Prosthetic Conscience

Suffering and power

‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’

Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.

‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.’

George Orwell, 1984

I hadn’t remembered this passage, but I think this is why, in my view, Epicureanism implies anarchism — power/authority/rulership requires suffering, and the goal of Epicureanism (as for Buddhism) is the end of suffering. One of the ethical lessons of Epicureanism, also, is that you cannot escape suffering by imposing it. If you acquire political power, you are cursed with the anxiety of maintaining it. If you cause suffering in some other way, you must always fear discovery and retribution. If you want to avoid suffering, yourself, you must therefore avoid causing suffering by either lawful or unlawful means. This is essentially a materialist explanation of karma.

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