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Marcuse0 t1_iucknxi wrote

Hi, philosophy graduate here. This is going to have 1984 spoilers for people who haven't read it.

>!The question of are people happy in Oceania is difficult. The first thing to be really really clear on is that the Party goes out of its way to ensure that outer party members are always kept in a state of discomfort. They live and work in a perpetual state of privation, with bad gin, terrible cigarettes, nondescript food, and constant monitoring by Big Brother. If they show even a thought against the Party they're dragged off to be tortured and re-indoctrinated. They know this full well, and fear it. Sexual desire and love are deliberately expended in events like the two minute hate, and constant Party activities designed purposefully to exhaust and weaken outer party members to make them unable to rebel against the Party.!<

>!Inner party members seem to be given way better conditions, but as they're the top dogs of the pyramid, and everything O'Brien shows us is likely a fabrication, there's really no way to actually tell. Besides this, we wouldn't consider a society where only the top leaders were happy to be a happy one.!<

>!The proles are where it gets interesting. They are left almost completely alone by the Party, other than basic entertainment and lotteries and such. This is because the proles as a group are considered to be, and in fact (in the story) are unintelligent enough that they don't pose any threat to the party and cannot be awakened to do so because Outer Party members are so rigorously monitored.!<

>!The situation of the proles is directly an imagining of the early communist question of when the working class would develop class consciousness; the intelligence and awareness of their oppression so they would be in a position to organise and fight against it. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were of the opinion that it was necessary for a "vanguard party" of intellectuals to guide the proletariat (from which the word proles is an abbreviation) to class consciousness, and doubted that without them they would not be able to do so.!<

>!The structure of the Party in Oceania defends against this completely by locking down and minutely controlling the intellectuals. Even those that believe (as in the family man who is, at the end, imprisoned and tortured just the same because his own children informed on him) are subject to the brutality of a state whose only aim is to increase and protect its own power.!<

>!Happiness is then only to the found in the lives of the proles, who are intellectually free because they have no intellect. Their inability to organise or formulate the concepts of revolution are what allows them to conduct the most human lives of any in Oceania (exemplified when Winston observes a large older lady singing while hanging out her washing). The only way to be "happy" there is to descend to the level of an animal and cease to be human, because intelligent humans are subject to the Party at every level.!<

>!It might be possible to argue that post-Ministry of Love, Winston is happy. But this is completely belied by the fact his whips are now in the mind, instead of external. His thought processes have become mangled to the point where he is essentially as mindless as a prole; he can barely stand to do anything of any worth, drinking and wasting his time every day. He dreams of being killed by a Party assassin because somewhere in his mind he feels death is preferable to his existence. In a sense, he loves Big Brother in the end because it will finally be the instrument of his release from the suffering they themselves have visited upon him, and is merely a response to the removal of torture, not a positive happiness.!<

I hope this helps!

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RyanfaeScotland t1_iud7lo3 wrote

>I hope this helps!

It helps, but if you could add 374 words and send it directly to my printer it would be perfect.

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Slartibartfast39 t1_iucj3uv wrote

It's been too many years since I read it but I'd say there are happy people in 1984. There will be people that believe in the system. There will be people in a loving relationship. There will be people who are so inured to the system and the restrictions they don't even think about how it could be different. I think Pratchett said something like "Normal is yesterday, last week, and last month averaged out." People are fantastic at seeing things as 'normal'.

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TheChocolateMelted t1_iud6eai wrote

There is an example of 'happy' person who believes in the system: Tom Parsons. Yet, as we see, despite him swallowing everything, raising his kids in the beliefs of the party, etc., he still isn't happy at his core and, by talking in his sleep, inevitably demonstrates he wants something different ... Parsons is determined to accept the party philosophy, but still isn't able to convince himself to do so.

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Slartibartfast39 t1_iudhcvq wrote

Excellent. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. Time to re-read it. I read A Brave New World recently.

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Dahks t1_iucj9q6 wrote

I need to devote nearly a third of my time to other people just so I can survive, which is the opposite of freedom. Yet, I'm happy. But that doesn't mean like I'm content or that things doesn't need to change.

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Sitheref0874 t1_iucjztp wrote

You need to define happiness, and whether there is an definition of “truly happy” as opposed to “as happy as they can be given X, Y, and Z”.

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Motoreducteur t1_iucj2os wrote

Hahaha 1984 is horrible in that regard, I still shudder when I think back on it.

Yes they are happy, but I won’t spoil the book for you. Orwell’s take on this is very interesting and troubling.

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ClaudioMoravit0 OP t1_iucj8rn wrote

actually i already read it, but it's been a while (few years from now) and i definitely don't have time to read it again. But yeah this book was amazing

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Motoreducteur t1_iucl3an wrote

Ok then I'll add an answer to your question in spoilers just in case.

>!In the beginning, the main character is not unhappy, but he can't be said to be happy either: he's just living. He has wants but he doesn't really act on them. He finds the situation all around him to be very strange.!<

>!The common people, socially lower than him, find happiness in their lives, but they're more free than he is in some regards. The people higher than him seem to have it better than him too. !<

>!The most important take you can get from the book, in my opinion, is that when Winston and Julia try to get away from society and become free to build their own happiness, they're denied that. However, in order to have no martyrdom, the regime makes people happy that they will die through brainwashing before killing them. The final lines are about Winston loving Big Brother.!<

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Jack-Campin t1_iucm4e3 wrote

You will find Michel Foucault more illuminating than Orwell on this question. Deciding who is "free" is not such a simple question.

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bitweta t1_iucpb75 wrote

Werent the happy people in 1984 the ones that the party didnt pay much attention to (the downtown or poor people, cant remember the term)?

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AardvarkusMaximus t1_iucxpxw wrote

They are happy as they forget what unhappiness is (especially as the word will progressively lose its meaning, just like freedom becoming "not physically restrained).

And in the end Winston becomes happy when surrendering. He is broken and ends up being thankful for it (last few sentences of the book)

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Fritzkreig t1_iucjyzx wrote

This is a late night, gew too many beers thought.

But Orwell is of the age of the Inklings

The group were pretty Christian, and the idea of free will under a governing body is all though all their books; and kinda a big focus in the Christian bible.... soooo make of that with what you will.

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Jack-Campin t1_iucn78k wrote

Orwell and the Inklings would have hated each other's guts. Orwell detested Christianity, but at the time he was writing the Inklings were too obscure to be worth disputing with or caricaturing. The all-out fascism of Christians like Chesterton and Belloc would have been much better known and more of a target given his Spanish Civil War experiences, but they weren't allegorized as part of 1984's landscape either.

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Fritzkreig t1_iuco61e wrote

Yes, yes I agree! Maybe I didn't write that out how I thought.

Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London Has a quite different view of power than say Tolkien; but honestly one can find a lot of similarties about power. Perhaps just a different way to approach it.

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Glitz-1958 t1_iucly7j wrote

I think there's a big problem with the word 'happy'. It's very transient. Contentment is perhaps more useful? Or satisfaction.

Have you done Maslow's heirachy of needs? Many are lucky if they get everything on the bottom row. Some are satisfied.

One of the problems in 1984 is when you know that others are deliberately keeping you down. That adds in a layer of pain. Perceived loss.

comparison. Do you know about the experiment where they gave treats to 2 primates in neighboring cages. One got more. The other didn't want his treat as he got less.

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Fessir t1_iucnh2l wrote

Since you mentioned Brave New World: Pretty much everyone in that world is excessively happy and they have very pre-determined lives. Maximising everyone's happyness is the ultimate goal of that society. It just raises the question if happyness by itself is so valuable that we should see it as absolute priority.

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KombuchaBot t1_iucqj2z wrote

I think that real happiness requires freedom. Orwell's famous final line of 1984 seems on the surface to indicate that Winston has accepted his slavery with all his heart, but what it really shows is that he has been broken, he is no longer capable of freedom even in his soul.

Orwell knew that real brainwashing isn't a matter of telling people what to think, it is about getting them to self censor at source; not spying on them, but getting them to spy on themselves and each other. That's what the novel is about.

In the GDR, about 2% of the population were full time informants and about 15% informed on each other part time. That was a pretty successful controlled society for a long time, but I doubt very much that it was happy.

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darthese t1_iucxh0o wrote

The proles were happy, I suspect that true believers amongst the party member will find some form of happiness.

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CevicheCabbage t1_iud3ipc wrote

Happiness does not exist without freedom. The quote says "without being free" which means literal 0 freedom. There is no happiness with 0 freedom, I assure you, please, for the love of God, wake up.

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left4ched t1_iud51us wrote

One of the entire points of the Party was to change the way words worked. So, once they change the word "happy" to mean "the way we want you to be" then yes, everyone is- by default and through no choice of their own- happy under all circumstances.

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books-ModTeam t1_iudd1qu wrote

Homework help requests should be posted in /r/HomeworkHelp. Please read their rules before posting

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ClaudioMoravit0 OP t1_iudsp4n wrote

Actually homework doesn't have anything to do here. It's just a reason why I post it to give a context

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idrinkkombucha t1_iucl12n wrote

I think you can be happy but you can’t be joyful. Not truly. Depends what you mean by happiness.

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