1984..... possibly....

now, the other day the Beard was in touch with the other side.... well, radio 2 anyway... still possibly my favourite station, despite the almost demise of a certain Terence Wogan, Knight of the Realm... but I digress....

anyway, the point is that Jeremy Vine (not to be confused with his ersatz cousin, Jeremy Kyle... many have...) was holding a discussion on what you would like to see the back of on the date of the ending of teh decade... and what the beard and several others said they'd like to see the back of was people saying that it was the end of the decade.... after all, its simple maths folks... there was no year 0, so the end of the first decade was obviously 10AD.... so unless somewhere we added a year, or had technical difficulties and weree stuck with a decade of nine years at some point, it would follow that the end of this decade is in fact the end of 2010... just as 2000AD was the last year of the 1990s... honestly... and 2001 was both the first year of the century and the millenium.... but as i don't actually follow the Judaeo-Christian based Gregorian calendar, this is all academic to me.... after all, i have 13 months in the year.... but again i digress...

but it did get me thinking of dates, and one date in particualr kept coming to mind, the eponymous date of Orwells second most famous novel.... the most famous being of course the one with the pigs.... now, 1984 has been one of my favourite books since i did it at high school in Eng Lit... which is usually a sure firer way to turn people off any book you care to mention... but 1984 was a breath of fresh air after The Outsider by Albert the Camel.... a controversial book, not least because it was french, and was written in french by a frenchman.... which technically isn't a crime, but does beg the question as always of why it was being studied in English Literature.... after all, does a translation into Deutsch make Lord of the Rings German Literature??? personally I doubt it.. but again, I digress....

1984 was, if I remember rightly, the first time i argued with a teacher over the content or meaning of a book.... a thing that i did more famously with the ever lovely Mrs Degg nee Davenport when studying Hamlet... and yes, she accepted the validity of my argument, especially when i showed he rthe reference to "nunnery" in my dictionary of Elizabethan slang... but there we go... anyway, i got fed up with everyone saying that 1984 was some view of a future dystopia, when i was sure (and still am) that Orwell was being a damn sight cleverer than that....

you see, behind the one dimensional characters and thin plot lies the essence of the novel, and of the warning, if such exists.... not a warning against some evil totalitarian state, but a warning that the apathy of the proles (us!!) would lead to the perpetuation of the current system of government... yes, that's right... Orwell in 1984 gives us a picture of a world where there used to be three layers of society... the High, whose aim is to stay where they are, the Middle, whose aim is to become the high, and the low, whose aim is to survive... every now and then, there is a revolution of the middle against the High, using the low as foot soldiers... the high are got rid of, the top end of the middle take the place of the high, and the rest of the middle and the low stay where they were.... until the middle revolt again... and again.... the only strata which experiences basically no change is the low.... now, in 1984 Ingsoc, et al, have achieved something greater.. they have ousted the High without replacing it.... so there is now no new High for the remaining middler to expel.... the low of course have stayed where they were.... but the place of the high has been taken by a faceless, non existent character, Big Brother.... and as he does not exist, the middle rule, by a committee that, since it does not allow individualism, is perpetual.... the revolution has finally succeeded.... the middle know that the way to stop new rebellion is simply now to keep the middle in fear, and make sure that the low are preoccupied with an endless war, popular songs, novels, and are only taught what they need to be taught.... all that remains is to alter the language.... so far so totalitarian, yes??

but no.. take any totalitarian state yiou choose, and you will see that the High still exists... there is only one system in which the high has been ousted or marginalised, and a faceless middle rules perpetually... its called democracy at the minute, and its alive and well here... think about it... as teh great Winston Churchill said (and i admit this is a bit of a paraphrase) we always have the same Cabinet.. only the faces change.... in other words (hock!! shorror!!) the system outlined by Orwell is our own system... just as in Oceania in 1984, if several members of the ruling committee die, it doesn't matter, as it is the body that is strong, not the individual cells.... and just as in 1984, the proles are kept happy by slight increases in rations, the X Factor and popular television, novels and songs and films churned out in machine like fashion, and kept in fear of bombings and wars that actually exist mainly by agreement with the middles of the other nations... so there will be no revolution ever again... the system is forever, unassailable....

but don't take my word for it... read 1984 again, and ask yourself.... does the governmental system depicted remind you of Nazism, Faascism, Stalinism, with their real dictators countermanding their cabinets.. or is it more like the good old mother of parliaments.... I know waht I think.... and I'd be very disappointed in orwell if i was wrong.... but I'm going on a bit much for this late at night.... so, all I'll say is that New Years eve was a good one, and I'm off to bed.... so, until the future does lie with the proles, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!