Well, what are some human dreams that would lead to 1984, and can we reconstruct them? Alternately, what are some activities that are prototypical of 1984 but can be changed slightly to good end?
My list of dreams would be something like conformity, letting other people make decisions for you, using language as a tool of thought, eternal conflict against outgroups.
Activities would be things like surveillance, revision of history, getting disappeared into a state prison.
Now, can we use these ingredients to make something good instead of something bad? Well, maybe not getting disappeared into a state prison. But mostly, sure.
Why should the future be united, why can’t we have factions like Eastasia and Oceania whose people view the other group as bitter enemies? What fun would the Horde be without the Alliance?
Why should the history of the world be readily accessible, rather than different groups revising history differently just to make it more awesome from their perspective, with true histories hidden and fragmentary? Herodotus thought it was a good idea to infuse his Histories with myth, maybe he was onto something, maybe it would make people nobler.
Or letting authority decide for you—this one’s pretty easy. What if Big Brother was smart enough to make a command economy work just fine? What if it turns out that most people lead lives as happy and valuable as any when the choice of where to live and what to do for a few hours a day is removed from them? Reversal test it—if we had consistently been assigned the perfect house for us, had been told to pick up and move to unknown locales only to find out they were amazing, would most people really want to switch over to house-hunting?
Well, what are some human dreams that would lead to 1984, and can we reconstruct them? Alternately, what are some activities that are prototypical of 1984 but can be changed slightly to good end?
My list of dreams would be something like conformity, letting other people make decisions for you, using language as a tool of thought, eternal conflict against outgroups.
Activities would be things like surveillance, revision of history, getting disappeared into a state prison.
Now, can we use these ingredients to make something good instead of something bad? Well, maybe not getting disappeared into a state prison. But mostly, sure.
Why should the future be united, why can’t we have factions like Eastasia and Oceania whose people view the other group as bitter enemies? What fun would the Horde be without the Alliance?
Why should the history of the world be readily accessible, rather than different groups revising history differently just to make it more awesome from their perspective, with true histories hidden and fragmentary? Herodotus thought it was a good idea to infuse his Histories with myth, maybe he was onto something, maybe it would make people nobler.
Or letting authority decide for you—this one’s pretty easy. What if Big Brother was smart enough to make a command economy work just fine? What if it turns out that most people lead lives as happy and valuable as any when the choice of where to live and what to do for a few hours a day is removed from them? Reversal test it—if we had consistently been assigned the perfect house for us, had been told to pick up and move to unknown locales only to find out they were amazing, would most people really want to switch over to house-hunting?