Nineteen Eighty-Four and Transhumanism
I think people commonly believe Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book of political commentary disguised as science fiction. But here I purpose my own interpretation of the book, I hope lains would find it interesting: the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four is more or less, a group of transhumanists.
I first read this book when I was ten years old, and I've just reread the book recently, and I was shocked seeing the actual explanation of the Party's ideology by O’Brien.
> You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.
The Party believed the individual alone is powerless, in order to extend the human capabilities, one should MERGE into the Party. IMHO, this is the most Sci-Fi part of the entire book, just take the words literally! Are you recalled the common trope which the individual minds are connected to form a hyper-conscious in modern Sci-Fi? It turned out that the Party is not just a bunch of dictators but actually something like the Data Integration Thought Entity that Yuki Nagato (in Haruhi) belonged to, or the true identity of the Sybil System (in Psycho-Pass).
WHEN HUMANS ARE CONNECTED, SMALL VOICES WILL BECOME LARGER. WHEN HUMANS ARE CONNECTED, EVEN LIFE WILL GET LONGER SO... - Series Experiment Lain, people are walking the streets of Tokyo at night. A female voice informs us.
It continues...
> Power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter—external reality, as you would call it—is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.’ But how can you control matter?’ he burst out. ‘You don’t even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death——’
> O’Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. ‘we control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. [...] I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.’
The Party believed the ultimate power is obtained by being able controlling the mind, the thought, rather than physical matter. What does matter is the people's perception of the physical world, not the physical world itself. Or in the perspective of modern Sci-Fi works, the DATA is what really matters. This concept of the Party is one of the major concept of transhumanism, reality is just your perception in the cyberspace, you modify the code and data so you change reality, the EXTERNAL REALITY IS NOT IMPORTANT.
And don't forget in Series Experiment Lain, the UFOs and alien encounters is actually made up by the human's collective unconscious itself. If the control of minds by the Party is accomplished, O’Brien "float off this floor like a soap bubble" is completely possible.
It well follows...
> ‘We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside—irrelevant.’
> ‘I don’t care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces.’ ‘Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any reason why it should?’ ‘No. I believe it. I KNOW that you will fail. There is something in the universe—I don’t know, some spirit, some principle—that you will never overcome.’
> ‘Do you believe in God, Winston?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?’ ‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’ ‘And do you consider yourself a man?’ ‘Yes.’
> ‘If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-existent.’
"IF YOU ARE A MAN, WINSTON, YOU ARE THE LAST MAN. YOUR KIND IS EXTINCT." It revealed that the ultimate objective of the Party members is the evolution towards to a life-form higher than human. The Party is transhumanist.
> It was a photograph. It was THE photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York. For only an instant it was before his eyes. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! ‘It exists!’ he cried. ‘No,’ said O’Brien. He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall.
IF YOU'RE NOT REMEMBERED, THEN YOU NEVER EXISTED. - LAIN
> ’Who controls the present controls the past,‘ said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. ‘Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’ ‘You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. ‘Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?’
> ‘No.’ ‘Then where does the past exist, if at all?’ ‘In records. It is written down.’ ‘In records. And——?’ ‘In the mind. In human memories.’ 'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories.’
In Series Experiment Lain, Lain managed to reset the world by alternating the records in the metaphysical space where everything on Earth is connected to. WHAT ISN'T REMEMBERED NEVER HAPPENED. MEMORY IS MERELY A RECORD. YOU JUST NEED TO RE-WRITE THAT RECORD. - LAIN
I am now thinking that Nineteen Eighty-Four was not just a political commentary, but one of the most underappreciated masterpiece of science fiction. And some of my final thoughts... the purpose of my post was not attacking transhumanism itself but merely some interesting discussion of the nature of Nineteen Eighty-Four's Party. As I said previously, I personally believe a cyberpunk world is inevitable and I welcome it from a historical perspective.
The main difference of the Party is the mean to achieve transhumanism. In order to modify the "DATA" for transhumanism, the core Party members establish a totalitarian regime to manipulate the data in meatspace, at the costs of everyone else's liberty, transhumanism through power. On the contrary, modern technology may allow the creation of an independent cyberspace in parallel of the meatspace, and the result is a libertarian version of transhumanism.
In fact I think the book itself also talked about the idea, and some other things.
> ‘Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world.’
Cyberspace, jack in!
> Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O’Brien’s mouth as he looked down at him. ‘I told you, Winston,’ he said, ‘that metaphysics is not your strong point.
> The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,’ he added in a different tone. ‘The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.’
Difference does exists, transhumanism is solipsist. But the Party was not even collective solipsist.
> In principle, membership of these three groups is not hereditary. The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area. In no part of Oceania do the inhabitants have the feeling that they are a colonial population ruled from a distant capital.
Also, in a cyberspace of transhumans, you can't have racism. Neither one's physical location can be a constraint factor. It's full-mesh.
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By the way, it can be a surprise that a book written in 1948 has so much ideas of cyberpunk and transhumanism which is only appeared in 80s cyberpunk, does it mean Nineteen Eighty-Four is cyberpunk? Not necessary, considering the fact that many ideas in transhumanism is extremely old, i.e. one can find them in religion, magic, alchemy, mythology, etc, it may no longer be a surprise.
Finally I hope my post is interesting to lains. Any thoughts about my analysis?