1984 #9 - "War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength" Notes

• World is only three superpowers now – Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia (185); “Eurasia comprises […] and Tibet” (185); Layout of the current world; “have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference” (186); Brought up again on pages 186 and 187
• “In the centers of civilization […]  War has in fact changed its character” (186)
• “In spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war” (186); “None of the three superstates could be definitely conquered even by the other two in combination” (186); “Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants” (186)
• “It is a war for labor power” (187); The “quadrilateral” that is fought over “with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth of the population of the earth” (187); “All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products such as rubber” (187)
• Wavering frontiers, never really much change, just places being “captured and recaptured” , “the balance of power always remains roughly even” (188)
• “Moreover, […] different” (188); Nothing would ever change, always a power struggle, eternal wartime even without slave product production; “The primary aim of modern warfare […] is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living” (188)
• “The world today […] looked forward” (188); Proof that the current world is worse than the past and is also much worse than the projected future; “The world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago” (189)
• “the machine” (189); The idea that invention would better the future, held in high regard
• “All-around increase in wealth threatened the destruction – indeed, in some sense it was the destruction – of a hierarchical society” (189); “If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction” (190)
• “For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike […] poverty and ignorance” (190); Ignorance is Strength, if proles were given money, they would become conscious of Party’s wrongdoing
• “The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare” (190-191); War is Peace: constantly being at war stops money and goods from getting to the people, keeping them ignorant and thus keeping them from uprising, therefore keeping the society peaceful; “War is a way […] too intelligent” (191)
• Weapons are made to expend labor power that can’t be consumed (191); “In principle […] another” (191); Keeps class distinctions cleanly separated
•  “And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste system seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival” (192)
• “War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way” (192); “It does not matter […] exist” (192)
• “In his capacity as an administrator […] world” (192-193); Inner Party knows the lie, yet believes it
• “In Oceania at […] Ingsoc” (193); “The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery” (193); Juxtaposition, contrast
• “The two aims of the Part are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought” (193)
• Scientists either “psychologist and inquisitor” or chemist, physicist, or biologist” (193-194); For learning what people think and killing lots of people without warning
• “But none of these projects ever comes anywhere near realization, and none of the three superstates ever gains a significant lead on the others” (194)
• “None of the three superstates ever attempts any maneuver which involves the risk of serious defeat” (195); surprise attacks, backstabs to truces; one true plan is “impossible of realization” (195)
• “The average citizen […] evaporate” (196); keeping people ignorant about other cultures; “The conditions of life in all three superstates are very much the same” (196); Oceania = Ingsoc, Eurasia = Neo-Bolshevism, Eastasia = Death-worship/Obliteration of Self; “The three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all” (197)
• “It follows that […] without victory” (197); they all know exactly what they are doing
• “War was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality”, “Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four” (197); they can say whatever they want but just by building things they are going against it
• “Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed” (198)
• “Cut off from […] which is down” (198)
• “They are obliged […] they choose” (198-199); omnipotent, but want to be omniscient, can force omniscience if they only teach people certain things
• “It is like battles […] one another” (199); animalistic, pointless, inefficient
• “The war is waged […] exist” (199)
• “A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war” (199)
• “Even after […] the other” (201)
• “The aim of the High […] equal” (201)
• “Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims”, “From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters” (202)
• “Now, however, […] long” (203)
• “The new movements […] had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality”, “But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment”, “As usual […] permanently” (203)
• “Even if it […] averted” (204); Equality is a threat
• “And in the general hardening […] progressive” (204-205); Regression to old, inhumane tactics and practices
• “As compared with […] opposition” “By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient” (205)
• “The invention of print […] private life came to an end” (205-206); Information now able to be given to the masses; People able to be viewed at all times; Want to enforce “complete obedience to the will of the State” and spread ideas for “complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects” (206)
• “Collectively, the Party owns everything in Oceania, because it controls everything and disposes of the products it thinks fit”; “no longer private property”  = “private property” (206)
• Four ways a ruling group can fall from power: 1) “conquered from without”; 2) governs inefficiently, stirring the masses to revolt; 3) “allows a strong and disconnected Middle Group to come into being”; 4) looses self-confidence and will to govern (207); All four come into play; “Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself” (207)
• “The masses […] articulate” (207); Basically the idea posed that the proles will not revolt until conscious and they will only become conscious by revolting; “The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way” (208)
• “Big Brother is the guise […] organization” (208); trying to seem relatable
• Big Brother = overall ruler, Inner Party = brains, Outer Party = hands, Proles = dumb masses, “not a permanent or necessary part of the structure” (208)
• “In no part of […] knows” (209)
• “Proletarians, in practice, […] eliminated” (209); never allowed to be intelligent because already allowed to feel, so cannot move up because know both intelligence and emotion
• “The essence of oligarchical […] the living”, “The Party is not […] the same” (210); never-ending cycle of those in power are chosen to be that way to carry on ideas
• “They can be granted intellectual […] be tolerated” (210); major difference between the proles and Party; thinking not allowed by those who can
• “A Party member lives […] alone.” (210)
• “Many of the […] any subject whatever” (211); able to think, but not as well as they could be able to if not fed Ingsoc’s ideas in childhood
• Crimestop – stopping yourself from “dangerous thought”; “Protective stupidity” (212)
• “Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since […] treatment of facts” (212)
• Blackwhite – “Applied to an opponent […] this”; ties in with doublethink (212)
• Alteration of past: 1) to stop all standards of comparison; 2) “safeguard the infallibility of the Party” (212-213); “To change one’s mind, or even one’s policy, is a confession of weakness”; “The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc”; “Past events […] have no objective existence” that can’t be changed or swayed to believe (213)
• Doublethink – “reality control”; contradicting ideas known and accepted at once; “lie always one leap ahead of the truth” (214)
• “The secret of rulership […] past mistakes” (215)
• “The greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane” (215); shown by Wilson’s confusion and him thinking he might be a lunatic
• “peculiar linking-together of opposites – knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism” “official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them”, “Even the names […] doublethink” (216)
• “Being in a minority, even a minority of one, does not make you mad” “if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad” (217); “Sanity is not statistical” (218)