We’ve Been Warned
The author George Orwell, like many others, seemed to have an uncanny sense of vision, of seeing beyond the obvious. But while most would learn some lessons of government and politics from his famous book 1984 (links), I see parallels in religion as well, especially Christianity.
The quotes I will comment on below (with my emphasis) are all from chapter 17, where the main character is reading from a book he believes was written by a counter-revolutionary. It discusses political theory from the perspective of the present (a totalitarian world consisting only of three super-states who are constantly at war) looking back on the time of Orwell (late 1940s).
p. 112-113 But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction— indeed, in some sense was the destruction— of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.While this is an excellent observation and the norm for most of history, I think in the last few decades we’ve seen that even when most people are affluent, they have still swallowed the lie that they must be governed by their “betters”— which now call themselves enlightened, advanced, evolved, etc. The boundary was simply shifted from the physical to the spiritual. Even so, I believe the elitists will not tolerate this risk for long; they will send the masses back into poverty. In fact this transformation (to use their own words today) has already begun, as we will see.
But there is another application in Christianity. The elitists must preserve and strengthen their place, protecting it from an educated and literate laity. But in what must certainly be a stroke of genius worthy of Satan, the solution was not to take the Bible away (and thus turn it into a symbol of the elite’s oppression), but to cast doubt upon it and then marginalize it in favor of mysticism. The Bible is Truth, and Truth is the enemy of control and oppression. Without an objective standard there is no way for the laity to judge the claims of the clergy, including this very class distinction. All it takes to control them is strong, charismatic personalities and maybe a smattering of real or imagined miracles. No matter how things are in the physical world, there will always be a way to convince the masses that necessary hierarchies exist in the spiritual. And since people fear the unknown, they cling to whoever offers the most convincing assurance.
p. 117 But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed.The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
In the first paragraph we see something that has failed to occur to most people on the subject of medical research. The elite know that people will continue to joyfully pour money into the quest for a cure of dreaded illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, even when no apparent progress is made. An occasional “poster boy” is paraded as a sign of success, but for the most part no one notices that the cure remains forever “just around the corner”. Ever wonder exactly why no cure has been found for the common cold while science learns how to clone, and map our genes, and put people on the moon? It isn’t because the common cold isn’t fatal, but because it is lucrative. Prescribed or over-the-counter, we are all drug addicts in one way or another, and it makes a few at the top very, very rich. You think nobody could be that cold-blooded? That’s the way they like you to think. They want you to keep faith in people, even people who have great power and wealth. As long as they have you believing there are certain depths to which even they would never stoop, they are safe.
The same is true in Christendom; nobody notices that even after centuries of “church” and “Sunday School”, the average believer never “graduates”, never matures to the point of seeing the clergy/laity distinction as artificial and unnecessary. We are all very busy “doing church” and feeling we are serving God, but the reality to which we have never opened our eyes is that we have turned the Body into a club and a society. People are conditioned to blindly trust those who claim a mystical “covering” over them, fearing deception or the flames of hell should they even think about leaving. It has not occurred to them that if church history shows anything, it is that this group-think and hierarchy is no protection at all against falsehood, and no reliable or consistent fount of the gospel that saves. This system is indistinguishable from the political realm; only the names have changed.
The second paragraph should leap out of the screen at us today, in the face of this global “War on Terror”. It is a war against an unseen enemy that we are forbidden to “profile”, a war with no boundaries, concrete goals, or objective results. Of course there are a few trophies, the most obvious being that a brutal monster was deposed. But incredibly, as if by design, it has also served to turn the true criminal (Islam) into the victim, and we have watched the sickening spectacle of world leaders kissing the very boots that keep kicking them (and us) around. Orwell would easily recognize this doublethink, where the victims become the criminals and the people’s rights are sacrificed on the altar of security.
It applies equally to the perpetuation of racism in America. Just when it seemed we were finally getting along, the borders were opened and American citizens began to be robbed by their own government to support illegal aliens. This of course immediately resulted in the citizens being labeled racists for complaining about it. And The Religion of Hate (wink wink) is being used to force Christians into the position of racist or “islamophobic” as well. Which is all to say that it has suddenly become a crime to be an American or a Christian. And it is all by careful design; it is necessary to keep the masses in a state of turmoil, chasing every enemy but the real one.
And once again the same is true in Christianity. We are constantly reminded of our differences, and there are always people stirring the pot on issues such as predestination, prophecy, hierarchy, etc. “From our own number have arisen ravenous wolves” who deny the scriptures, promote “another Jesus”, another gospel, another way. They want the Body divided: head from foot, left from right, “spiritual” from “unspiritual”, us from them. Yet we must not jump from this sinking ship into the mouth of a shark; we must not obliterate the line between truth and error, Jesus and all impostors, God and gods, saved and lost. As long as we’re fighting each other instead of Satan, he is most pleased because we are no longer a threat.
p. 121 ... in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.
World Wide Web, anyone? We think of it as the ultimate tool of freedom, but think of its potential for propaganda. We have already seen the willingness of giants like Google to capitulate to totalitarian demands, so who is to keep them from applying this around the world? And how would we know it if they did— or already are? The elitists have their trolls everywhere, their disinformation, their spies and hackers and surveillance. We have the technology to implant people with chips, to make nano-robots and microscopic snooping devices. We are tracked by our cell phones, TVs, PDAs, and who knows what else (are all those microwave towers really for better phone service?). This “global village” is a control freak’s dream come true, a propagandist’s paradise, a megalomaniac’s nirvana.
p. 121 It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called ’abolition of private property’ which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group instead of a mass of individuals... In the years following the Revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost unopposed, because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization. It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport— everything had been taken away from them: and since these things were no longer private property, it followed that they must be public property.
Also known as redistribution of wealth, a campaign promise in the last “election” here in the US. I honestly believe that’s the only promise that will be kept. Hasn’t anyone else noticed that the campaign of “hope” has been a presidency of “panic”? And that there’s always a scapegoat (it’s Bush’s fault)? (Don’t get me wrong, Bush is part of the globalist elite too, but the current usurper-in-chief is much worse.) And that the “change” we’ve seen so far has all been horrible, and all aimed at destroying what’s left of western civilization? We have already seen government take over some major private industries, and with frightening ease. We’ve seen them print money while demanding more taxes. We’ve watched investments evaporate before our eyes and known terrorists released without any regard for public safety. Our standard of living is in freefall, just as the elite have planned it.
p. 123-124 All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. Physical rebellion, or any preliminary move towards rebellion, is at present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is. They could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly; but, since military and commercial rivalry are no longer important, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.
We are in the midst of all this right now, and as stated, we are unaware of it, as well as unable to change it. People want/need to believe those who control them, and will even lash out at anyone who doesn’t. Official conspiracy theories, no matter how sloppy or ridiculous, are swallowed by the masses without choking, and abuse is hurled upon any who point out that the emperor has no clothes. We cannot believe that the government could keep huge operations a secret, even though the elite have a myriad of ways to do exactly that by essentially brainwashing their most loyal defenders. The best weapons for the elite, it turns out, are the ones who will insist to the death that they are free and well-informed. To admit anything else is unthinkable.
p. 126 (ch. 17) If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.
While Orwell concluded that it is sheer power that drives the elite, I would go one more step and identify it as hate. Satan hates all mankind and wishes to enslave it. He hates us because he hates God. Nothing but absolute sovereignty is his goal, undiluted and merciless. He is the master of altered reality, calling God the enemy and himself the victim, calling slavery freedom and oppression protection. (Sounds an awful lot like “Christians” who call authority submission, and rule service.) He believes himself to be the true god, and uses humans with that same delusion as pawns in this great cosmic war.
Whether it’s high-rise steel buildings that defy the laws of physics, or convincing people that victims are criminals, or telling Christians that they need an invisible, mystical covering, we are beginning to live the Orwellian nightmare. The world has never been more ripe for The Lie the Bible predicted in the last days.