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by javajosh
574 days ago
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Love the book but I always thought this needed a little bit more explanation. It seems in our world people seek power for many reasons and only a small minority seek it simply to make people suffer. For example, people seek power to increase their own safety and pleasure. The suffering of others is incidental to their goals. In addition, since suffering is universal and requires no human actor to inflict. It seems rather like a huge waste of effort. I think it's better to read O'Brien's statement as something more specific to the world of 1984 and Big brother rather than something general that applies to all power seeking. We don't really learn that much about the workings of the inner party and the kind of propaganda that they are subjected to or subject each other to, and this might be evidence of what that looks like. |
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Are you sure? Your assessment is probably specific to regional experience; I'd probably have agreed with you at another point in my life. It's not something I was familiar with before living here, and it's not the same kind of (hierarchical/organizational/bureaucratic) power alluded to in the quoted passage, but in Austin I'm acutely aware that a not-insignificant subset of "normal" people here seem to be driven to seek enough power in whatever position they occupy that will allow them to make others miserable. I see it in people here who are nasty to me for no reason, and I see it in people here who are nice to me but nasty to others for no reason.
It's a shame that "the cruelty is the point" is so tightly bound to politics, because it captures in a few words a perfect description of the phenomenon.