thejediknighthusezni said:
The greatest misconception about '1984' is that GO was warning us about what could happen. That is true, but only part of the truth. Rather, he was alerting us to what is happenning- at this moment- at any modern moment. He was describing the inborn and conditioned mechanisms that drive people to use modern techniques to seek power-UNLIMITED POWER-without end. WS tells his torturer that there are more rational ways of dealing with him and he is promptly tormented yet more for missing the point entirely. The point is that, for people who start down the path of controlling all in the name of some greater good, a point will be reached when it is no longer sufficient to hold potential power. At a point, only the exercise of actual power to intrude in the most minute and intimate ways in the life of another can be acceptable. "Power corrupts...." It was also a tale about the effect such total survaillance has upon the observed- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. There's no escape from it. The more intensive the observation, the more radical the course of the observed is altered. How utterly warping it is to the individuals trapped in such intolerably inhuman conditions.
Oh man, I just fell in love with you... a little.