Eric Blair: 25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950

From what I have read about him, Eric Blair was not an easy person to get along with, and enjoyed challenging the status quo. He had strongly-held political opinions and was reluctant to be silenced. He resigned from his job with the BBC because he opposed censorship. His family supported the British establishment, but he came to oppose it. Blair was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay Toward European Unity. He was left-wing in his politics, but was also highly critical of the left. He hated anything politically authoritarian, which is how he came to write Nineteen Eighty Four. In Why I Write (1946) he wrote "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."

Having visited Auschwitz-Birkenau

One of my sisters recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have never had the courage to visit that grim place, and I respect her for doing so. In response to her visit she found herself asking versions of the primary questions listed below that she was kind enough to e-mail me. I have added some searching, self-reflective supplementary questions because that is my nature. It is not my intention to remove anything from her experience by developing her material in this way. Rather, my purpose is to engage with her material in ways that are relevant to my process. As recorded elsewhere, I am currently active in considering a new non-religious ethical framework for society. It is in this context that my supplementary questions can best be read.

Q1. What is the character of someone who believes that other people are a sub-species and unworthy of life? Are there occasions when I treat someone, or some group of people, with less than the full respect that belongs to humanity?

Q2. What possible ethical framework could permit medical doctors to perform "experiments" on living people, and subsequently kill those people with phenol injections? In what ways do I behave unethically towards people, even if those people live in a different continent? I buy electronic goods that I suspect were manufactured in Chinese sweat-shops; I buy food staples that may have been grown and harvested by poor and oppressed people working the farms and estates of trans-national corporations.

Q3. What did the recipients of second-hand clothes / false limbs/ glasses / suitcases / etc., believe about their provenance? Do I always enquire about the provenance of the clothes I wear and the food I eat?

Q4. How could anyone feel okay about making cloth from the hair, and lampshades from the skin, of people for whom they have contempt, and what kind of person would want to possess objects made from those materials? What will people of the future think about the choices I have been making during my life?

Q5. Why did the Nazi machine go to the lengths of transporting Jewish people from places as far away as Greece and Portugal (taking up to 10 days in freight trains) to Birkenau, only then to murder them?

Q6. How did the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of people who were involved at some level in the premeditated murder of Jewish, Roma, gay and disabled people across Europe, subsequently reconcile themselves with the wickedness in which they had participated, or at least with which they had colluded? How do I reconcile myself with knowledge of the hurt and pain I have caused people during my life?

Q7. Why didn't the Hungarian 'underground resistance' disseminate the news from escapees about what was happening in Birkenau, and thus prevent half a million Jewish people from being transported there in 1944? How guilty am I for allowing people to believe what I have known not to be true.

Q8. To what extent did the UK and US governments keep quiet about Auschwitz-Birkenau? Why do I stand by without complaint and permit the UK government to deport from the UK refugees from strife-torn parts of the world?

Q9. Are the Italian authorities currently dehumanising the Roma people, and thereby moving in the same direction as the Nazis? Is my conscience as squeaky clean as I should like people to believe?

Q10. By what signs could I recognise that the people around me have gone a step too far? Would I be prepared to recognise that a line had been crossed? What would I do about it were I to see it happening?

***

The following poem is widely attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Original

Translation

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

***

In 2003, American punk rock band NoFX paraphased the poem in the song "Re-gaining Unconsciousness" on the album War on Errorism

First they put away the dealers,

keep our kids safe and off the street.

Then they put away the prostitutes,

keep married men cloistered at home.

Then they shooed away the bums,

then they beat and bashed the queers,

turned away asylum-seekers,

fed us suspicions and fears.

We didn't raise our voice,

we didn't make a fuss.

It's funny there was no one left to notice

when they came for us.

***

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." (frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke.)

***

14:50 Wednesday 16 July 2008, Cafe, Murray Library, Sunderland

My sister visited Auschwitz-Birkenau last weekend. I am filled with tears simply imagining the experience. I wish never to visit the place which is as close to hell as I ever need to hear about. Besides, my credentials go a long way to excusing me the ordeal. As a lifelong pacifist, a Quaker for 25 years and a vegan for nearly 15 years, it would be difficult to mistake where I stand on issues relating to the wickednesses perpetrated in that evil place. On most of the occasions when I have visited Amsterdam I have been in the Anne Frank House, which I have also browsed online. I have visited the holocaust memorials in both Paris (several times) and in Berlin (where I should also like to visit the new memorial to the gay people who were murdered by the Nazi regime). Also in Berlin I have twice visited the harrowing Topography of Terror exhibition next to the Martin Gropius House. In both Sunderland (Crowtree Centre) and Newcastle (a gallery off Pilgrim Street) I have attended holocaust exhibitions. I have not only attended the anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy in London when white-skinned people ruled South Africa, but I have also picketed Barclays Bank in Durham for its collusion with the apartheid regime. Perhaps more controversially, I make a point of reading the website of the far right British National Party in order to understand their poison. I have attended anti-racist training workshops, although I have never led any. However, I have led gay-awareness and mental health awareness workshops. My daughter has multiple disabilities, and as one response, I use British Sign Language. During the first five years of my life I was brought up in close proximity to a Jewish family (Marion and David Bernard and their three children) in north-west London. As a counsellor I have examined in detailed, and hold up for ongoing examination, my opinions, attitudes and thoughts. As a Quaker, my beliefs are subject to perpetual examination. Superficially, then, my credentials appear kosher. However, I have written almost nothing about any of this in a way that positions me in relation to other people - I rarely stand up to be counted. I am, in fact, indistinguishable from the narrator or Niemöller's poem. Neither do I do much that makes a practical, positive difference. It is not sufficient that I have a preference for the light of truth and love, and that I reject the darkness of ignorance, fear and hatred. I have lost sight of the fact that it is my duty to be creating light, and my responsibility to be shining as a beacon against the darkness of falsehood and hypocrisy. Compared to the bleak days of the 1930s and 1940s, I live in blessed times. Compared to the darkness that enshrouds the populations of Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea, the UK is "summertime, and the living is easy" ... but I have, for too long, chosen to sit on my hands. My comfortably-won credentials do not, in fact, excuse me from visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first question for me to ask now is whether I am able to stir myself into action before making that grim pilgrimage.

A Twentieth Century man

I have several dictionaries. Working as a counsellor, words and language mean much to me. William Shakespeare is my hero: I watched my first Shakespeare play (Twelfth Night) when I was ten years old. I have four generations of Chambers dictionaries: from the 1950s (Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, recently acquired second hand), 1972 (Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, a Christmas present), 1988 (Chambers English Dictionary, my own choice) and 2003 (Chambers Dictionary, also my own choice). I prefer Chambers because its definitions tend to be more liberal-minded, less conservative, less reactionary than other dictionaries. However, I have an extreme objection to Chambers' progressive acceptance and incorporation of the '-ize' suffix, an appendage that, in spite of my Classical education (I studied Latin for five years, Classical Greek for two years, and some years ago made a serious attempt to teach myself Biblical Greek), I consider to be affected (as in an affectation, used by someone who wishes to puff up their language, making themselves sound clever and important, like people using the word 'whilst' when they mean 'while') and/or elitist (its 'correct' use - to use it incorrectly flagrantly demonstrates 'ignorance' - is only when the word's root is from Classical Greek, and who but a Classics scholar is likely to remember which English words have a Classical Greek root?), and gratuitously unnecessary. Use of the '-ize' suffix sneers at both ignorance and dyslexia: it is anti-language. In contrast, use of the '-ise' suffix is universally applicable, and to be favoured by the proles, the hoi poloi, the sans culottes - the people who make a reality of democracy and democratic language.

I have a reverse dictionary that has been useful only very occasionally. I have a dictionary of words first used in the twentieth century. This latter, although of little practical use, is interesting. I have a much-used Roget's thesaurus, and much-less used Brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable, Brewer's concise dictionary of phrase and fable, and Brewer's twentieth century dictionary of phrase and fable. There are also the Oxford dictionary of quotations, and Oxford companions to both the English language and English literature. Beyond English alone, there are dictionaries of signing (BSL) and of other European languages. Were I to be required to shelve all these dictionaries in an attic, I should probably guess that they weighed in at about 50 kg. So why is my first port of call always the internet? Reading The Wisdom of Crowds, recently, I came across the word 'fungible'. The context in which the word was being used offered few clues about its meaning. I checked it out on the internet. As well as definitions, I read the Wikipedia entry. I felt enlightened. I then checked Chambers. The definition was clear and concise, just as I should expect. Yet had I not also read more widely, including the Wikipedia entry, my understanding would have been as thin as gravy made only with a vegetable stock cube.

The words and phrases that I use, and the thoughts that inspire my articulations, belong to the twentieth century. I was born in the middle, the heart, of the twentieth century, the century that provided the context and backdrop for everything I thought and said and did. I learned to speak and think twentieth century, and I have twentieth century preoccupations, such as a concern for technology, for communication, for identity, for democracy, for equality, for spirituality freed from the shackles of traditional religion. Whilst it could easily be shown that none of these is unique to the twentieth century, their assemblage certainly is. It is true that being born and raised in Western Europe, and in Britain in particular, I also became, and continue to become, progressively more aware of previous centuries; but this itself is the root and relativism of post-modernism, a philosophical framework that belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. Simply by being brought up in the second half of the twentieth century, without the requirement of an elite education, I have the capacity to identify with the industrial entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century, the enlightened free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, the radical Commonwealth republicans of the seventeenth century, and so on.

What of the twenty-first century? I am not sure. If the twentieth century could be characterised as a battle between the old and the new, between empire and new democracy, between generations, between the sexes, between enforced adherence to stereotype and searching for new identities, then to a large extent we won. At the start of the twenty-first century, Britain is much closer to France than to Britain at the start of the twentieth century. However, now those battles are over, apathy appears to have set in. Politicians bemoan the public's lack of interest in politics, whereas people vote in their millions for ghastly television trash such as Big Brother and the X-Factor. (Whilst Marx's aphorism about religion is widely misunderstood as a criticism of religion, when he was observing the solace that drown-trodden workers were able to find in it, his 'misquotation' could more aptly be applied to the early twenty-first century addiction to television soap operas.) People no longer appear to have much interest in raw spirituality, and the church pews tend to be occupied by people who have chosen to leave elsewhere and make Britain their home. Concern by adults and children alike for technology seems to focus on games consoles, and battles and wars that are fought look increasingly like computer games and disaster movies. Royal Mail, the UK postal delivery organisation is close to collapse because no-one writes letters any more - it is not that I am knocking e-mail, it is my sadness that the text-message culture hardly favours deep and careful thought.

What of the twenty-first century? The battles having been fought, apathy and lethargy won. I think that ordinary, everyday, twenty-first century Britain lacks a sense of direction, purpose and aspiration. Maybe that is one of the reasons I remain a twentieth century man.

Dystopias

Dystopias are usually dark images presented as what may be to come, or what could have been, often in order to comment on the present and current trends. What follows below is a list of writers and their works exploring variously the predicted future, or imagined futures, or imagined pasts, or imagined presents. I do not know whether the focus is merely mine, but technology and stage of technological development seem to play a significant role, whether through science fiction or through fantasy. An issue faced by all dystopic works is how to separate the dystopia from the real world. One method is to set the dystopia in the past. More commonly, the dystopia is set in the future, sometimes post-apocalyptically. A second method is to invent a fantasy world (Gormenghast, Middle Earth). A third is to place the dystopia on an island.

Early Works
Although I feel reluctant to include here The Revelation of St. John, canonically the final book of the New Testament, it purports to consider the future. Indeed, it is an eschatological work, that expresses the fears and hopes of the writer. There is no sense of a different technology, merely the destruction of society, maybe on moral grounds.
In total contrast, some of the writings and drawings of Galileo Galilei focus on moving technology forwards so as to better the lot of people in contemporary society.
Thomas More wrote a utopia, a pastoral idyll that I guess (for I have not read it) to be a kind of correction to all that was wrong with Elizabethan England. As I understand it, his writing was not about the future.
Nostradamus purported to predict the future. No doubt he had an agenda that was more financial and less mystical than popular imagination would care to believe. However, for people who take him seriously, the future was his to observe, not to control or judge. Why are people fascinated with his writing? What sort of people are fascinated with his writing?

Island Dystopias
Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe, was based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk. Selkirk was shipwrecked, and for four years lived on an island off the coast of Chile. This was at a time when Britain was developing its empire. Selkirk and Crusoe had access only to pre-Iron Age technology, and the island represented regression.
The issue of regression, but much more explicitly regarding human nature, was explored by William Golding in The Lord of the Flies. In this 1950s novel, the aeroplane crash lands on a desert island, and the only survivors are children. The atavism that lies at the root of what it is to be human is progressively exposed by the island, leading to the savage murders of both Simon and Piggy.
In 1980, Lucy Irvine agreed with Gerald Kingsland to be Castaway (book, and movie starring Oliver Reed, 1986) on a desert island (Tuin Island in the Torres Straight, off the northern coast of Australia), as were both Joanna Lumley in Girl Friday (1994), and Tom Hanks, albeit fictionally, in Cast Away (2000).
Islas Sorna and Nublar constitute a different kind of island dystopia, inhabited by dinosaurs. These are largely closed worlds in which technology has been or becomes destroyed. It is ironic that it is only the most advanced technology that has permitted the re-creation of the archaic animal (and plant) life, whereas the dinosaurs themselves have the effect of destroying all technology. There is an obvious sense of disclocated time: 65 million years ago, a kind of present day, a near future in which such technology would be possible. There is also the observation in each movie that our society is fixated with entertainment I: theme park, II: safari, III: extreme sports / personal recreation.

Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe
During the height of the industrial revolution, with new sources of energy and new forms of power, the promise and threat of modern technology began to be explored.
In France, Jules Verne was writing exciting adventure stories, such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with exploration at their heart and new understandings of science and technology to add spice and suspend disbelief.
H.G.Wells wrote about possible futures. In The Time Machine, his protagonist is an observer; however, the tension between the Eloi and the Morlocks suggests a moral dimension that accords with Wells' eugenicist leanings. In both War of the Worlds and The Shape of Things to Come, Wells focuses on England in the future, although he gives a sense of life beyond Britain.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis is distinctly set in a future. It is not comforting.
Aldous Huxley set Brave New World in the future of the 26th century. It is a utopia in that it is a place of order, but it is a dystopia in that to a contemporary person there is no freedom. Huxley was extrapolating from what he knew of social (rise of Nazism and Stalinism) and technological developments (eugenics and the steadily increasing mechanisation of society).
Tolkein's response to what was happening in the world was to regress into the early medieval times of Middle Earth. In his highly moral tales, social relationships are rigid, and there is an absence of technology beyond the Iron Age. Middle Earth includes England (The Shire), but also includes dangerous places that are far away.
C.S.Lewis, in his writings, also explored a moral (Christian) past in Narnia (some of which resembles the medieval England of Robin Hood tales). However, Lewis also looked into the future, albeit with moral foreboding (Voyage to Venus, Out of the Silent Planet, That Hideous Strength).
Mervyn Peake also apparently retreated into a kind of Gothic (perhaps early 19th century) English past in his Gormenghast trilogy. However, his work is also more obviously a comment on what he was experiencing in mid-20th century England.
Written in 1947, and also commenting on post-war England, albeit set in the near future, is Orwell/Blair's 1984. There is technology, but no science. There is no freedom. For faithful party worker Winston Smith, the bad dream turns into a nightmare when he transgresses. There is for me an irony that whilst Orwell/Blair wrote that Big Brother is watching us, and therefore we must not transgress, in early twenty-first century, everyone is watching Big Brother, and has little time to transgress. With the exception, perhaps, of Monaco and Singapore, metropolitan Britain is probably one of the most observed places in the world, with webcams, cellphone cameras and closed-circuit television cameras beyond count. However, it is also clear from incidents such as the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005, that despite hugely more advanced technology to the British state than was available in 1947 Britain, or to Airstrip One in 1984, it was not possible to prevent the bombings: the sense of being watched is more in the mind than in reality.
In Brazil, Terry Gilliam reworks 1984 into a darkly humourous absurdity. Whilst the location of the drama is a city in an economically-developed state, the place is more obviously New York than London.
In Escape from New York, John Carpenter takes the New York dystopia almost to its logical conclusion: the city as a prison from which there is no escape.
On the other hand, although A Clockwork Orange, is set both in place (southern England) and time (1960s), Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick, in their dystopia, consider the breakdown of morals.
In John Wyndham's novels, there is a breakdown in society, usually precipitated by the desire for dangerous (scientific) knowledge: The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (Village of the Damned: John Carpenter), The Kraken Wakes.
On the other hand, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick see progressive and evolutionary development of human awareness both as co-dependent on technological development, and also continuing into the future, as shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Similar ideas are developed more dystopically in Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise)
In I, Robot, Isaac Asimov develops a future in which the distinction between humankind and our technological creations become indistinguishable.

Post-Apocalyptic Visions of the Future
In The Postman, Kevin Costner plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. The stage of technological development is a mixture of early-Iron Age (I think that there is a blacksmith) and legacy industrial. Although the movie is critically held as flawed, it raises some interesting issues, for instance about what it is that we carry into the future. A hope for their future lies in rebuilding their civilisation, initially focused around the US Mail (c.f. the role of the Post Office in Die Blechtrommel).
In Waterworld, Kevin Costner plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. The stage of technological development is a mixture of pre-Iron Age and legacy industrial. The movie questions what will be left of our civilisation in centuries to come. A hope for the future, which becomes realised in the movie, is finding and re-inhabiting dry land.
In the Mad Max series, Mel Gibson plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. There is no hope for the future, and all hope has been destroyed.