Facing Dystopia(a sermon delivered at the Hamburg Unitarian Universalist Church on November 21, 2004) We live in a dangerous world. MSNBC recently reported that there have been 3,000 terrorism-related deaths around the world since the 9/11 attacks. 3,000 in three years! From 1970 to 2,000, not a single year passed without a terrorist attack somewhere in the world, but those thirty years of terror produced only a little more than three times the number of deaths of the past three – around 10,000. And, since many terror attacks use some type of explosive, the injury toll can be as much as ten times higher. So, including 9/11, that’s over 16,000 dead and perhaps another 160,000 injured by terrorists in the last 34 years. But terrorism is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to humanity’s ability to destroy itself. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice, 22 of every 1,000 people over the age of 12 were victims of a violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, or assault) last year! That’s nearly 5 million victims in one year. And this marks a 10-year low from a staggering 51 per thousand reported in 1994. Worse still is the bloody history of war in the 20th century. An interactive conflict map at nobelprize.org shows where conflicts have flared across the world during the last century. In every decade, a dozen or more wars rage across the map for months or years. In fact, not a year has gone by since 1900 without man waging war against man somewhere in the world. 104 straight years of war (and, in reality, probably more)! The Red Cross estimates that over 100 million people have been killed in wars since the beginning of the 20th Century! 100 million! That’s more than a one-third of the current population of the United States; three times the population of Canada; or all of the people alive today in Mexico. Our bloody, violent history. Is it any wonder that 59 million Americans chose to re-elect a war-time president? People are afraid and George W. Bush played to that fear throughout his campaign. But are we safer now than we were four years ago? The terrorism statistics I cited earlier would suggest no. But in truth, only history will truly be able to tell. However, I believe we are now closer to the state of Big Brother than at any time since George Orwell wrote 1984 over 50 years ago. Obviously, we don’t live in a totalitarian regime under the constant eye of the Thought Police. We don’t have Two Minute Hate periods to whip us into a patriotic fever. The Junior Anti-Sex League hasn’t eradicated passion from marriage. The little Spies organization hasn’t turned our children against us. And two plus two still equals four. But some of the trends of the last few years are frightening nonetheless. The class struggle gets more acute every year as the rich not only get richer but also stabilize their power base and tighten their control over the lower classes. Those who don’t conform to the currently narrow definitions of normal behavior have found their freedoms restricted over the past few years. And the so-called Patriot Act – in a wonderful application of DoubleThink – was enacted to keep us safe by severely curtailing our civil rights. In the months after 9/11, our government arrested and detained some 1,200 people on immigration charges or as material witnesses. These people were held without trial, without representation, and with little or no rights. Most of the non-citizens were deported after several months, but some languished for up to 18 months in jail without ever being charged with a crime. Even today, our government has some 600 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Most of these are Afghan prisoners captured during U.S. action against the Taliban. But there are also those like Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen born in Louisiana who, since being captured in Afghanistan, has been held as an “enemy combatant” without charges for three years. A U.S. citizen held by the government for three years! Reports of torture coming out of both Gitmo and Abu Graib, the Iraqi prison, compare almost frighteningly well with the trials Winston Smith faced inside the walls of the Ministry of Love. But even more insidious than these attacks on personal freedom is the casual disregard our leaders have for the truth. Big Brother maintained control of the people of Oceania not only by the threat of turning dissidents into non-persons, but also by cutting citizens off from the past through constant revision of the facts. “We are at war with Eastasia,” Winston is told. “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” Sound familiar? How about if we change it slightly. “We went to Iraq to remove a madman from power. We always went to war with Iraq to remove a madman from power.” The idea is that rewriting history over and over again makes it impossible for the average person to realize that he or she was better off at some other time in the past. We can’t be in a recession because we’re constantly told that the economy is improving. But there is a more sinister reason for these revisions as well. Let me quote a passage from 1984 that really hit home for me: “It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change of doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one’s mind, or even one’s policy, is a confession of weakness.” In other words: “A flip-flopper is a weak leader.” Now, when I first decided to talk about 1984, I thought I would discuss how close we are technologically to the world where “Big Brother is Watching You.” Cameras record us in most public places these days. Companies can now monitor employee computer use keystroke by keystroke. And Radio Frequency Identification – or RFID – chips are about to become a ubiquitous part of our lives. These miniscule microchips need no batteries, can transmit information up to five meters to special receivers, and will be placed in just about every product we buy (ostensibly to help manufacturers and retailers track inventory) as well as in U.S. passports. Safeguards are obviously being put into place, but anyone who now has to protect their computer from viruses, spam, and spyware knows that safeguards are no safe bet against someone determined to abuse technology for their own good – even our own government. But it isn’t all the potentially abusive technology that surrounds us that scares me so much as the political parallels I see between our world and that of Winston Smith. In 1984, the Party rules not for the sake of the people, but for the sake of, and for the continuation of, the Party. The hierarchical structure of upper, middle, and lower class has been frozen in place forever, with all benefits going to the upper class and no chance given to either the middle or lower classes to effect any change in the status quo. But where Orwell foresaw ultimate rule through oppression and fear, in our world, it is being accomplished through capitalism and apathy. Fully 95 percent of senators and congressmen get re-elected every election. Why? Primarily because they’re backed (for the most part) by corporate America. The upper class wish to remain in their seats of power, so they finance those politicians most likely to maintain the status quo. With that money, incumbents can control the message (or rather, control reality). Many voters don’t even realize they’re being duped. The rest of us just don’t believe there’s anything we can do about it. Our President went so far as to require supporters to sign loyalty oaths before being admitted to campaign rallies in an attempt to control the message – to insure that the rallies rolled along their predetermined path to a fever pitch of patriotic acceptance of his administration. The truly sad part about all of this is that it works. Our government – no, our entire country – is governed not by politicians and rhetoric, but by corporations and advertising. Let’s face it, we are a consumer-driven culture. With the holidays just around the corner, it’s impossible not to realize this fact. David Shenk, an author who has written for Wired, the New York Times, the Washington Post, states in his book Data Smog that the average American encounters over 3,000 advertising messages per day. He claims that number is up from 560 in 1971. Although the advertising industry firmly refutes this statistic, it is cited by many other sources. Obviously we don’t take conscious notice all of these messages. Most of them are nothing more than product logos skimming past us during our daily travels. But today there are ads everywhere, from register receipts to bathroom stalls, from t-shirts to golf holes. And even if we are not aware of every message, according to Stuart Ewen, professor of communications at Hunter College, what affects us is not our experience of any one ad but “the totality which repeats certain kinds of messages again and again.” This constant stream of 3,000 messages per day has a cumulative, and primarily, unconscious effect. This, then, brings me to our “Brave New World,” which Aldous Huxley saw only too clearly 70 years ago. Huxley’s dystopic society relies not on fear and oppression, but on production line genetic engineering and subliminal social conditioning – it’s the best and worst of Henry Ford and Pavlov. Even before birth, every member of Huxley’s society is assigned a predetermined caste in life from the highest Alphas to the lowest Epsilon morons. Then, through strict hypnopaedic conditioning (messages repeated thousands of times during sleep), everyone is conditioned to be happy with their lot in life. As the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning says, “The secret of happiness and virtue [is] liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that; making people like their inescapable social destiny.” But more than just conditioning people to be happy, these hypnopaedic lessons, which become homilies that the drones repeat throughout their lives, turn them all into good consumers, because it’s important to “keep the wheels keep turning.” In this world (much like our own), if something breaks or wears out, you don’t try to repair it. You simply buy a replacement. Or, as the hypnopaedic homily goes, “The more stitches, the less riches.” The art and literature of the past is forbidden in this world because, as the Regional Controller states in the book, “beauty’s attractive and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.” This same character goes on to say, “Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t.” Therein lays the danger of this consumer-driven, self-gratification oriented society. All happiness is by definition mediocre and fleeting. And, we’re closer to this world than I think we would like to admit. The Controller says at another point, “You’ve got to choose between happiness and … high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.” I watch Hollywood’s flashy, big budget, but ultimately uninspired entertainment, which panders to the lowest, most common audience. I see reality television, which forces people to debase themselves for the prospect of a few fleeting minutes of fame and fortune. I stare at the thousands of advertising messages telling me I can’t be happy unless I buy the latest gadget, or car, or clothes, or medication. I look around me at all of the people who are buying into this false message of happiness, and I shudder. I know. We’ve already made our choice. Of course, if we have to choose between the happiness and comfort of Brave New World and the oppression and paranoia of 1984, I guess we’re making the right choice. But do we have to choose between the lesser or two evils? Sometimes maybe. But remember what philosopher Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” There are two items that both of these dystopias share in common: The first is that all of the great art, architecture, literature, philosophy – and of course, religions – of the past were abolished. This was, in part, to insure that the masses never realized there was something missing from their lives. But also, and more importantly, this insured that the masses had no access to the great ideas of our ancestors. They are kept from from subversive elements. The second thing that both of these evil regimes did was to eliminate the aged. I think part of the reason for this is because old people are cranky. They complain about discomfort. They complain about disorder. They complain about life. So, if we are to defeat the dual tide of oppression and rampant consumerism, we must question everything. And we must do so vocally – as vocally as the old crank who writes letters to every corporation anytime he feels wronged; as vocally as consumer watch groups like Human Rights Watch; as vocally as Ralph Nader. We must call our elected officials on their mistakes and their mistruths. We must complain when we see adolescent girls dancing to “Let’s Get Physical” in a toy commercial; and not just about the impropriety of the situation, but on the idiocy of those who chose that song for a children’s toy, unaware (we hope) of its sexual subtext. We must speak out against injustices against those in our society who have been marginalized; those who have no voice; those who simply don’t fit into the mold of normality being imposed on us by our government, by the moral majority, and by faceless corporations who see us all as merely statistics in economic or market research equations. We must become cranky and less satisfied with our happy, contented lives, because contentment leads to apathy; Contentment turns us into sheep. And I for one refuse to be led off to be slaughtered. |
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