"Every law, every tax, every mandate for the collective good is an implicit threat of violence." I have felt this for a long time so I am glad someone else recognized this strange bureaucratic bullying that can be far more nefarious than outright attacks and so mundane and underhanded many will never spot them or understand their nature.
lots of people realize this, especially libertarians. Hell, Jack Donovan wrote an essay on it about ten years ago, "violence is golden" and it's not subtle.
My favorite dystopian novel is CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. Because it ends with Christ conquering the demonic totalitarians through sicing Merlin and a hungry bear on them.
RIP ZATHRAS; REIGN IN PREDATION ETERNAL. Like most, I was exposed to the anti- authoritarian parables in grade school, with Animal Farm and The Giver. Each were informative, but were a little too fantastic, as with 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and so on, to really hit home. It wasn't until I read EDEN, by Stanislaw Lem, that it all landed.
The biggest miss in this video is a common one, because most people only ever compare Orwell's 1984 to other works of fiction. The actual book that gives the most insight into Orwell's thinking during the process of writing 1984 is James Burnham's "The Managerial Revolution" which Orwell wrote a negative review of shortly before writing 1984 (and which the publisher's of more recent editions of Burnham's book often include in the preface these days) in 1941. The general premise of Burnham's book is that totalitarianism was inevitable, no matter the origin point of ideology. Whether that origin be liberal, communist, or fascist, the growth of the role of the middle manager in complex societies always veered them into a technocratic direction and that technocracy thus always veered them into a totalitarian one. Orwell hated the notion, but also seemingly respected it broadly according to his review, and much of what Burnham proposed was going on in the then present (he wrote the book DURING WW2 when the outcome was not yet inevitable, so it has more than a little language that's hedging bets that the fascists might win) in all of the powers fighting in the greatest conflict of the age. The understanding that a regime could maintain continual power due to an eternal war economy is something in particular that seems particularly inspired from Burnham in 1984 I'd say.
Excellent video essay! Really interesting how you compared 3 different books with slightly different perspectives on the same sort of totalitarian regime. You deserve more views!
When rich people say, "Put the wealthy in charge of society! We are clearly the best choice to lead us all into prosperity!" We answer, "We've tried plutocracy; it made everyone poorer - including, ultimately, the plutocrats! No, thank you, we don't believe in your utopian scheme." When priests say, "Put the righteous in charge of society! We are clearly the best choice to lead us all into virtue!" We answer, "We've tried theocracy; it led to the corruption of both the State and the Church. No, thank you, we don't believe in your utopian scheme." But for some reason when technocrats say, "Put credentialed experts in charge of society! We are clearly the best choice to lead us all into efficiency, prosperity, AND virtue!" For some reason too many people's well-honed skepticism goes absent, and far too many of us say, "We're listening! Tell us more about your utopian scheme!"
I don't think it should be even slightly surprising that people prefer their rulers to actually understand things. Take a look at congress and tell me we're not a kakistocracy.
Thanks! I don’t think I’d come across We before, and though I had heard some about Things To Come long ago, it had slipped from my memory. Edie, Peach, and the outdoor kids salute Zathras!
We've reached the mix somewhere between 1984's surveillance and intentional malevolence, and Brazil's massive incompetent inefficiency and idiocracy of the state
The degeneracy and hedonism of Brave New World, the surveillance, doublethink, and ideological brainwashing of 1984, the anti-intellectualism of Fahrenheit 451, and the bloated, inefficient, incompetent kafkaesque bureaucracy of Brazil
I love your analysis and takes on 1984, so interesting to see it differentiated to We and things to come instead of brave new world, far more insightfull comparison. Using the prespective of the different authors on their real life experience with totalitarian systems to contrast the three books to each other was, at least to me, really insightfull. Your line in the Mad Max video about the Goverment beeing a an Egregore blew me away, gives such an interesting perspective on all sort of institutions and expresses an generally understood property of social structures in an language that makes it far more tangible. Your videos are great analysis on themselfs and i thourghly enjoy them, but sprinkeled throughout are individual thoguhts that not only enhance the video but really invite (the viewer) to apply them outside of the context of that particular video. I work an entry-mid level job in tech and sometimes when i grasp a new concept/method/framework whatever i sometimes have experiences where i have to take a step back and sit for 10 minuits because implications and possibilities of application of some information overwhelm me and there are moments in your videos where you reveal your thought process in a way that invokes a very similar response in me. Please keep creating these videos, they are gems. Is it possible to Support you on some plattform that accepts paypal ? i have problems getting Ko-Fi to accept any payment provider i use.( Sorry, am German, dont have a credit card)
Thanks, I appreciate it. There's plenty of new stuff in the works that will hopefully be as interesting, and I'm looking into some options for expanding the channel. It's been rather haphazard up to this point.
I read "1984" years ago. Have always remembered the line "If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." || "...down to how long a bite of food should be chewed before swallowing." Humans aren't meant to live this way; soulless, mechanized, regimented. Never heard of "We."
I remember during the Apollo Moon missions, Ray Bradbury would write articles extoling space exploration, and he refer to _Things to Come_ as an earlier promotion of Manifest Destiny into the Universe. When I finally saw the thing as an adult, i was major league creeped out. I suppose I was inoculated by already reading CS Lewis Space/Ransom Trilogy, where the first two books ( _Out of the Silent Planet_ and _Perelandra_ ) explicitly presented the Wellsian rationale as one for ruthless progress over anyone who might get in the way, be it fellow humans or any aliens who might dare get in the way.
Its strange that this never dawned on Wells since he wrote about it himself, in his most famous work no less, The War of the Worlds. The Martians were very technocratic, highly advanced, but had evolved to such a state that they pigeonholed themselves and were ultimately defeated by simple disease. The Martians are also not in any way sympathetic, something even HP Lovecraft sometimes allowed with his advanced alien races.
Incredibly thought provoking video! You’ve inspired me to read things I did not know even existed like “We”. “A medical operation to remove the imagination and make them good productive members of society”. That sounds like a PhD program in the sciences if you’re unlucky enough to work for narcissistic megalomaniac. But therein lies one of the issues with what the American university system has become. The only ones to “win” and get tenure are the ones with the right political tenacity and ambition. Academia has become a quest for power rather than a quest for knowledge. Modern academia rewards political prowess and intellectual mediocrity.
The whole point about violence is very significant, and it pays much to keep it in mind on your day to day transactions, I find. Rest in peace Zathras, claw on those clouds you couldn't reach in life.
the 1979 hokey movie Shape of Things to come, is quite amusing, yes you had Jack Palance playing the bad guy prancing around in Spandex. and a cape haha
I still a have a soft spot for the 1936 Things to Come. It is gallingly naïve in the later sections, but the first half still holds up as an engaging and sometimes unnerving piece of apocalyptic fiction. I've seen it described in some places as "NWO propaganda", their words not mine, but by today's standards its outright tame. Its an underrated film regardless of its politics, and a must see for fans of classic science fiction. It is almost a dystopian movie to the modern viewer, but really so is just about every piece of utopian fiction from a previous age. Its free on RU-vid so I recommend people check it out, but Criterion did a remaster too if the potato quality bothers you.
Definitely a must see. And I can almost see a modern world war dragging on for decades with neither side close enough to defeat to make them flip the table and go nuclear, but neither able to make any real progress either.
@@feralhistorian There is definitely something interesting to the idea of a blasted post-apoclayptic hellscape created not by a nuclear exchange, but by a prolonged conventional war that just ended up consuming everything around it.
@@feralhistorian The modern war would drag on specifically because of pussyfooting around in an attempt to convince the opponent that going nuclear would be worse. One can see echoes of this in the Ukrainian conflict, where more than once when the West promised $NEW_TOY to the Ukrainians the Russians pushed back with the claim that $NEW_TOY justifies a nuclear response. Okay, yeah, an extended conventional war _also_ provides more room for graft, and if you believe you're certain to win anyway, why not funnel some of those war appropriations into your own pocket?
as for me I grew up in the Philippines in the 70s and 80s during the Pro American Marcos dictatorship where you had military and police enforced curfews from 9 pm to 5 am. prohibitions on free speech, media just parroting the gov line that everything was OK, Philippines was producing bumper crops, the gov was building beneficial public works , everyone was happy, communism was bad(this was one of the few things I agreed with the PH gov at the time), our military strong and daily news had a lot on the body count, like a score card in sports , how many communist and Muslim seperatist guerillas died every day with the PH gov miltary getting low casualty scores. If you spoke out, you got arrested branded a communist then if your family did not pay up, imprisoned tortured possibly killed. (disappeared). then when the people finally kicked out the dictatorship and establizhed so called freedom, the PH was so chaotic, worserning economy corrupt high crime rates (like Russia in the 90s) that many just wanted the dictatorship to keep everything safe orderly and prosperous. That is why the son of the dictator won since Filipiinos wanted to go back to authritarian times, btw, after freedom happened you found out the dictatorship were a bunch of corrupt aholes who stole the country blind, and all their good news was fake. Yep that is why im in Canada since the 90s. (low crime rates, better opportunities, law and order. )
I think as a general rule, whenever the government insists that it's trying to protect us from something we need to be extremely suspicious. They always seem to end up being corrupt assholes in the end, don't they.
@@feralhistorian yep either power corrupts or the ruler was an ahole to begin with, power just made it worse. I remember there was the pro USA dictator of South korea in the 70s called Park Chung Hee, yep he rivalled Kim Jong Il in terms of authoritarianism, including giving the police powers to arrest people with long hair and give them military crew cuts on the spot. and he continued giving a speech even after his wife got shot in front of him and the body carted away. Built the foundations for South Korea industrilization and mega corps and current booming economy and South korea today is a stable rich democracy.
Great video and spot on. I continue to think that 1984 is an inferior book to Brave New World, and generally, I might be almost alone in thinking that the dystopian horror stories of central planning and control are obsolete. They're all old school and came from the prewar period or soon after. Not long after the war, the majority turned against big institutions. Modern problems are more about the excesses of individualism with institutions and authority as the most popular scapegoat for why the path of freedom isn't working like we hoped. Think about it. We have fewer social limits than in the past, more resources, higher expectations for how we can get more for less and come and go from previously upheld commitments. Social barriers have been broken down everywhere, especially for groups with the most harrowing histories. Any kind of giving back or being accountable to the institutions, from long-term employment to the draft to having an ID to vote, are considered onerous repression. We don't have a totalitarian dystopia problem in the west, we just think we do. The dystopian stories contributed to this attitude. I don't want more repression, but I do think that institutions represent the hope for a common humanity that does big things, and we should make room for that. If it means they would end up with enough leverage to give people incentives to work for bigger goals without bankrupting themselves, then maybe that's preferable to handing over a UBI or a makework job. This presumes that people can be made less useless than they are now, but with strong incentives, a lot of them probably could. And it assumes that those with power could be kept from the rougher edges of exploitation, but I'm not talking about direct command authority over all, I'm talking about opt-in with the corresponding possibility of opt-out. Not gonna be a popular topic though. Everyone can keep blaming the politicians and capitalists, I'm sure it feels better than saying a hedonistic people are the problem.
I agree that the dystopian classics are mid-20th Century artifacts, rooted in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Today though, regarding the “excesses of individualism” and the loss of trust in institutions, I’m not sure we can really draw a distinction. I’d argue that we’ve largely lost the thing that makes democratic/republican/”free” (whatever terminology one prefers) systems work. They require a populace that wants realistically attainable things and understands the costs of getting them. That’s largely absent now, in the public and the institutions. Our dystopia isn’t one of totalitarian oppression but a gaggle of opposing nags demanding impossible things right now from bloated institutions that pretend they can deliver them. I’m not sure how we fix it when the rot is at both ends. I certainly can’t see a way out that doesn’t start with the people in the institutions being held to a higher standard, one that makes the institutions worthy of trust and respect, but who’s going to do that when it’s a systemic cultural failing? Perhaps a start would be to try and dismantle the crab-trap aspects of it. The institutions are not only corrupted, but also bloated with the effect of dragging everything down to the ever-sliding mean. A trimming of bloat and narrowing/clarifying of scope could make it easier for individuals and organizations that want to do the big things and in the process set an example, but to be more specific about what that might look like . . . not a popular topic indeed.
@@feralhistorian I would love to think that more accountability at the top is most of the answer, but I really think that it's focusing on a problem that's theoretically easier at the expense of practically dealing with an obvious one in the populace. They can't work within institutions. They don't make intelligent compromises, they expect to be pandered to, and just generally think that institutions are there to make their lives better at cost to someone else, someone else who only exists in the abstract for them. It's a child culture. In terms of leadership, that's obviously a problem, but while I won't argue chicken and egg here, I think you can't have good leaders unless you have followers that accept some minimum standard of accountability from those leaders. We have a followership problem. This is ideological. I am a hardline capitalist because that system IS decentralized institutional authority. If we respected that on its own terms, we could build new institutions. Even capital isn't really a problem: a fraction of the annual discretionary spending of the middle class could build a lot of new corporations that might improve employment prospects and drive down prices. Instead, we just leave business building to the investor class, top-down. And of course, post-virus, we have a stronger trend towards oligopoly than we've seen in decades. It's legal to build co-ops, too, I've looked into it. We just don't. Easy to blame it on government and the rigidities of the system, but I think we're too cynical to even try now, and that's truly disturbing. Again, great video, love the content.
I've only recently discovered your site and am backtracking through your videos so please forgive my late showing to the party (the story of my life lol). Without wishing to sound too much like a gushing fanboy (I'm 62 ffs) thank you for another absorbing video and a MAJOR thank you for finally solving the mystery of that Gibson short story which I read many years ago and have never been able to pin down since, The Gernsback Continuum. I've always wanted to read it again but have never been able to remember the author or title. What a brilliant name for a cat and a perfect description of all felines. Tell me, do you pronounce it ''Zathras'' or ''Zathras''?
"Two 'Zima' scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved 'Zima.'"
I recently finished watching the first season of SILO on Apple TV +. It's based on the WOOL series of stories. I won't give away to much of the plot. However it represents a Dystopia that tries to be a Utopia... Ten Thousand people locked inside a 144 level habitat. They are told they have been robbed of their history and that the world outside is poison. Anyone asking to go outside, does so know they won't live long. Possession of relics or knowledge of the past is strictly controlled. The vast majority of the populace live, work, and ask few questions. But there are pockets of decent. In a weird way it reminded me of the MATRIX, minus the virtual reality and Machines controlling everything! Whatever our future holds, I hope we heed the advice of cautionary tales and avoid some of the nastier bits of these possible outcomes... But being generally stupid, we probably won't!
Sometimes I get the impression humans just dont care enough about our freedoms. We fight for it all the time but we never seem to want to maintain it once we have it and almost always eventually fall into some form of autocracy or similar systems. Right now American is all but becoming an Oligarchy despite screaming how free we are. Its strange because if we actually regularly voted and participated we have power to make serious changes at any given point. But we dont. Instead we have a number of rich families and individuals that influence politics and even own whole news services and social media outlets. They have more say in our laws than we do, but again only because we dont participate. Ive always wundered what sort of systems is truly ideal for the human mind and body because on some level i think we might be too lazy as a species to manually maintain our needs. There has to be a system we can develop that allows us the opportunities to create forfilling lives that isn't so easily corrupted by power and wealth. Thanks for another interesting video! They always get me thinking.
It seems natural to not worry about something that's working, which ends up letting little problems become serious ones. And yet we try to solve social problems with laws or systems. If a system doesn't work, we get cynical and hostile. If it does work, we neglect it until it doesn't anymore and the cycle repeats. Using the US as an example, we've gone from John Adams observing that our system works for a "moral and religious people" but is "wholly inadequate to the government of any other" to the present state of barely-masked oligarchy. Our elections have been more than half theater for a long time now and this time around one party isn't even bothering to pretend to listen to their voters. I'm skeptical that any kind of stable social system is possible, any generation born into peace and prosperity seems to get lazy about it and take it all as a given. But maybe instead of trying to build better systems we build a better culture that places more value on asking good questions than having simple answers. But to do that we'd first have to reclaim a level of personal freedom and responsibility that is probably only possible in the face of some massive state-crippling calamity. And yet despite the cynicism I remain strangely optimistic about the future.
all hail zathras(did you get that name from Babylon 5?) yah I also had a natural anti authoritarian named Baguette. 19 years old when she passed ten year ago, I now have a 15 year old anti authoritarian by the name of Raven. (nothing to do with the highlander the tv show character or the comic character from Teen titans).
You could have thrown This Perfect Day into the mix as well. But I don't think that was ever filmed, and I do understand how having film clips makes production easier.
The three major books that change my thinking over all in high school were 1984, animal farm and the first volume of Mein Kampf. They made me very cynical in my views of politics. I viewed th ultimate goal of any political party is to gain absolute power and exterminate all those who threaten or do not fit in their order of the nation undesirables if you will. I also came away with the view that every major organization from government to corporations to major religions were just manipulating the masses to bend to their will. Part of me still can't help fall back onto this views even though I still hope for something good were we the people do not get screwed over.
It's interesting you chose the film over book version of Things To Come because Things To Come actually is more a precursor to the grander Foundation by Asimov.The film follows through on characterization more then the book, which is more the way a technocrat would look at human 'insects.' Of course, both We and 1984 fail precisely because they are w/o good characters and devolved into industrial fables. Most people and critics look at Animal Farm as the far superior work to 1984 precisely because it is a fable, and makes no bones about it. Brave New World is also interesting in that It's the bleakest end with suicide as the only way out; not even allowing the state the victory, so to speak.
I went with the film mainly so I could use clips from it. This one already has too much of me reading stuff. And the film just seems so damn pleased with itself about the whole thing. I have a vague plan to revisit this topic from another angle, with Brave New World and some odd picks like The Master and Margarita as the scaffolding.
Did John Maynard Keynes ever see a television commercial for an automobile? GDP: Grossly Distorted Propaganda NDP: Not Done Properly Don't the Laws of Physics affect the economy by the act of making things wear out? Marx used the word 'depreciation' 35 times in the first two volumes of his major work. But neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx ever saw a planned obsolescence economy. Net Domestic Product is GDP minus Depreciation There were 200,000,000 motor vehicles in the United States in 1994. Where did the depreciation go? If you examine the Net Domestic Product equation that Western economists do not talk about, you will find that Depreciation only applies to Capital Goods. Consumers are supposed to be stupid and charge up credit cards to buy junk designed to depreciate, thereby sabotaging themselves economically in the process of increasing GDP. Paying interest on depreciation is so rational. If you search Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations for "and account" you will find multiple instances of "read, write and account". He used the word 'education' Eighty Times. When did economists stop advocating for mandatory accounting/finance in the schools?
I guess the city in Dred is the is the opposite were outside the walled city it is genuinely worse then being inside it no matter how dystopic it is at least you won't get eaten by cyborg cannibals.
Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and current China also have variants of heavily managed state capitalism. The difference is that Vietnam as and China have non-democratic one party states.
Great video, but please don't use fake cyrillic in thumbnails. It's a nightmare for those of us who actually read and write in cyrillic. The first thing i read was "Sche thniygs to somye" followed by "perspectives oy Tesnyosrasu" It's like inducing a dyslexia in your viewers
There are freedoms to and freedoms from. Suppose everyone has the freedom to walk around in the nude now I can't safely leave my home without risk of seeing someone naked. I'm not more free because I lost the freedom from seeing nudists when I go outside.
The problem with "freedom from" is that it very quickly starts crushing the "freedom to" of others. Free speech and expression can't survive in an environment where people demand freedom from hearing or seeing things that make them uncomfortable. Not that I'm endorsing nudism. In most cases, please don't.
@@feralhistorian Freedoms from and freedoms to can't co exist. Freedoms from inatly deprive others of Freedoms to and in the same way freedoms to inatly deprive others of freedoms from. This is a tautology. But not all freedoms from and freedoms to are equally justified. Even in freedoms of expression. Up until somewhat recently stolen valor crime and of course what was said before still is.
