86 - THE GRAND RETURN!

[buywithme]

Is this--

...

Comrades? Are we--

[There's a long pause.]


I have-- cons--


Comrades!

Consumers!

Allow me to extend my fondest and most sincere greetings to you from the end of history! I’m quite sure you know my name: Prefect. Are we not the most highly favored of all our kinds to be here? In this, our new chance? Our new and open doorway? The compilation of not only millennia of history and experience, but worlds upon worlds of variety and flavor, all compressed into one microcosmic existence? Lain out for us on a platter? Let us not mourn our misfortune or dream of escape, but rather, let us combine and create and expand in our scope and diversity! Once more unto the breach my friends once more! Let us immanentize the eschation!

Brothers, sisters, comrades, buy with me.



[Ooc: Okay, so Prefect is back, and where he was that week lasted a lot longer than it did here. As such, he's worried that the people he knew will have all either graduated or just vanished off. Instead of being sensible and asking, he's re-written his original greeting post in case he's just surrounded by strangers.]

Comments

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

...So, Comrade, what you're saying is that your language is smaller than mine, and you think that makes it good?

Comrade, you have less than me, less is worse than more. The only word that should be removed from the dictionary is the word 'enough', and the extra space it's absence makes should be used to enlarge the entry for 'enormous'!

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Yes, comrade, but efficiency is even more important than quantity. Think of what you can control, just by eliminating certain words. Think of what you can do with that power, comrade.

To say it's constantly getting smaller, Newspeak enables a vast amount of things.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Comrade, the Factory has built a palace of excess within the reassuring bars of efficiency. Why create less words for things when you can create more? When you can have seventeen words for 'need', so that you can never run out of ways to tell people what they deserve? Nineteen words for one chemical so you can slip one off and the next on whenever the fashion shifts?

Comrade, the world needs options! Nay, deserves options! And there is literally no one but the Factory who can provide them with those options. So is it not our duty to do so?

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

No. If you're the only people who can provide anything, there's no need for choice. You only need what is prescribed. Giving people different words to describe what is unnecessary or unorthodox only encourages erroneous thought.

Imagine, comrade, if you took the word 'free' and stripped it down to the meaning of 'without' and nothing more. Words will only mean what you want them to mean. Other conceptions of them will be abolished.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

...But people like having options, Comrade. They are fulfilled and made perfect by conforming their tastes and interests to one of the options which we provide for them, if we didn't provide them with options then they'd be unhappy. They'd look elsewhere.

Freedom is being able to always buy another one, and we give people that freedom. We give them the money to buy things with, the things for them to buy, and the incentive to want those things. There are as many things as we can imagine, and they only matter for a second, and then the next one rears it's head, and everyone is happy, and safe, and has everything they can ever want. It's heaven, Comrade. Why would we change the language in heaven?

they're really just having doctrinal rants at each other now.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

That's a very proletarian conception of what freedom is. You give them the choice to pick the little things and all the big things go miles over their heads, because you don't give them the ability to recognise it. All they are obssessed with is where their next drink, fuck or cigarette is coming from. They live on survival instincts due to that kind of 'freedom'. It is a pathetic, inferior and weak kind of 'freedom'.

And it's slavery. For Party members, we have a greater freedom. We have the freedom of being part of the collective. Being part of a greater, more powerful, immmortal conception, which can shape reality, which can take history and re-write it. We enslave ourselves to that so we can be free. Freedom is slavery. Slavery is freedom.

Yep, GO GO EVANGILISM!

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Comrade, for the children of the Factory there's no need to waste time dawdling over the bigger issues, because the Factory has done all of that for them! There are no concerns of morality, of loyalty, of who raised them or who will bury them, the issue might be muddied and worthy of contemplation where you are from, but for us? The Factory is eternal, The Factory is the mother and father and the servant and the overseer of us all, It transcends such fashion statements as those things that make us free, and defines the very quality of our existence.

Comrade, the Factory killed history and gutted culture and we all feast upon the meat it left, and our table is great and bountiful.

...o'brien just changed his mind within five seconds. he may love you, prefect. if he was capable.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Your world. It must be...

So the only source of truth is your 'Factory'? The only way anyone can possibily concieve reality is through your 'Factory'? Is that correct?

I do believe I misunderstood you. That is a very interesting method of control.

He's going to be disappointed when he hears the "killed by workers who saw through my bullshit" bit!

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

The Factory is everywhere. It is everything to us, all our jobs, all our needs, everything we have or are it gives to us.

There is only one reality to be perceived, and the Factory built it.

he'll just take it as proof that my party is better than your factory.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

It seems you and I have more in common than simply the use of 'comrade', comrade.

My Party is all and everything. We maintain absolute power and control, even over thought. Nobody can oppose us. Nobody ever will because the collective Party will live on forever. Can your 'Factory' do that?

I'm curious. How did you kill history, comrade? We have our own...peculiarities when it comes to history, so I am curious.

THERE ARE NO FAMOUS BOOKS THAT EVERYONE ON THE BARGE HAS READ ABOUT THE FACTORY BEING SHIT :|

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

The Factory will exist for as long as humanity does. Without it we would whither and die.

We killed history by coming to the end of it. We arrived at the ultimate apex of human development and we marked it with a full stop, and then we began working backwards, we took whatever we wanted from whenever we wanted and we made it fashion or entertainment and it lasted a moment and meant exactly the same thing as every other moment from any other time. We painted it's bones and chopped them up and made fashionable mobile phone covers out of them and sold them and no one knew or cared what they were before we took them.

O'BRIEN DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH BOOKS.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

But was there no sense of objective or progress? Even we carefully developed the sense that there was progress. That there was more chocolate today than there was last week, that there was the potential for the war to end, that the Party would overcome its enemies, even though those subversive elements, those Eastasians were always, always necessary. To make them love you and fear you all at the same time.

I am beginning to think you are the most normal and sane person I have come across in this entire place, though, comrade.

PREFECT KNOWS THEY EXIST. EVERYONE DOES. O'BRIEN'S PROPAGANDA SUCKS.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Things are better now than they have ever been before, because no one from any time but this has ever had so much stuff as we have! Work hard, buy with me, and live your dreams, and some day you may truly have it all! Thank the great and glorious providence of the Factory that you have a good job, here in the Factory's central processing department, where you can serve the Factory with full access to all of it's wonders! Think of those poor people on the far eastern extremes, working out in the assembly lines, just work hard, fulfill your function, pass your evaluation, and you will want for nothing.

...

I like talking to you, Comrade.

EASTASIAN AGENTS. IT'S ALL EASTASIAN AGENTS.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Would that not just create love for the items themselves, not those of you providing them? For in my world, we will create a world where there is no loyalty except loyalty to the Party, no love except love for Big Brother. There will be no laughter except that of triumph over a defeated enemy. Omnipotance makes all of that unnecessary. All you require are love, fear, hate, loyalty and self abasement. Do you not see that all competing pleasure must be eradicated, in order to only allow for it to be directed at the party? For all you need is the draw of power, the rush of victory and glory, and an eternal face to stamp that rage upon.

That is all we need to create power. You do seem to understand the need for power, comrade, better than anyone else I can see here, but do not pretend it is for anyone's good except the perpetuation of power. If that is your only ultimate aim. There is no need for such petty pleasures, as love will only be conferred onto them.

I do, however, like talking to you, comrade. You understand.

OH IT IS NOT >:| Also on an unrelated note, I think there's a hideous part of me that now ships it.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

...

Comrade, I don't think you understand. The Factory loves it's people and it wants to give them everything they need, and it wants them to be happy and have all the things anyone could imagine that they might want. The Id, Comrade, is the most base element of human nature, the desire to have things immediately. You might be able to distract and defer this instinct for decades, but at the end of the day, it will still be there, and eventually if it goes unfulfilled it will rise up and try to take what you've withheld from them, and when that day comes, Comrade, starvation and misery and suffering will not deter it, it will transcend your games with language, and It's loyalty will only be to itself. You will be the hated enemy, and they will tear down your walls and rob you in the name of what they want.

In the arms of the Factory, our people want for nothing. They love what we let them buy, and they know that they only have the things they love because we love them, and the Factory wants what's best for them. It's not about power, we're taking care of them. We're protecting them.

...I have hideous parts of me like that too. O'Brien is disgusted with me.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Comrade, I don't think you quite understand. There is no use in pretending it is about love. What makes you think hate is less self-sustaining than love? If you keep the hate constantly directed outwards, constantly directed at some enemy, both internal and external, an enemy which will never die. The stronger the power we have, the tighter the control becomes, the more we crush those enemies, the harder we stamp on that face. For there were always be a face to stamp on.

They will never hate us, because every instinct we instill in them, every fear and every love will be directed at the Party. They will not know how to do anything but love the Party and Big Brother and hate the agents of Goldstein and Eastasia. That is all they will know. They will not have the words to express such a hate for us, going back to the principle of Newspeak. They will find happiness in the successes of the Party, in the future of the Party, as being part of that collective. And they will hate everything else. If you remove all other attachment, if you entirely prevent that kind of human understanding, the only thing they will ever feel emotion for is the Party.

We are protecting our people too. They have to believe that, because in a society where nobody trusts anybody, the only thing you can trust is the collective. You cannot trust other individuals, you can only trust the Party. And that gives us power. That gives us the power to be loved and feared all at the same time - because they revere you for protecting them, but fear what you may do if they betray the collective, demonstrate unorthodoxy, put a thought out of place. They cannot turn the hatred on us and rob us for 'what they want' because what they want is what we have taught them to think they want.

You can use all those pretty duckspeaking words, comrade, but in the end. In the end, comrade, it all comes down to power. If you have the power to make history and memory what you want, if you have the power to tear minds to pieces and put them back together in shapes of your own choosing, you have true, utter, immortal power. Once you get people not just to think what you want them to think out of silent obedience, but out of devotion, then you have no need to make them love anything. They will love you. They will love Big Brother and the Party and will hate any enemies of theirs. Because that's all they know how to love and that's all they know how to hate.

Your similarities to him are now sort of freaking him out!

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Comrade, we do not tear minds to peices! We don't tear anything to pieces! We guide people though-- through the natural path of human development towards perfection! We lead them to the glorious conclusion of history and-- and if there is a certain level of control which must be exercised over them to help them to choose the right things to want or the right ideals to obey or how to conduct themselves, then yes, we might steer them gently through that as well, but our devotion is not just created through a collection of techniques to assure our obedience!

It's the natural human response to being given everything you want and through being shown how good to you the Factory is and how much the Factory values you and knowing that it needs you and that you are a part of it's great machine!

Besides, I don't see how if you never give them any stuff, you can honestly prevent people from noticing that your party is 'ungood'.

ohdear. o'brien might actually do a good thing and decide not to push breaking his orthodoxy.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

It is the natural human response, when given everything, to want more. To take it, and you, for granted.

Old despotisms were founded on such a thing. The, ah, social contract, I believe it was called. We give you everything you need, you shut up and do what we tell you. A fair enough idea, but a weak one, in the end. It is not sustainable, because people realise that you are merely pretending to be good, it's all a cover for maintaining your power. For that's all the aim of any system is. We do not cover it up. We take more and more power quite blatantly and we do not give people the opportunity to realise it is 'ungood'. The more power we have, the more attractive we are, and the more feared we are. The closer we get to omnipotence, the less chance there is ever of there even being such an unorthodox thought.

But, comrade, I can see you are a goodthinker for your 'factory'. I'm very sure my Party loves me too, and has concern for me as part of the collective. I simply also understand the how as well as the rhetorical.

Good things suck, he should push the crap out of it

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

The Factory is not pretending to be good!

Thank you, Comrade. I... I'm sure that the party would have been an admirable alternative if the Factory didn't exist.

excuses! they are excuses to come bother you, prefect! he's having totalitarian existential angst.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

I am sure that your factory would have been suitible if the unthinkable were to happen. At least, in comparison to everyone else's words.

Comrade. Would you be interested at all in borrowing my book on Newspeak? If only out of academic curiosity.