The Complete Failure of '1984' ｜ 10⧸26⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per minute
165.49805
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Hate speech
4
sentences flagged
Summary
Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984, has been read as required reading in American public schools for decades. And yet, it was never actually written as a critical work of literature. Instead, it served as a convenient shorthand for government control and propaganda.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:25.260
Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:00:30.000
Progressive media outlets are celebrating the release of Julia,
00:00:40.580
a new feminist retelling of 1984 authorized by George Orwell's estate.
00:00:45.380
One glowing review from the Los Angeles Times declared that the new novel outclassed Orwell's dystopian classic
00:00:50.960
and suggested that it should take the original's place in high school English curricula.
00:00:57.500
Perhaps the 20th century's most famous novel about propaganda,
00:01:01.220
in which the main character's job is to update the historical record to conform to the current government narrative,
00:01:07.300
has been updated to conform with modern propaganda.
00:01:10.940
The media, which in theory serve as the safeguard against exactly this form of centralized information manipulation,
00:01:17.700
are instead its most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
00:01:20.260
Though we live in a society whose conception of authoritarianism has been shaped almost entirely by 1984,
00:01:27.060
Orwell's novel failed to slow our rush headlong toward centralized state control.
00:01:32.640
Humans are narrative creatures who don't interact with facts in a vacuum.
00:01:37.400
Stories are critical because they create a shared context and vocabulary in which we can place the facts that we encounter.
00:01:43.920
Even going back to Plato, most civilizations understood that the stories that they collectively tell themselves
00:01:50.680
shape the very conceptual landscape on which people approach issues.
00:01:55.980
Orwell's book has served as the shared narrative context in which America and many other western nations
00:02:01.520
discuss the possibility of tyrannical state authority.
00:02:04.940
Modern advances in mass transit, mass communication, and mass production during the early 20th century
00:02:12.000
allowed for the rapid centralization of state power,
00:02:14.880
and gave rise to nightmarish regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
0.55
00:02:19.940
Orwell's most famous work perfectly captures the nature of those regimes
00:02:24.020
in its depiction of brutal authoritarian government backed by plenty of direct opposition and the threat of force.
00:02:30.420
The dystopian novel became the universal reference point for tyranny thanks to its ubiquitous assignment
00:02:36.900
as required reading in American public schools.
00:02:40.980
Although the deterioration of public education has meant fewer modern students will read the book,
00:02:46.800
for many decades 1984 was likely the only novel most Americans had read that provided such a conceptual framework.
00:02:53.860
And yet, while most people treat 1984 as the critical warning on what an authoritarian government looks like,
00:03:00.880
they never seem to consider why it was included in compulsory public education in the first place.
00:03:07.660
The truth is that while 1984 serves as a good warning against the dangers of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union,
0.71
00:03:13.700
it fails to equip students with the tools necessary to oppose the total state that is currently consuming America.
00:03:18.860
Given the nature of our soft, managerial regime, 1984 poses little threat to our leaders.
00:03:26.340
And because it's the only text in which most Americans encounter the idea of a dystopian government,
00:03:31.440
the novel limits their ability to conceive of an oppressive government that does not resemble the one Orwell described.
00:03:38.160
As a result, 1984 is only a threat to the dead managerial regimes of the past,
00:03:45.400
It serves the role of containment, setting a narrative frame that fences in thought about how a population might be controlled.
00:03:53.940
I'm not suggesting that there's some vast conspiracy to distribute 1984 to control the masses,
00:03:59.540
but its organic selection was likely due to its compatibility with our regime's mode of power.
00:04:04.940
Think of the rebellious and edgy television show that warns you about the dangers of evangelical Christianity,
0.69
00:04:11.580
thereby enforcing all the real narratives of power.
00:04:14.460
Some of the predictions in 1984 did come to pass, like the novel's own propagandistic update and replacement.
00:04:22.140
But our totalitarians look and feel so different that Orwell's warnings failed to halt their advance.
00:04:28.880
By casting themselves in the guise of kind, tolerant, and educated administrators applying therapeutic remedies,
00:04:34.620
our current regime's rulers can enact many of the social tears depicted in 1984 without triggering the narrative alarms.
00:04:42.200
These days, it's impossible to thrive with just one job.
00:04:44.800
Between increasing living costs, paying off debts, and planning for the future,
00:04:48.500
things like buying a home, building savings, and even going on vacation can seem like fantasies.
00:04:52.880
If your goal is financial freedom, you could start taking on more hours at your current job,
00:04:57.360
work towards a promotion, or try putting your money into something risky like stocks, cryptocurrencies, or even a side hustle.
00:05:03.460
But at the end of the day, do you really want to sacrifice time and energy
00:05:06.460
that could otherwise be spent with your loved ones or on your hobbies just to make a living?
00:05:10.660
Luckily, you don't have to hustle to reliably make more money.
00:05:15.220
Job stacking is the best way for regular people, regular employees,
00:05:18.640
to unleash their earning potential and increase job and financial security.
00:05:22.220
How? By working multiple jobs, but without burning out, or more importantly, getting caught by corporate overlords.
00:05:28.100
Job stacking allows you to reliably receive paychecks from multiple employers each month
00:05:32.040
without having to work more than eight hours a day.
00:05:34.560
You don't have to be in tech or any particular field or industry to do it as long as you can work remotely.
00:05:39.580
If you've thought about working multiple jobs, but you're not sure how to start
00:05:42.420
or are afraid of getting caught, get the fundamental job stacking course today
00:05:45.860
and learn all of the secrets on how to sustainably work multiple full-time jobs
00:05:50.040
from the foremost expert on the matter, Rolf Haltza, author of Job Stacking.
00:05:54.380
Rolf has worked multiple full-time jobs since 2018, including hybrid jobs,
00:05:58.660
and has condensed all of his experiences and wisdom into a single four-module online course
00:06:03.760
so you can start proficiently job stacking without having to make mistakes,
00:06:07.380
figuring things out on your own, or reinventing the wheel in the process.
00:06:11.260
Go to www.jobstacking.com and enter the promo code ORIN to get a special discount.
00:06:17.700
Several alternative dystopian novels do accurately warn against aspects of our soft managerial total state,
00:06:23.980
but they failed to gain the formative narrative status achieved by 1984.
00:06:28.780
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is probably the most famous of these stories.
00:06:32.280
Though flawed, it does a much better job of laying out the tools deployed by our regime today.
00:06:36.680
While Orwell focused on force, hate, and blunt propaganda,
00:06:41.200
Huxley predicted the more benign and therapeutic tone that social engineering would take.
00:06:46.120
The population in Brave New World is not held in check by fear.
00:06:50.220
Instead, they're controlled by the manipulation of their pleasures.
00:06:54.020
People are genetically engineered to be happy with their station in life
00:06:57.320
and provided with constant chemical assistance to help them deal with any feelings of despair or unhappiness.
00:07:03.560
Why resist the regime when you can just take a drug that will make all your problems fade away?
00:07:08.920
If there's one thing we learned from the pandemic lockdowns,
00:07:11.760
it's that Netflix can be just as effective as Soma at pacifying the masses.
00:07:15.720
Brave New World was also more aware of the impact that the sexual revolution would have on the total state.
00:07:23.900
Humans are genetically engineered, not naturally conceived,
00:07:27.280
and so sex has become entirely detached from its organic content.
00:07:30.560
So you've always been picky about your produce.
00:07:33.120
But now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian.
00:07:38.180
At Sobeez, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first.
00:07:51.000
Refusing to have sex with someone is considered selfish.
00:07:54.240
Orgies are common, and exclusive attachments are the ultimate taboo.
00:07:58.820
There are no husbands or wives, mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers.
00:08:04.400
The family forms a fundamental loyalty that competes with the total state,
00:08:11.380
but through the destruction of the sacred and the proliferation of pleasure
00:08:14.900
that's been unmoored from its natural foundation.
00:08:17.960
The citizens of Huxley's dystopia don't fear the jackboot,
00:08:22.120
but simply can't imagine an existence where every moment isn't managed by a vast array of highly qualified experts.
00:08:28.560
The main problem with Brave New World is that Huxley was still a modern progressive who saw managerialism as the way forward.
00:08:37.300
The novel is more of a cautionary tale of progress gone awry than a warning against this form of progress itself.
00:08:43.680
That hideous strength by C.S. Lewis is a lesser-known work,
00:08:48.640
but it also provides critical insight into a regime that 1984 never captured.
00:08:56.280
Lewis understood that the modern obsession with disenchanting the world and controlling human nature was evil in and of itself.
00:09:04.140
Lewis also managed to predict the rise of anarcho-tyranny.
00:09:09.740
a cabal of self-righteous college professors who had been tricked into serving evil
00:09:13.860
used street thugs to manufacture riots and then manipulate the media into justifying a crackdown on average citizens in response.
00:09:25.580
The novel's characters are forced constantly to state obvious lies to themselves and others
00:09:31.320
to maintain their social status as intellectuals.
00:09:34.000
It's that depiction of a moral and spiritual death by a thousand little cuts that makes Lewis's novel so powerful.
00:09:41.760
These shapers of public opinion slowly recognize that they've sworn allegiance to a grotesque evil,
00:09:47.640
but they've bound so much of their identity and status to the new regime
00:09:51.280
that they have to continue their pyramid scheme of lies.
00:09:55.140
While there's certainly great merit to Orwell's warning against the forces of authoritarianism,
00:10:01.840
It was written to ward off vanquished foes, not address the spirit of the regime that now rules over us.
00:10:09.140
The soft managerial regime is one that strips away the sacred,
00:10:13.120
denies human nature, and seeks to manufacture the ideal subject.
00:10:17.900
The destruction of the family, the sterilization of the vital,
0.98
00:10:21.200
and the weaponization of sex are all key tools in the arsenal of our ruling class.
1.00
00:10:25.700
The battle being waged in our time is a fundamentally spiritual one.
00:10:30.240
It's a battle of our hearts, minds, and ultimately, souls.
00:10:34.700
This is a war of belief, and we must fight to return to what is sacred
00:10:38.620
if we wish to escape the smothering advance of managed technocratic dehumanization.
00:10:55.700
And of course, you can watch all of my shows and read all of my columns over at The Blaze.
00:11:16.220
And you should definitely go check out the new Blaze website,
00:11:18.820
because you know those terrible ads that cover all those conservative news websites?
00:11:23.980
The Blaze got rid of them, and it looks so much better.
00:11:28.640
And they did that because, of course, it's nicer to read,
00:11:30.860
but also because they don't have to worry about demonetization anymore.
00:11:37.780
they go ahead and slap it with the demonetization label,
00:11:40.300
and all of a sudden it drops to the bottom of the algorithm,
00:11:42.300
and nobody reads it, and all of a sudden they've disappeared the story.
00:11:45.560
What this does is it allows Blaze to run all kinds of stuff,
00:11:49.560
and they don't have to worry about that aspect.
00:11:51.780
They don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to get deprioritized,
00:11:56.860
They can just go ahead and do the type of reporting
00:11:58.860
and run pieces like mine without having to worry about the ads that would get attached to it.
00:12:02.880
Of course, that means that they are reliant on subscriptions,
00:12:05.480
so while you're there, you might consider checking it out and supporting.
00:12:09.040
All right, guys, thanks for watching, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.