Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: GPS Nav in 2008 / attn: Andrew

Mere debauchery did
not  matter very  much, so  long as  it was  furtive and  joyless and  only
involved  the women  of a  submerged and  despised class.  The unforgivable
crime  was promiscuity between Party members. But -- though this was one of
the  crimes that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to --
it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
     The  aim  of the  Party was not  merely to prevent  men and women from
forming  loyalties  which it  might  not  be  able  to control.  Its  real,
undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love
so  much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it.
All  marriages between  Party members  had to  be approved  by a  committee
appointed  for  the purpose, and --  though the principle was never clearly
stated  --  permission was always refused  if the couple concerned gave the
impression   of  being  physically  attracted  to  one  another.  The  only
recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the
Party.  Sexual  intercourse was  to be  looked on  as a slightly disgusting
minor  operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain
words,  but in  an indirect way it  was rubbed into every Party member from
childhood  onwards. There  were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-
Sex  League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children
were  to  be begotten by artificial  insemination (artsem, it was called in
Newspeak)  and brought  up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware,
was  not meant  altogether seriously,  but somehow  it fitted  in with  the
general  ideology of  the  Party. The  Party  was trying  to  kill the

appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of
establishing  liberty and  equality was more and more openly abandoned. The
new  movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in
Oceania,  Neo-Bolshevism  in  Eurasia,  Death-Worship, as  it  is  commonly
called,  in  Eastasia, had the  conscious aim of perpetuating UNfreedom and
INequality.  These  new movements, of course,  grew out of the old ones and
tended  to keep  their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the
purpose  of  all of  them was  to arrest  progress and  freeze history at a
chosen  moment.  The familiar pendulum  swing was  to happen once more, and
then  stop.  As usual, the  High were  to be turned  out by the Middle, who
would  then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High
would be able to maintain their position permanently.
     The  new  doctrines  arose  partly  because  of  the  accumulation  of
historical  knowledge,  and the  growth of the  historical sense, which had
hardly  existed before  the nineteenth  century. The  cyclical movement  of
history  was  now  intelligible, or  appeared  to  be  so;  and if  it  was
intelligible,  then  it was alterable.  But the principal, underlying cause
was  that, as  early  as  the beginning  of  the  twentieth century,  human
equality  had become  technically possible. It was still true that men were
not  equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized
in  ways  that favoured some  individuals against  others; but there was no
longer  any  real need for  class distinctions  or for large differences of
wealth.  In  earlier ages, class  distinctions had been not only inevitable
but   desirable.  Inequality  was  the  price  of  civilization.  With  the
development  of machine  production, however, the case was altered. Even if
it