Member Care and Member Terror

Orwell in October--Part 3

The struggle of man against power

is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Milan Kudera, quoted in the Economist, 18 Oct. 2008, p. 92
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“[1984] is a 1949 English novel about life under a futuristic totalitarian regime in the year 1984. It tells the story of Winston Smith, a functionary at the Ministry of Truth, whose work consists of editing historical accounts to fit the government's policies. The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens. The book had a substantial impact both in literature and on the perception of public surveillance, inspiring such terms as 'Big Brother' and 'Orwellian'.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

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Big Brother can be understood as being a continuum of control.
On one end of the continuum lies subtle manipulation.
On the other end is found blatant extermination.
It can be a person, party, process, or principle.
It controls through fear and falsehood.
It distorts, deceives, and destroys.
It terrorizes to maintain power.
It is Member Terror.
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1984 paraphrased quotes

(from the 2003 edition including both Animal Farm and 1984)

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The person who controls the past also controls the future.

The person who controls the present also control s the past.
p. 119

The past was not simply altered, rather it had been obliterated.
p. 120

Commonly, if the Party was displeased with you, you simply disappeared and no one ever heard from you again.
p. 129

Orthodoxy means that you do not think and that you do not need to think.

Orthodoxy involves being unconsciousness.
p. 136

Why should you feel that something was very inappropriate unless you had some kind of distant memory that reality was actually different in the past?
p. 143

Until people become aware/awake, they will not protest their condition, and until they have protested their condition, they will never be truly aware/awake.
p. 153

No one ever escaped from the Thought Police. The victims were like corpses that would be soon returned to their graves.
p. 158

Freedom means that you can freely say that two plus two make four. If this is allowed, then the rest follows.
p. 163

The hope for society lay with the proles [common people, the proletariat]. It seemed reasonable, until you observed the rank and file walking past you in the street. Your hope was based more on faith than reality.
p. 167

We will force who you really are out of you, and then we will replace the emptiness with ourselves.
p. 332

You cannot do anything against the lunatic who is smarter than you, especially the lunatic who listens to your logical concerns fairly, and yet still acts like a lunatic.
p. 338

No, Winston, you yourself are only to blame for your dire and thoroughly dehumanized condition. This is the consequence of your having opposed the Party.
p. 347
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Reflection and Discussion
1. People play dirty.

And people in mission and member care can play dirty too.

How do you stop it?

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2. How have people changed history or intentionally forgotten the past--lied to you and others?

Have you done the same?

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3. Listen to this song.

Consider the last line of the lyrics (below).

Relate it to your life, your work, the world.

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"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again, 1971
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Enjoy this unusual, shorter, acoustic version by Pete Townsend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQUAxN9Sxdo

For a substantially rockier, longer, and spacier version,

including the mother of all cathartic rock screams (7:50), go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-wG5LLqE&feature=related

Member Care and Member Tear

Orwell in October--Part 2

We are exactly the people and organisations we have become.

[Animal Farm and 1984] can be read…as a strong preventive medicine against the mentality of servility, and especially against the lethal temptation to exchange freedom for security; a bargain that inevitably ends up with the surrender of both…
Christopher Hitchens, 2003, Introduction.

**Servility is a dysfunctional form of the servanthood extolled in the New Testament.
**Exchanging freedom for security is a dysfunctional form of laying down one’s life extolled in the New Testament.

Both involve the loss of the rights and responsibilities:

to speak and think freely

to tell the truth and to be told the truth

to require accountability and to request change.

Servility and the loss of freedom dehumanise us.

They necessitate self-deception and other-deception.

Organisations/groups tainted with such dysfunctions and which remain unchecked, increasingly become unsafe places to work.

Ultimately, these dysfunctions tear the members apart.

Let's call it Member Tear.
How endemic and/or epidemic is this in the mission/aid sector?

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Animal Farm
Note: The context for the next five paraphrased quotes involves naivete, manipulation, and lies:

1. "Loyalty and obedience are more important than bravery."
2. "You have probably only dreamed these things, comrades.
…the animals were content to think that they had made a mistake in their thinking."
3. "I can't believe that this would happen here on our farm. I don't get it. We must be wrong. I am just going to have to work harder to solve this."
4. "The animals were one again bewildered, but with the able convincing of Squeeler they once again believed that it was their own memories that were faulty."

5. "It was easy to prove to the other animals that there was plenty of food, in spite of the actual appearances."
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And now the ending of Animal Farm:
"Twelve angry voices were shouting, each of them like the other…pig shouting at man, and man shouting at pig, and pig at man again; but it had already become impossible to tell them apart. "
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Reflection and Discussion
**The essence of Member Tear is to distort the truth in a way that hurts others. Comment on this assertion.

**Pigs become humans and humans become pigs. For Orwell, this means that people can and do have the propensity to become evil and exploit others. Comment on why this propensity—Member Tear-- might be hard to understand, accept, and to change.

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Note:

"[Animal Farm, published in 1946] is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of a farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal. However, class and status disparities soon emerge between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by those in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

Member Care and Member Tares

Orwell in October--Part 1

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I am pouring over two books written by George Orwell in the mid-late 1940s: Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell’s prescience is nothing short of remarkable. Totalitarian states that prey upon the vulnerable have always been, are present now, and probably will always be. Or to blend some of Orwell’s terms with Christ’s: the poor we will always have with us….along with the pigs, the proles, and the Thought Police.

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I am also reminded of Christ’s concluding remarks in the parable of the unjust steward: "The children of this world are, in their own generation, wiser than the children of the light" (Luke 16:8). These books are a helpful balance for those who claim to be “children of the light” including myself, who are prone to emphasise the good in people and to give most folks the benefit of the doubt. I call this emphasis “wheat wisdom” as opposed to “street wisdom”, the latter which is far more familiar with the "member tares" and the “tactics of tares” in our midst, as mentioned in Matthew 13.
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So in light or Orwell and the New Testament (and even though I am really wanting to dwell much more on esthetically-pleasing things), I am thinking about hindrances for people to understand and act on truth. I am thinking about how we often conform reality to our minds and not vice versa. I am thinking that oftentimes people and groups do so intentionally and maliciously. And I am thinking about an important theme in the book of Hebrews: there is a true reality—the Kingdom of God— that cannot be shaken.
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Note that many of the comments from Orwell that will be quoted reflect the intention to enslave rather than enlighten. Stay tuned.