Imagine a world where the government’s sole purpose is to maintain in power forever. It doesn’t care about making itself stronger or becoming a super power. It doesn’t care about increasing its productivity. It doesn’t care about its people well being, in fact, having its people to live in fear everyday is what it wants. All it cares is to maintain in power for whatever it takes. It doesn’t acquire power because it helps them to achieve what they seek. Power is what they seek.
Power is not a means to an end. Power is the end.
The book 1984 painted a view on how such world might look like. This world is ruled by the party and its ruler Big Brother. Everyone is being watched by the party 24/7. Every word you say, everything you do, everywhere you go is monitored. There is no privacy, there is no entertainment, there is no individual thoughts, even thinking the wrong way is considered a crime. Thought-crime as the book call it. Your only purpose is to serve the party. You are expected to love the party more than your family.
It is a depressing world, and one can’t help to wonder like the protagonists will there be hope. The book’s answer is there is no hope because of how the system was designed, and its philosophy behinds it makes it an unshakable behemoth.
How can such system exists? The Party understands since the beginning of society, there has always been 3 categories of man in a hierarchy pyramid. The high, The middle, and the low. The high are the nobles, the riches, those who are in power. The middle are the middle class, the educated. The low are peasants, the labors, the workers that supports the foundation of the pyramid.
Throughout history, the constant struggles of the high is to figure out how to maintain in power for as long as possible. The lows where never the problem, because they are incapable of individual thoughts and does not have the strategic mind to think to rebel against the high. Those on the low will continue to operate their life as long as their fundamental needs are satisfied.
The middle on the other hand, is capable of individual thinking and soon they realized that the high has no function in the society and thus should be gone. The middle rallies with the low and overthrown the high. When the highs are gone, the middle became the new high and some low became the new middle, and the cycle continues for millennial.
The party seeks to solve this problem once and for all. It sees that the biggest problem past rulers had was the centralization of power. Putting all power in one single person is akin to painting a target in the forehead waiting for the next power thirsty person in-line to pull the trigger. If one wants to avoid the bullet, one needs to avoid become the target. Hence the party is an entity where power is evenly distributed within the elites, where no kings can be slayed.
By making sure power falls within a group of elite, with all their common interested aligned, no one will overthrow such a system. Hence each individual will work in his own interest to sustain such system. The fictional leader “Big brother” does not exist. It is just a symbol of the party. All words coming out from Big brother are in fact coming out from the group of elite. Such system cannot be overthrown because there is no one to be overthrown. There is no target and hence oppositions has nothing to go against.
This book makes me feel that the world it painted is totally a possibility, and I felt kind of depressed about it because it is already slowly happening in the real world. But when I spoke with my father, I learned that this kind of society can’t last forever because a government made out of a bunch of power seeking individuals will not be settle for a portion of power. If one’s core drive is to seek power for its own sake, one would always want to seek more power. One would not want to rule the world with a bunch of other people, once wants to rule them all.
If there is one thing we can learn from history is that history always repeats itself. Hence, conflict will arises withing the elites, war will began and power crumbles. Hopefully newer and better system will be invented and people in power will seek something greater than their own interest.
Never give up hope.
