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Orwell on the will to power for power’s sake — 27 Comments

  1. Hi,

    I have some background regarding religious history and how they evolved. I too read 1984 at a young age. What strikes me is how often any organization evolves following the path Orwell describes.

  2. Reading about the private life of Karl Marx as a young man, and as a struggling revolutionary, leaves a pretty clear impression that he was from the time of his youth, driven by resentment and rage and envy, which manifested in practice as a will to disruptive power; rhetorically couched as the procedural precursor to an end of history utopia in which “the problem of alienation” no longer existed.

    What one is to make of the Marx of his last years, living, at least superficially one reads, a bourgeois dream which had evaded him most of his life, I cannot say. But I think the fate of his children demonstrates that his warping and malevolent influence was more profound than was the effect of him strolling with the family to the park, or reading the classics by the fireside … a retired revolutionary.

    The modern left is working from another new eschatology, recognized as and referred to by many here as a secular religion. It takes the form of an emergent evolution drama, in which the progressives assign themselves starring roles as members of the vanguard and social engineering class, dedicated to bringing to life another “new man”, or … “peoplekind”.

    They are religious nuts sans the supernatural: sprung of the same neurotic impulses found in the burnt over districts of the mid 1800s

  3. John on September 24, 2019 at 12:07 pm said:
    Hi,

    I have some background regarding religious history and how they evolved. I too read 1984 at a young age. What strikes me is how often any organization evolves following the path Orwell describes.
    * * *
    There are plenty of studies and writings about that.
    Pournelle’s Law is operative in most organizations.

    https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

    Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

    First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

    Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

    The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

    Specifically, and relative to the Maspeth High post today (from another post linked in the above): “Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent.”

    If you give coercive power to the second group, usually but not always under some pretext of law or necessity, you inevitably end up with Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Pol Pot, Mao, and so forth.

    Religious organizations are not exempt from the “two types of person” rule, which is why we have the First Amendment prescribing that the State shall not establish (sponsor or mandate) any particular religious organization, that is, supply it with coercive powers.

  4. The Lenins always kill the Trotskys. The desire for power is understood and manageable. The desire to “help the people” is amorphous and cannot be counted on. The only way control political leaders is to limit their authority and change them often.

    Political leaders are like diapers. They should be changed frequently… and for the same reason.

  5. What O’Brien describes is a society predicated on the elimination of eros. Which, of course, impossible — without eliminating all human beings simultaneously. That’s Marx’s deal though: nature has to go. It’s too unruly.

  6. https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/neurosurgeon-visits-theosophical-society/

    It’s a good presentation by a neurosurgeon on beyond death experiences.

    https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2019/09/19/antarctica-and-boleshevism/

    This is my analysis of Bolshevism and why it is such a cancer upon the human body when ever it incubates.

    I think in terms of Russian style Literature as Life, Ayn Rand’s books were closer to the mark. Even though they weren’t particularly accurate in terms of novelization and characterization. She put the literature as greater than life, whereas as Russian Sol wrote down the life and it became a literature/culture of Russia, that was larger than the lives lived and died.

    Orwell’s work is a bit strange in this sense. It is perhaps our closest version to what the Russians see in their culture/life/literature. A signature book, just as Marx’s works were, but a warning by a socialist rather than a road map to dictatorial control (Marx’s proletariat revolution).

    The irony is thus… that many generations of children read that book and thought that the totalitarians were the Republicans or some “political/racial Other” that looked and behaved differently than their Elect, Perfect, Righteous ego driven selves. The self that is ridden and controlled by Satan, believes itself free and in control, much as a slave thinks itself free in Slavery 3.0.

    The problem is not with totalitarianism or economic theories like socialism. The problem is the human soul and the human distortion, the corrupt taint that must be purified before it will get any better. Left to its own devices, Satan’s natural instincts will drive humanity into an ever spiraling downwards road away from the Divine Plan. Satan is not Lucifer, btw, just to clear that up. Lucifer is a Roman Bishop and his original Hebrew name was Heyl-el, alt translated as The Howling Star.

    Humanity is trapped and has trapped the divine spark on this realm of materialism, greed, self righteous beliefs and ego driven “will to power”. In order to liberate the soul rider from the human consciousness, much work had been invested, which will soon be seen as worth it or not in the end. The fate and ending is up to humanity, each and every aggregate soul.

    If they fall to the strategies of Bolshevism and Satan, then they will learn from their enemies to defeat their enemies. The plan is to quagmire trap humanity, not to defeat humanity. Humanity is trapped in this Veil of Illusion, this Maya, this Matrix, this simulation, but it thinks it is free. And it thinks some “god” is to blame… or some “marxist economic theory” is to blame.

    Look in the mirror. That is your greatest and truest enemy.

  7. “The irony is thus… that many generations of children read that book and thought that the totalitarians were the Republicans or some “political/racial Other” that looked and behaved differently than their Elect, Perfect, Righteous ego driven selves. ” – Ymarsakar

    Bingo.
    Although, given the Greta-post’s example, I think I would make that “many generations of children read that book and were told by their teachers (or parents, less commonly) that the totalitarians were” whatever group constituted the Deplorables in that generation.

  8. ” Utopian idealists who are willing to do evil because the ends justify the means (or because they don’t even recognize it as evil),”

    Non-recognition seems to be a bigger factor than one would supposed. I think it was in the article cited here last week, How the Great Truth Dawned, that Solzhenitsyn explains: “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. . . . it is in the nature of a human being to seek a justification for his actions.”

  9. Ymarsakar:

    Thanks very much for that link to Dr. Eben Alexander’s lecture to the Theosophical Society.
    A truly fascinating story. I just watched the whole thing and plan to check him out at his website.

  10. “The will to power” includes moving goalposts as needed.

    https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/09/24/democrats-shift-goal-posts-demand-more-than-phone-call-transcript-after-trump-says-hell-release-it/

    Democrats are demanding President Trump do more to prove that he did not try to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son, after Trump announced Tuesday he would release the transcript of his phone call with Zelensky in July.

    Although Democrats have demanded that Trump release the transcript, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said after Trump’s tweet that it did not matter if the transcript was released and no quid pro quo was found, but rather, it was about the “sequencing” of his actions.

    Journalists and former Obama officials also demanded Trump release more, including a whistleblower complaint made to the intelligence community inspector general reportedly about the call.

    According to CNN, the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of the details of the president’s call with Zelensky.

    Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) tweeted that after Trump said he would release the transcript, “amazingly Democrats now say the whistleblower complaint is more important.”

    He added, “Folks, the ‘whistleblower’ wasn’t on the call. They think a secondhand account of the call will tell you more than the *actual call.*”

    Seems like we’ve seen this maneuver before.

  11. The power to move goalposts at will.

    Reversals are not unique to this situation, btw.

    A commenter at Breitbart, on the UK Supreme Court ruling Boris’s prorogation was illegal, had this to say:

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/09/24/a-sinister-shadow-government-is-killing-brexit/#comment-4627712845

    Person223 Angry Citizen • an hour ago
    Someone in my state government (California, sigh), one of the few with any sense, said that the representatives now represent the government to the public rather than represent the public to the government. This isn’t an exaggeration. We have bureaucrats openly saying we are doing this to induce people to do that, and when we email people to say that’s absolutely backwards we don’t even get an answer. How is that we get the idea that government is unresponsive to our concerns?

    Delingpole’s article is a must-read, of course.

    Fair and balanced principles ordain that the Beeb has to have a chance to weigh-in as well. The Court’s ruling seems judiciously judicial, until you start to think about what it means for the judges to have the final word on whether or not a Government action is “without reasonable justification” — sounds a lot like the courts here ruling that an EO is okay if one president does it, but not if another (Trump) does, because he has “wrong think” motives.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49810680

    For present purposes, the relevant limit on the power to prorogue is this: that a decision to prorogue (or advise the monarch to prorogue) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In judging any justification which might be put forward, the court must of course be sensitive to the responsibilities and experience of the Prime Minister and proceed with appropriate caution.

    If the prorogation does have that effect, without reasonable justification, there is no need for the court to consider whether the Prime Minister’s motive or purpose was unlawful.

  12. I’ve spent most of my life studying True Evil. The horrors of communism outrank ALL.

    Lenin’s term for the kind of thing we’re seeing from the American Left now: Useful Idiots.

    My God, in our unique Liberty based country, we see the daily carnage to our culture & the mass Koolaid consumption by our young.

    Read Robert Conquest’s great work: “Kolyma:The Arctic Death Camps”., for a glimpse of what the Left hath sown.

  13. I was trying to understand what “revolution” meant when I was 13 years old, as it was the 1960s and the word was everywhere then. I first studied the French Revolution of 1789 and then the Russian Revolution of 1917. Sure, I only went into this very superficially back then.

    The Moscow Trials of 1937-38 put me on the road to hating Stalin and everything about the Soviets.

  14. Gringo:

    I never discussed politics with my Soviet-phile uncle.

    First of all, I was quite young when these discussions occurred. But that wasn’t the main reason. The real reason was that I was a listener, not a participant. These were usually bitter bitter arguments, with the adults yelling and angry at each other. The uncle was alone in his opinion, and nothing—and I mean nothing—that anyone said reached him in any way. He had an answer and excuse for everything. His belief was impenetrable. If all the adults couldn’t reach him, it never occurred to me that I could. Plus, at the time, I just wished they’d all stop fighting and talk about something else.

  15. there are two kinds of power people
    those that do not need to feel it
    and so are not sure they have it

    and those that do need to feel it
    and are sure they have it

    the only way to feel power is to force people to do things they dont want to do
    the more powerful the more people

  16. I read 1984 when I was in high school. Looking back on it, it was remarkable how much Orwell got right. He knew human nature and the evil of anti-democratic government.

  17. “Got right”? IMHO
    Perhaps if we look at 1984 as thinly veiled history, “upgraded” in the trappings of
    inevitable “tech improvements” just around the corner at the time.
    Kinda’ like Ayn Rand.
    Of course, there’s a plethora of authors with such clever stuff, but only get the “acclaim” from a limited crowd nerds and geeks, because they don’t/ didn’t have “exotic” cachet with the ersatz-intellectual crowd , like you know….Russian!

  18. One of the great things about “1984” is the relative lack of any real ideology on the part of the State; it could Communist, Fascist, Theocratic, or something completely different. It’s the Totalitarianism that matters.

  19. We now act exactly as you would guess we would act in order to survive @330,000 years in small tribes of 50-150 people. We must have been dying all the time. We were terrified all the time. We were sick and miserable and cold and hot and racked with pain and sore feet and infections a lot. We had to get rid of people who did not cooperate or were a pain. We had to protect our kids for many years. We had to protect our pregnant women and those with children fiercely. We had to develop social structures that were congruous with the above.

    We probably were hard wired for fairness—don’t psychologist claim this? —but not for equality and we must have been harsh to heretics. I bet democracy was not in there.

    Design for survival and add those parts you need and that’s where we are today. 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution doesn’t give us enough time to really evolve into modernity.

  20. This came up via the Impeachment post today.
    Daniel Greenfield is on the same wavelength as Orwell.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/disturbing-reason-why-dems-really-want-impeach-daniel-greenfield/

    The choosing of governments, it follows, is too important an issue to be left to mere voters whose voting machines and brains are all too easily hacked by disinformation campaigns and FOX News.

    And the removal of President Trump from office is also too important to be left to those same voters.

    Lefties have made it very clear that they would rather, practically or symbolically, reverse the results of the 2016 election than focus on winning in 2020 because of the larger principle at stake. The second part of the principle appears in every media piece pushing impeachment. It hinges on President Trump’s alleged unfitness for office. The first part of the principle is the unfitness of the voters to choose leaders.

    Elections are a humiliating process that force lefties to lie to voters, hide their agendas, and appeal to the people they despise to be allowed to rule them. Even when they win, a sour taste lingers afterward.

    The Left desperately wants impeachment proceedings because it wants to exercise direct power.

    The actual basis for impeachment has always been a corollary to that claim of an inherent unfitness that preceded even the election.

    Inherent unfitness expresses the idea that the voters never had any right to elect President Trump.

    Impeachment is not just meant to be a trial of President Trump, but of the voters who chose him. Its outcome, whatever the composition of the Senate, is meant to be an argument for remaking the system of elections, whether by abolishing the Electoral College or tampering with the judiciary, that would take the power further out of the hands of the voters and concentrate them with the right sorts of people.

    But the real appeal of impeachment is more emotional than strategic. President Trump’s victory threatened lefties by suggesting that, despite the Obama era, they are not actually in control.

    “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship,” O’Brien tells the hapless Winston Smith in the novel 1984. “The object of power is power.”

    Marxist regimes love show trials because they allow them to destroy and humiliate their enemies.

    “How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?” O’Brien asks.

    “By making him suffer,” Winston replies.

    Outside the media and social media, where the purges of cancel culture are a daily event, the Left lacks the power to regularly drag its political enemies before its bar, to put them on trial and break them. And yet it craves that terrible power above all else.

    Impeaching Trump isn’t about him. It’s a Rorschach test that reveals the ugly inkblot of the leftist soul. Its real purpose is for an ugly totalitarian movement to live out its fantasy of casting aside the vestiges of democracy, divesting itself of the illusions of representative government and holding a show trial.

    Leftists speak less about equality these days than about justice. This is the justice they have in mind.

    Terror is in the political DNA of every radical movement. And the arc of the Left is always radical.

    “Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–for ever,” 1984’s O’Brien rhapsodizes.
    Impeachment is a feverish effort by the Left to live out this evil fantasy. It’s one of a million show trials that the radicals who are taking over the Democrats envision, not just for Trump, but for America.

  21. A Case for Jefferson

    Harrison loves my country too,
    But wants it made all over new.
    He’s Freudian Viennese by night.
    By day he’s Marxian Muscovite.
    It isn’t because he’s Russian Jew.
    He’s Puritan Yankee through and through.
    He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
    But his mind is hardly out of his teens:
    With him the love of country means
    Blowing it all to smithereens
    And having it all made over new.

    Robert Frost, 1947

  22. “Animal Farm” is more concise and teaches the same message, but I think “1984” has an atmosphere which grips the imagination and persists. I also read 1984 in 7th or 8th grade mid-60s, and was assured that it was about the older people, the status quo, who were leading us down totalitarian paths. Not to worry, though. A new generation of freedom-loving kids was growing up and we were UP TO THE TASK, if only the few good ‘uns could hold ’em off long enough for us to grow up. I essentially believed that until the 80s, as my children grew older and I had to work at a thankless job. Even then, the change came slowly.

    Remember the words of then-activist Democrat Ron Silver in 1993 during Clinton’s inauguration, initially a bit freaked at the jets passing overhead in formation. “Those are our planes now.” They still don’t see that this is who they are.

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