1984 Is Not A Manual

We’ll see if I stick to this, but the plan is to do a track by track for both Defunct Devices and Planets In The Wires over the coming weeks. I’m doing this using a random generator thing, and unfortunately it’s chosen ‘1984 (Is Not A Manual)’ as the first one. So track one of the most recent album. The one I’ve already written about, and which – if you had a passing interest – you will probably have checked out already.

So what else to say? It’s always tricky to try and write something ‘definitive’ and ‘important’ but that’s very much what I was attempting with this song. I had visions at one point of it being 11-12 minutes long with multiple sections. In the end it came out a sprightly 6 and a bit minutes. Though there’s a four minute ‘radio edit’ in there if you looked for it.

What is it about then? I think the key line is ‘we’re haunted by power we cannot control’. I was using ‘haunted’ as in ‘hauntology’. I’ve been dipping in and out of the work of Mark Fisher over the last few years, and I think there’s a lot of that ‘mourning the loss of what the past thought the future would be like’ type ideas in this record.

So 1984 is I guess just about struggling with how we change things. Things need to change more than feels realistic. And why do we feel that way? Fisher has a book called Capitalist Realism. When socialist dictatorships used art to try normalise socialism and make it part of the unquestioned fabric of what is going on, they did so overtly. This is certainly what happens in Orwell’s 1984. 

But I think Fisher is arguing (and I would agree) that capitalism does this too. We constrain our own options and vision of what is possible, but I genuinely don’t think it’s the result of conspiracy – it’s just what happens when you step back from intervening in the world. The mistake is to assume that either intervention or non-intervention is the default state, and that whichever one you instinctively or ideologically reject is the aberration. 

The line ‘Kyoto protocols are going to drown us all’ is an example of this. These were an attempt to set out a legal and economic framework for emissions trading, and this was essentially a negotiation with a mindless counterparty – nature itself. I’ve come to a more nuanced and positive view of what carbon trading could achieve in the short term, but the fundamental intellectual error still troubles me. 

Others have called this space of what is deemed to be possible the ‘Overton Window’. I was disappointed when I realised someone had already come up with this concept, otherwise it could have been named after me.  🙂

Then I think there’s some stuff about communications technology in the mix too, and the role it plays. Orwell’s view of how a mega-state would control everyone is almost quaint now. Lots of human beings finding and manually ‘correcting’ history as the party’s stance on the forever war changes. Far more brutally efficient, rapid and mindless means of rewriting reality have emerged since the internet arrived. And the recent rise of ChatGPT promises more to come.

The voice speaking over the outro is Marshall McLuhan – of ‘the medium is the message’ fame. When he codified that idea – that means of communication shape what is communicated – he was seen as an evangelist for it. What he’s articulating in this clip is that he was actually more of a sceptic / scaremonger. 

These changes move faster than our ability to understand and therefore control them. We’re increasingly unleashing powerful forces that are emergent rather than designed. What looks like conspiracy to a certain kind of left winger is – I think – just some unscrupulous people being willing and able to ride the chaos and profit from it. 

I wish this song had a ‘happy ending’ in terms of how we’ll address this. Back to my previous post about the overarching direction of the ‘trilogy’ – I think the hope lies in the next generation. Digital natives who, I hope and believe, will actually be better at navigating this shapeshifting landscape of truth. 

The other voice you hear on this song is my daughter, aged 2, protesting the closure of our local library.