Reflections: Animal Farm

Human beings grow up with an inevitable ego that they are better than other animals - creatures with just sparse senses, incapable of thought, language or intelligence. Religious, social and philosophical theories try to mold us as superior beings, who are above and beyond animal-like impulses, who are far more cognitively developed than lower-order Pavlonian-creatures who obey their behavioral responses, who have the innate clarity to discern between good and bad, uphold equality and harmony, and who are blessed with an alacrity to work against Nature, to innovate, progress and stay invincible.

But looking at the world around us, the societies and civilizations that have risen and fallen, it's an irony that we humans start bearing the very same animal attributes that we were taught to overcome; worse yet, we indulge in these "primordial" animal traits with a devious use of our "sixth sense" - the power of thought. When this sordid metamorphosis afflicts people, the hope for Utopia, for love, peace and harmony evaporate, leaving the world dry and parched of freedom and equality.

George Orwell yet again explores the strong theme of dystopia through this book. In this tale, farm animals decide to revolt against humans, after years of suppression and cruelty. Through a brave rebellion they oust their human master and start a civil society, founded on seven noble commandments that profess peace, harmony and equality to all animals. What started as a socialist society with a vision towards Utopia, soon started turning rancid. The most cunning and power hungry pig, Napoleon, employed his conniving political tactics to gradually amend each of the seven commandments to suit his dictatorial authority. The gullible, naive and "illiterate" animals are swayed into trusting Napoleon and his entourage of cunning pigs and vicious thug-dogs. Those unfortunates who dared to rebel, ended up as snacks to Napoleon's dogs.

Orwell's prose is laced with intense satire at our political schemes, the manipulative conspiracies and the utter disregard with which the "lower-classes" are oppressed, and beguiled, causing the rich to grow richer and the poor to grow poorer. Just as how ironically, humans start degrading in their values and turn into animals, the pigs, who started a revolution to liberate animals from humans and to keep away from human-traits, soon started acting like men - greedy, selfish, hypocritical and treacherous. The metamorphosis is so seamless that men and pigs become indistinguishable - each having changed with the others' vileness.

Orwell's tale is a tragedy that most countries and societies have faced, and still face. He masterfully hints at how every society despite being started with hopes and promises of equality to all, succumb to core human vices, such that the term "equality" eventually transforms to gradations of social-classes. Although Napoleon, the pig, is a caricature of Joseph Stalin and his totalitarian rule, each person can associate Napoleon with plenty of "leaders" and political swindlers of their society. The book fuels righteous anger and has its heart wrenching moments. I enjoyed Orwell's crafty analogies to depict our societal cultures in the light of simple farm animals. I particularly liked the raven, Moses, who preaches to the animals of a mystical hill that grew sugar-candy and line-seed cake, wherein all animals could be blissful and happy forever. The animals, despite being skeptical of such a hill, wanted to hold onto the belief to distract themselves of their miserable lives and hope for a more sanguine future.

This is a book that makes us introspect on our values and triggers us to prevent the human-animal metamorphosis that threatens to put our civilization on a path to dystopia.

And I need to make a note that I received this book as a loving and thoughtful birthday gift :)

Reflections: 1984

I'd wanted to read George Orwell's 1984 for quite a few years now, and despite being familiar with the political and philosophical debates surrounding it, I never expected the book to affect me so deeply. Such is the power and intensity of Orwell's writing in concocting a dismal world of negative Utopia (or dystopia) where the basest and vilest of human nature are brought to their pinnacle and the very essence of humanity is pushed down to the nadir, to be eventually extinguished. For those of us like me, who constantly visualize, hope, and strive for an Utopian world of civilization formed out of love, peace, justice and rationality, this book jarringly dishes the image out and replaces it with a civilization that gets founded on the basis of hatred, dehumanization, greed and lust for power. A world where there is no sense of individuality, rationality or love, where everyone of us is being constantly monitored and watched by the "Big Brother", where every single thought of ours gets inspected by Thought Polices, and every single thought or deed that goes against the philosophy of the party gets severely punished and rectified. The party philosophizes that "Freedom is Slavery", "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength". The totalitarian dictatorship is so extreme that the Party tries to even control and correct the Past...as much of an oxymoron it might sound as. For what is Past, but for our collective memory of it and some physical records or documents? How easy is it in principle to alter both - especially in a technologically advanced rule of dictatorship.

I spent a big chunk of the book in plain denial, of the impossibility of us humans to be ever stripped off our basic humane instincts. But towards the end of the book, as the rebellious protagonist was being grilled under torture and was being psychologically manipulated in the worst forms possible, I could see my own thoughts fading, and subsiding, only to be replaced with horror and the desperate need to defend myself... so powerful was the prose in conveying the fragility of our minds and the kinds of manipulations that can scar and alter it forever. The torture was so excruciating that it took me a lot of coaxing and courage to finish the final pages of the book. Orwell masterfully brings out the kinds of psychological manipulations that can unearth some of our worst fears and drive us to insanity and complete dehumanization of ourselves. Willfully at that. This disturbed me so deeply that I was haunted with nightmares that played themselves out of each fear riddled recess. Well, we all know my extent of torture now - just make me read about it and I'm all set to resign and submit. Despite such an intense reaction, to me, the plausibility of dehumanization is still an unabated philosophical debate - I somehow cannot come to terms with the theory that the meaning of humanity and the essence of being a human can be eradicated altogether, forever. Despite the scars, despite searing every little cell in our mind that is responsible for human "virtues", there is just some inexplicable faith that the feelings and the essence will revive. I strongly believe that it is this faith that can keep our civilization in good stead.

Through such manipulations of the human mind, Orwell raises the question of what truth is? How objective is it? Is truth an external objective reality? Does reality exist separate from our understanding and mind, or does it only live internally in our minds? If reality and truth exist only inside our minds, manipulating them and declaring what truth is, should be theoretically plausible. And for a political system that is just hungry for raw power, in order to control reality, the past, and the future, it is a dream come true. This ideology borders on a solipsistic way of thinking about any kind of "knowledge" that exists outside the mind. In this context, Orwell introduces the concept of "Doublethink" - the frame of mind in which we equally and consciously believe in two contradictory beliefs. Getting humans to this state of doublethink is the most dangerous of all, for it reduces us to unfeeling, hypocritical, automatons, incapable of any critical reasoning to prove or disprove our own thoughts.

The book also raises a lot of red flags about our current social and political systems. Although on a basic level, the book extrapolates on the extents of dictatorial rule the world might be in, after Stalin's iron hold over Russia and the Nazi's atrocity during the Second World War, it also questions some of our basic principles on democracy and war. Big Brother's philosophy "War is Peace" seems to resonate (albeit in a convoluted way) with our current policies and justifications for nuclear weapons production. Each country bases its policies on the aggression and perceived threat from some competitive country...if every country lives on such threatened boundaries, to them peace is achieved through War! With the world's super powers proclaiming democracy, doesn't the principle dissolve into nothingness with the irony of constantly preparing for war, in order to maintain peace? Isn't it a form of doublethink?

The rise of such a morbidly ominous civilization is a warning to us. It is shown that such a totalitarian rule came about when humanity was on the verge of achieving Utopia, but we humans lost hope and reverted to the lusty craving for power; gaining power as not a means to anything, but power as an end in itself. The horrifying prospect of us humans being turned into empty, mindless, soulless shells is terrifying. But such a terror is what should propel us into acting and thinking appropriately, so as to avert such a dystopic hell.