This story is the sixth installment in my "Origins of a Writer" Series.
Does six make be a serial writer?
You can find previous parts on my page or by searching "Origins of a Writer" on the top left.
If you don't have time to read the previous parts, it's okay! Lucky for you, the actual stories aren't related, so all you really need to know before you start reading Part 6 below is the Author's Note portion of Part 1. And just because I'm so accommodating, here it is ---
Believe it or not, but I wasn't always a great writer (if you're laughing at this statement, I can't hear you).
In my first year of college at UC San Diego, I took a class called 'Theatre And Film' (I think), in which we studied (watched) films that were based on stage plays. Instead of exams, we were graded on essays comparing each adapted film we studied to its original written play.
Obviously, I got an 'A' in this class (this is a verifiable fact, and I am boasting because it was my first A in college). But on a more serious note, this class (and the 'A' grade, just saying) was particularly important to me because it was the first time I wrote something I wanted to write.
Basically, when historians in the future research my life, they will find traces of Launchora's origins in this class.
So to continue celebrating Launchora's first weekend of story-publishing (i.e. June 20-22, 2014), I'm going to publish some of my college writings/essays in this multiple part series, which I would like to call "The Origins of A Writer". Yes, I just made that up and then changed the name of this story to reflect it.
---- End of Author's Note from Part 1
This essay (part 6 of the series) is part of the second segment of my college writing, which I wrote during a class called CAT 2 (Culture, Art, Technology 2). I wrote my first fictional story (Tabula Rasa, also available to read for free on Launchora) during this class, so it was a pretty big deal you guys.
This essay was written on February 26, 2009, and is reproduced here word-for-word, typo-for-typo. As always - don't judge my writing, judge 18-year-old me's writing.
Spoiler Alert: This essay talks about the novels - 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 - which are obviously classics of sci-fi and 20th century literature. I can honestly state that if it wasn't for 1984, I would have never felt the inspiration to try out fiction writing. Also, the last line of this essay is a fun sentence to read after all these years, considering that my first company deals with taking stories into the digital age.
ESSAY SIX
Predicting, Planning, & Controlling Spontaneity
Human behavior has undergone various modifications through time. In fact, there isn’t a time when the entire human race was at a standstill or without progress. It is in human nature to want change and to always aim to achieve the impossible - it is what drives us.
Our current world is a combination of numerous attempts, full of successes and failures, in every field from medicine to archaeology to economics and so on. What we have created is a consequence of a consequence over hundreds of years, progressing in some way or the other. This progress, which has been a downhill experience with several hits and misses, has lead us in charge of a world where we control everything and we control nothing; that is - we control the products, the consumers, the producers, the production and the consumption, but we no longer have any control on the cycle or the process. We do not know how to stop what we have created, and so we play along and pretend to the best of our capabilities by convincing ourselves that we do not wish to stop the cycle.
Technology is always moving forward. There was a time when people had to wait at least a few years for a computer company to come up with a newer model. Now, not only are newer models introduced almost every quarter, but now there is an entire range of models to choose from based on size, color, cost, etc. Every electronics manufacturing company is boasting about how each product is made specifically for its owners and how it’s all personal, while shipping millions of identical, standard models. Not only are they able to convince the consumers that the machine is built solely for them, but they also then introduce ‘Special/Limited edition’ products for those who want to make the item even more personal. We are slaves of our own insecurities and will do anything to keep ourselves from realizing our mistakes or whether we really need the things we buy. The goal then is to always keep the consumers on their toes so that the only question on their mind is “what will be the next thing they come up with?”, thereby eliminating the chances of the consumer to even think about what they are buying and whether they really need such things in the first place.
As long as man has been creating/inventing and discovering things, he has also been destroying things. For example, Microsoft created the ideal and perfect computer operating system called Windows. Not even a few months in the market and people were already having problems due to ‘viruses’. In order to fix the viruses, software companies made ‘Anti-virus programs’. So now, not only does the consumer have to spend anywhere between $500-$5000 on a computer or laptop notebook, but also another $50-$100 on the ‘cure’ for the computer’s problems. By creating one simple object, the purpose of which was to fix and solve problems in the first place, man HAD TO make more objects to fix the object itself.
Before we knew it, we were inventing problems.
As mentioned in George Orwell's novel 1984¹, ‘a minority of one’ is the biggest enemy of the Party. The Party spends all its time and resources to make sure that the person in question realizes how he is much better off being part of the majority. Such methods are applied in our time, if not by the government, yet, then by manufacturing industries that make everything from everyday consumer goods to clothes to entertainment systems. We live in a world where we pay personal trainers to make us look like them because Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger tell us what to wear and what to look like.
In fact, every form of human behavior has been exploited by the fashion industry. For those who wish to be disciplined and neat/tidy all the time, there is the formal look. For those who like to be informal but neat - the casual look. And for those who don’t really care about what they wear or what they look like, that is the people who hate the idea of ‘looks’ in the first place, there is the dirty/messy or the ‘just-out-of-bed’ look. And all of these looks apply to clothing, hair, make-up, etc.
Not only have we predicted man’s ability to be spontaneous, but we have labelled it and modified it into regular. Some religions say that even the atheists were created by God, and if even the ones who do not wish to be part of the norm are assigned the term ‘rebels’ by the social system, then the real meaning of a rebellion is lost over time.
This can be seen in 1984, where we learn that the ‘Brotherhood’ doesn’t exist and was just created by the Party used to trap the disloyal and then convert them into a Party-believer, and at the same time give the rest of the populace a common enemy so that they never suspect the Party itself. By anticipating every possible human reaction and/or behavior, man has succeeded in eliminating, or rather predicting, spontaneity.
In Fahrenheit 451², Bradbury describes that there are places which are designated to certain acts of randomness - Fun Park, Window Smasher place, or the Car Wrecker place, etc(²p30). By anticipating most of the things that people would want to do, the new world as envisioned by Bradbury was able to eliminate the possibility of people committing actual acts of randomness, leaving no room for spontaneity. Even in our present world we have assigned specific places and and even times for certain acts. Be it the sunday family time at the Monster Truck show where the children can jump in their seats while watching things getting crushed, or the scheduled monthly appointments with the dentist or physician to revalidate that there is nothing wrong with us. People spend 10 hours in the office and then another 2 hours in the gym to stay fit for another day at the office and so on. The only way a sick person can find a cure or afford medication and/or surgery is if they prepare themselves for unexpected health problems beforehand and pay ‘insurance’ premiums for the rest of their days. And those who do wish to play by the ‘book’ (the accepted way to live as defined by prevailing social belief system) and aren’t afraid to die will surely die if they can’t afford the bills.
Our social system has brought us to a stage where the survivors are those who live everyday by anticipating death. We, thereby, pay into our fears, our entire life.
There is a contrast in terms of social systems presented in both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. In 1984, it is the minority in control (the Party being only 15% of the population of Oceania), whereas in Fahrenheit 451 it is the majority or the masses that are in control of the government and the people. This contrast reflects on the two different ideologies present in the two worlds. In 1984, the Party is represented by the brightest minds who have thought of every possible loophole and in turn figured out how to make the Party immortal and eliminated individualism. In Fahrenheit 451, it is the uninterested nature of the people that lead to such a future where the system thrives on individualism by making every man for himself.
The alternate reality that Orwell has created may seem dystopian to some but in my opinion the new world that exists in 1984 may be the utopia that mankind really wants. For example, in Hinduism and Buddhism, utopia is not a place but rather a state of mind. In 1984, we are introduced into a world where there is no religion or a god to fear and mankind is in complete control of their existence on Earth. The Party does what it wants and makes the people believe what it wants. Man in Orwell’s world in longer bound by reality and the laws of nature. Isn’t that what every individual wants? Or in fact, isn’t such a world, where humans can finally take responsibility for their actions and live without the fear of a make-believe god or culture or religion created only by their ancestors, what man should want?
O’Brien states that the Party wants power for power itself - “Power is power over human beings, over the body - but, above all, over the mind”(¹p236) - by convincing themselves and convincing the people within the Party that they control the mind, along with their motto ‘Ignorance in Strength’, the party is able to create a realm where human beings are in complete control of their existence and leave nothing to fate. The freedom to give the idea of ‘two plus two’ another answer is Orwell’s attempt at describing the Party’s attempt to leave behind the entire history of man before the revolution and start over with new laws and beliefs where people’s actions are no longer controlled by ethics.
This idea of giving an entirely new definition to everything is represented by ‘Newspeak’, the new language to be used universally by everyone in Oceania. The Party’s main goal is to control human behavior in order to protect as well as revalidate its ideologies. O’Brien states “We shall abolish the orgasm, our neurologists are working on it”(¹p238) - while comical to the reader, this statement illustrates the fact that the Party is using technology solely to control and modify human behavior. By constructing a new reality with an unimaginable ideology where ‘an individual is just a cell’, Orwell has accomplished in describing the consequences of human aspirations, dreams, ideas and inventions.
The actual year 1984 came and went like most, and although there are some areas in our current world where Orwell’s predictions are relevant (the government monitoring the people ‘for their own good’), it is our generation’s ability to remain selfish in our goals that may have prevented Orwell’s 1984 to occur. Our ideology and social beliefs control every aspect of our personal life, but as long as we are unaware of such control we are comfortable with being ignorant. We are addicted to giving into our addiction of technological items. Why give up the addiction when there is sufficient supply, and everyone is doing it?
We have, thus, imprisoned ourselves in a technological world where we are bizarrely happy to be imprisoned as long as nothing happens to our laptops, phones, and iPods. Our reality isn’t one where everyone is constantly monitoring my tele-screens, but it is one where we are rather relentlessly ‘guided’ by our personal trainers, dietitians, and therapists. And our books aren’t being burned, but might as well be since we now live in a digital age and wish to save trees.
¹1984 by George Orwell(published by Plume)
²Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury(50th Anniversary Edition)