I read somewhere that a core attribute of Satanism is mockery. It occurs to me that that is what is being portrayed as well in 1984: they are mocking all human virtues, in the process of denying the possibility of being human.
Here is what I propose: a coherent sense of self is the pathway, the gateway, to connection with the universe, oneness connecting with Oneness.
A coherent sense of self is exactly that: a sense, a feeling of who you are, what you believe and why.
Evil is precisely the rejection of the self, one driven by unseen shame and fear. It is a lie requiring continual replication and repair.
The presence of Goldstein was a conscious mockery of the people being oppressed. And the “virus” of Goldstein was something the sadists running the system anticipated and savored. O’Brien lived for his “work”. The work was the purpose of the system. The relative luxury was simply one more way they mocked everyone on the outside. It was a way of reinforcing the lie they told themselves, that they had a purpose in all this, that violence could provide them solace, and that the costs they paid were worth the benefits they earned.
Our billionaire class is like this even now. I think Bill Gates is like this even now. His purpose in life is being him, knowing that most of humanity cannot be him. But outside of a power relationship with the world, he is nothing. He can be nothing. He is empty, a vacuum, a dark hole.
And the Ministry of Love, the Ministry of Truth: these were even within Orwell’s context a conscious mockery. They were consciously derisive, consciously intended to mock human possibility, human advancement, human progress. They were not mistakes or simply concealing lies. They were a Fuck You to all human beings capable of contemplating a lives of refinement, joy, progress, and love.
I see how horror can be addictive, but it is always a decay. It cannot build. It cannot grow. It is a game played behind high walls by and for people who shrink every day.
To my mind, Winston Smith’s message to the future “from a dead man” was absolutely redemptive. His defense of humanity was absolutely redemptive. O’Brien was wrong, even though he broke Smith and even though such people will always break the Smiths of the world. It was the fight he put up, his lasting efforts to remain human.
Ultimately, there really is no more contextualizing belief that what we believe happens when we “die”, when our bodies stop working, as they surely must do. I tend to try and apply my mind to all minds, to all beliefs–I try and posit moral and psychological arguments that would be relevant and intelligible even to atheists–but everything I do is ultimately conditioned to some extent by my reading of the scientific evidence, which is that our souls go on, that there is something more, that this life and this world are not all there are.
Edit: and as I think about it, this explains much of the behavior of the Left I see on the internet. They love mocking people, trying to hurt them, denying valid arguments or ignoring them entirely. And they LOVE using what I have taken to calling the Idiot Emoji, which is the laughing icon. I get that on my posts dozens of times a week. What they are trying to do is hurt me by laughing at me, which is to say by mocking me.
All of this, to protect their own lies psychologically. When you are lying to yourself, you have to be aggressive. You have to attack everyone else, and keep the focus external, in vivid motion, and chaotic.