Timeline for Why does Oceania not want to achieve victory over Eurasia and Eastasia?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 20, 2018 at 22:25 | answer | added | Naib | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jun 20, 2018 at 20:26 | comment | added | celtschk | @Valorum: It's quite I while since I read that book, but IIRC O'Brien has some (very few) memories from before the time of the Big Brother. Those are clearly not created by the Party, and their existence means that the system was instantiated less than a human's lifetime ago. | |
| Jun 20, 2018 at 20:07 | comment | added | Mike Harris | Eastasia/Eurasia are not the enemies of the Party (of Airstrip One) - in fact, the ruling parties of all three empires are essentially one and the same. The true enemy of the Parties are their subjects. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 4:02 | answer | added | Sydney Sleeper | timeline score: -2 | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 2:04 | comment | added | Spencer | Please support your assertion that there's actually a war of any sort going on. AFAICT all evidence comes from the Ministry of Truth. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 22:59 | answer | added | Keith Morrison | timeline score: 14 | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 22:57 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSciFi/status/1003772653608546304 | ||
| Jun 4, 2018 at 21:09 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Dictators always want an external threat, and all three are happier keeping the status quo rather than winning. Look at the USSR and the end of the Cold War... | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 21:02 | comment | added | gaazkam | @JonCuster But wihout victory there are people who are not being controled - how can this be acceptable? | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 21:01 | comment | added | Jon Custer | The desire of the party is to control the people, which eternal war helps accomplish. If there were victory, probing questions will start to be asked... | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:51 | comment | added | gaazkam | @Valorum 1) I know and stated myself in the question that conquest isn't even considered and that the goal of war is to instead use up surplus resources; and this is what perplexes me 2) I find it hard to understand how people capable of creating such a totalitarian system would so easily believe they couldn't conquer the other states by any means possible, as I described in my question; 3) Especially with ABC weapons at play, it should be within the realm of possibility to nuke these other states to the dust or kill their populations with blight - or die trying | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:47 | comment | added | Valorum | "The primary aim of modern warfare ... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living." - So conquest isn't even being considered. | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:45 | comment | added | Valorum | "None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and their natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants." - Although Goldstein's book is a tissue of lies, we can assume it also contains truths | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:41 | comment | added | gaazkam | @Valorum This is what the Party's propaganda says and wants OUTER Party members to believe; however, if I recall, O'Brien makes it very clear that the decidents do not believe in the possibility of victory, nor do they want to achieve it | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:39 | comment | added | Valorum | "I would rather imagine that this state of perpetual war cannot last forever" - That is quite literally the stated goal of the Party. Assuming the parties are happy to exist in a state of equilibrium, who's to say that the year is 1984 or 19984? | |
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:37 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:39 | |||||
| Jun 4, 2018 at 20:34 | history | asked | gaazkam | CC BY-SA 4.0 |