in the hearts of the world’s community. If they began to slaughter children, what will come next? They try different “methods” to intimidate their victims, and they are very resourceful indeed: first their hostages were, as a rule, “normal” people. Then they began to take journalists, celebrities, and high-profile persons in order to attract public attention to themselves and provoke people’s fear: if even such a wealthy and powerful person as X could be abducted by them, what can possibly happen to common people like me? When it did not seem to work, the terrorists began to take more people hostage each time. People began to be afraid of going to crowded places, to the theatres, cinemas, rock-concerts, even to the shops sometimes – that is, they started to fear to live. When September 11, 2001 attacks came, their effect was entirely based upon visual perception. Millions of people around the world were stuck to their TV screens unable to do anything, to help that catastrophe in any way, and just watching the twin towers collapsing, hundreds of people dying before their very eyes. The terrorists then managed to overcome us. They actually supervised us, and punished us. We did exactly what they wanted us to do: watched and feared, and believed that they are the real power, and we are only a crowd. We are a mass that only can stare – and do what they are told to do. And in order to stop all that, we have to break away from the crowd and become individuals. Conclusion Crowd is the most dangerous, the most powerful and, at the same time, the most irrational and helpless entity that can ever be. Crowd deprives us of our individuality, of our “Selves”. This is clearly shown by Orwell in his “1984”. One does not have to actually be out there, among thousands of people in the crowd, in the street, to be a part of it. Anywhere, anytime one will be a part of that crowd provided that you react in a way they want you to. Same as Orwell’s characters, we are all living in a panoptic society, which is constantly being viewed by someone, and it is not always easy to define, who is a supervisor, and who is a supervised. Sometimes it seems as if power does not exist at all, and the only power that rules the panoptic societies is the power of common fear – as well as the power of the blind belief that there IS some power. The principle of panopticum was first applied to a construction of a prison. This is a brilliant metaphor of our world, to my mind. We are all kept in prison – and this prison is our fears, our complexes, and our ignorance. Just think of it: we are constantly being forced to behave in some way which is profitable for someone else. We chose “our” candidate at the election, though we cannot be sure that we will live better. We buy the product which is advertised because a nice blond with enchanting smile told us to in a last commercial. We are afraid when someone wants us to be afraid, we cry when someone wants us to cry, and all we actually do all our lives is adapting to someone else’s will. In order to beak this vicious connection we have to become Individuals. Please do not get it wrong – I do not call upon to reject society and community, for these are everlasting values. We have to find a compromise with the outer world, and not to suppress ourselves for the sake of the society. That is the only way to become an individual. Bibliography 1. Foucault, M. Supervise and punish: the birth of prison. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1999. 2. Fromm, E. Afterword. In: Orwell, G. 1984. New York: A Signet Classic, 1984, pp. 257 – 260. 3. Grachev M. “Communicational media as a tool of transforming the socio-political reality.” Vestnik of RUDN. 2001. – № 3. pp. 88–103 4. Orwell, G. “1984” 5. Otstavnov, Maxim. The extremely personal. 26.09.2000. Cited: February 9, 2010. Available on the Internet: 6. Semenova, V. Heidegger. In: Postmodernism. Minsk: Interservis. 2001, p. 93-105. 7. Usmanova, A. Debord. In: Postmodernism. Minsk: Interservis. 2001, p. 193-195 Read More