“O’Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer. You are thinking, he said, that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails? We are priests of power, he said. God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realise is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: ‘Freedom is slavery’. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone – free- the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realise is that power is power over human beings. Over the body – but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter – external reality, as you would call it – is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute….But how can you control matter? He burst out. You don’t even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death- O’Brien silenced him by a movement of the hand. We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston….But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny-helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited…Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exist except through human consciousness…”
―
George Orwell,
1984
