[Ciaphas Cain]

Have been re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four lately. Something I've long noticed:

Early in the novel it remarks that nothing is against the law, because there are no laws to be broken. That rarely gets touched upon.

And yet Oceania is the most totalitarian nation ever (at least in fiction).

There is no legal law in Oceania, because there is no moral law. There is only the Party, and the power it has. Power is the be-all and end-all of human existence. And the Party does anything it damn well pleases to squash any threat to that power however minuscule or insignificant it might be.

There is no governing morality at Facebook. Not really. There is no governing morality among any so-called progressivism. They are priests of Power, as O'Brien told Winston.

And they will kill you, in idea if not in body.

[poconopundit]

There is no governing morality at Facebook.  Not really.  There is no governing morality among any so-called progressivism.  They are priests of Power, as O'Brien told Winston.

And they will kill you, in idea if not in body.

* * *

Very well said.

I don't use Facebook, but I think it serves many people a useful purpose, which is to preserve a corner of the internet for themselves and join a forum that is a mere plaything to what we have here on FR.

It's true.  Facebook will put your face on the internet.  But the big lie is that your face would be private and that Facebook would preserve your freedom to speak and to hear the speech of others. 

The 1984-ish Power that grew from that simple Facebook "service" has done much destruction to true community and friendship.

Hear what Emerson had to say in his Self-Reliance:

What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under!

But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength.  If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the modern man to his grave.

Society never advances.  It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.  It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not improvement.

Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

• The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
• He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle.
• He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.
• His note-books impair his memory;
• His libraries overload his wit;
• The insurance-office increases the number of accidents;

And it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber.  Have we not lost by refinement — by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms — some vigor of wild virtue?

Note: I lighted edited the text above to better please the modern ear.  A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, even when quoting Emerson :- )