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Posted by J.R. Sinclair on December 25, 2007, 5:46 pm
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to avoid
swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like.
Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain,
there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with
the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in
interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and
which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or
the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from
starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are
obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their
rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into
whatever shape they choose.
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars,
is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant
animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of
hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats
up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special
mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen,
is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the rulin
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