{"id":1337,"date":"2013-06-20T02:50:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T02:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=1337"},"modified":"2014-02-09T04:25:45","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T04:25:45","slug":"the-eyes-watching-you-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2013\/06\/the-eyes-watching-you-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eyes Watching You: “1984” and the Surveillance State – Article by Sarah Skwire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Sarah Skwire
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
June 19, 2013<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
\n

George Orwell. 1984<\/em>. New York: Plume, [1949] 2003. 323 pages.<\/p>\n

In the kind of horrifying coincidence that surely would have prompted one of his more acerbic essays, the news that various U.S. government surveillance agencies have been gathering data from millions of citizens\u2019 phones, email accounts, and web searches broke during the week of the 64th publication anniversary of George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>. As the news reports poured in, and as sales of 1984<\/em> surged by an astonishing 6,884 percent, a friend asked me whether the PRISM story strikes me as more Orwellian or more Kafkaesque.<\/p>\n

My response? We\u2019d better hope it\u2019s Kafkaesque.<\/p>\n

No one wants to inhabit a Franz Kafka novel. But the surveillance states he describes do have one thing going for them\u2014incompetence. In Kafka\u2019s stories, important forms get lost, permits are unattainable, and bureaucrats fail to do their jobs. Like the main character in Kafka\u2019s unfinished story, \u201cThe Castle,\u201d if you were trapped in Kafka\u2019s world you could live your whole life doing nothing but waiting for a permit. But at least you could live. Incompetence creates a little space.<\/p>\n

What is terrifying about Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em> is the complete competence of the surveillance state. Winston Smith begins the novel by believing he is in an awful, but Kafkaesque world where there is still some slippage in the state\u2019s absolute control, and still some room for private action. Winston says that Oceania\u2019s world of telescreens and Thought Police means that there are \u201calways the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed\u2014no escape.\u201d But he follows that by saying, \u201cNothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.\u201d He also believes that while the diary he keeps will inevitably be discovered, the small alcove in his apartment where he writes his diary puts him \u201cout of the range of the telescreen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The feeling that some tiny space for private thought and action can be found leads Winston into his relationship with Julia. Though they know they will inevitably be discovered, Winston and Julia believe that, for a time, their relationship and their meeting place will remain secret. They could not be more wrong.<\/p>\n

One day after making love to Julia in their clandestine room, Winston, prompted by a singing thrush and a singing prole woman who is doing laundry, has a vision of a future that \u201cbelongs to the proles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The birds sang, the proles sang. The Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan\u2014everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead; theirs was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body.<\/em><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this very moment, just as Winston comes alive to what feels like hope and possibility and the dream of some kind of a future for humankind, the telescreen that has been hidden in the room all along speaks to Winston and Julia. The Thought Police break down the door. The couple is taken off to be imprisoned, tortured, and broken.<\/p>\n

There has never been any private space for Winston or Julia\u2014not in their \u201csecret\u201d meeting places, not in their sexual rebellion, not even in the few cubic centimeters inside their skulls. \u201c<\/del>F<\/del>or seven years the Thought Police had watched him like a beetle under a magnifying glass. There was no physical act, no word spoken aloud, that they had not noticed, no train of thought that they had not been able to infer.\u201d Winston should have taken more seriously the description of Oceania he read in the forbidden book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism<\/em>, by Emmanuel Goldstein<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations, his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression of his face when he is alone, the words he mutters in sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body, are all jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected.<\/em><\/div>\n
***<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

The Orwellian surveillance state is terrifying not because\u2014as in Kafka\u2014you might be arrested because of a rumor or a mistake, or because despite your innocence you might be caught in the surveillance state\u2019s unnavigable maze. It is terrifying because it never makes mistakes. It does not need to listen to rumors. And it knows that no one is ever innocent.<\/p>\n

Sarah Skwire<\/a> is a fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Skwire June 19, 2013 Recommend this page. ****************************** George Orwell. 1984. New York: Plume, [1949] 2003. 323 pages. In the kind of horrifying coincidence that surely would have prompted one of his more acerbic essays, the news that various U.S. government surveillance agencies have been gathering data from millions of citizens\u2019 phones, email accounts, and web searches broke during the week of the 64th publication anniversary of George Orwell\u2019s 1984. As the news reports poured in, and as sales…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,5],"tags":[2210,2212,2213,2208,84,2209,2011,756,2187,2214,2207,202,2211,2215,56,796],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-history","category-politics","tag-2210","tag-data","tag-data-collection","tag-franz-kafka","tag-freedom","tag-george-orwell","tag-literature","tag-police-state","tag-prism","tag-private-action","tag-sarah-skwire","tag-surveillance","tag-surveillance-state","tag-the-castle","tag-totalitarian","tag-totalitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}