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Wildcat

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Max Monroe

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“Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”

“In the latter half of the twentieth century, two visionary books cast their shadows over our futures. One was George Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its horrific vision of a brutal mind-controlling totalitarian state - a book that gave us Big Brother, and Thoughtcrime and Newspeak and the Memory Hole and the torture palace called the Ministry of Love, and the discouraging spectacle of a boot grinding into the human face forever. The other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), which proposed a different and Softer Form of Totalitarianism - one of conformity achieved through engineered, bottle-grown babies and Hypnotic Persuasion rather than through brutality; of boundless consumption that keeps the wheels of production turning and of officially enforced promiscuity that does away with sexual frustration; of a pre-ordained caste system ranging from a highly intelligent managerial class to a subgroup of dimwitted serfs programmed to love their menial work; and of Soma, a drug that confers instant bliss with no side effects. Which template would win, we wondered? ....Would it be possible for both of these futures - the hard and the soft - to exist a the same time, in the same place? And what would that be like? ....Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us... ....those of us still pottering along on the earthly plane - and thus still able to read books - are left with Brave New World. How does it stand up, seventy-five years later? And how close have we come, in real life, to the society of vapid consumers, idle pleasure-seekers, inner-space trippers, and programmed conformists that it presents? - excerpts from Margaret Atwood's introduction (2007) to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.”

“Пропаганда называет диссидентов «контрреволюционерами», поскольку революция на Кубе типа продолжается («нет у революции конца», помним-помним). Стало быть, люди, желающие перемен, это здесь контрреволюционеры. А те, которые хотят оставаться у власти, в роскоши реквизированных особняков через шестьдесят лет после ее захвата — это революционеры! Тут главное — не перепутать.”

“Naysayers at their polite best chided the rewilders for romanticizing the past; at their sniping worst, for tempting a 'Jurassic Park' disaster. To these the rewilders quietly voiced a sad and stinging reply. The most dangerous experiment is already underway. The future most to be feared is the one now dictated by the status quo. In vanquishing our most fearsome beasts from the modern world, we have released worse monsters from the compound. They come in disarmingly meek and insidious forms, in chewing plagues of hoofed beasts and sweeping hordes of rats and cats and second-order predators. They come in the form of denuded seascapes and barren forests, ruled by jellyfish and urchins, killer deer and sociopathic monkeys. They come as haunting demons of the human mind. In conquering the fearsome beasts, the conquerors had unwittingly orphaned themselves.”

“In your cultural prison, which inmates wield the power?" "Ah," I said. "The male inmates. Especially the white male inmates." "Yes, that's right. But you understand that these white male inmates are indeed inmates and not warders. For all their power and privilege - for all that they lord it over everyone else in the prison - not one of them has a key that will unlock the gate." "Yes, that's true. Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can't, but he can no more get out of the prison than I can. But what does this have to do with justice?" "Justice demands that people other than white males have power in the prison." "Yes, I see. But what are you saying? That this isn't true?" "True? Of course it's true that males - and, as you say, especially white males - have called the shots inside the prison for thousands of years, perhaps even from the beginning. Of course it's true that this is unjust. And of course it's true that power and wealth within the prison should be equitably redistributed. But it should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.”