2:49:09 It's the control of language. It's the control of speech, which if you remember, we're told in the book, in the story that when newspeak, the dictionary of newspeak is complete, that is the destruction and control of the language, when that's complete, then the revolution is complete. And you might think, well, why is the revolution complete when it comes to speaking? Wouldn't it be, you know, guns and being out in the street? No, no, no. That's the point. That's the point O'Brien makes to Winston, which is that don't you understand that this was all a revolution of the mind? And they have this amazing discussion towards the end of the book when Winston's being tortured. And O'Brien says, there is no individual, there's only the collective. The collective has all power. And so that's why you are depersoned when you are not
2:50:01 in line with the collective. And the collective isn't actually even what all the people say. The collective is expressed in Big Brother. So actually, Big Brother is just the party. The collective is just the party. And he says to O'Brien, the party is what's immortal. The party is what's eternal. The party is what is power. It is reality. Everything that you call the person, the individual, he says none of that even matters. We don't even acknowledge its existence. O'Brien silenced him by a movement of the hand. We control matter because we control the mind. So he says it doesn't matter what your theory of matter, pun intended, is. It doesn't matter what you believe about the external world, what you think about logic, what you think about metaphysics, blah, blah, blah. None of that matters, he says, because all we have to do is control people's perception of reality and we control the world.
2:50:55 That's a profound statement and we've seen people like Karl Rove, Henry Kissinger echo that, right? The control of the public's perception is really the control of reality. For the priests of power, they don't care about the metaphysics of what's true and let's get out there and solve the secrets of nature. They only care about solving the secrets of nature insofar as they're useful to the power structure to control the mind. And that's what O'Brien says. He says, Reality is inside your skull, Winston. And you're going to learn that, that there is no law of nature. We make the laws of nature. And so Winston is confused by this because he thinks, well, you don't control the external world. You don't literally control the laws of nature. They are without you. And O'Brien replies by saying, no, no, no. Did you not hear what I said? He says, have you forgotten your double think? He says, the universe, it may be out there, but we don't care.
2:51:51 Because what we're concerned with is the control of your perception of the universe. And as long as we control that perception, it doesn't matter what is actually going on out there. Thus, that's the sense in which O'Brien says, we, the party, make the laws of nature. you probably heard about Soviet science or Lysenko or these kinds of things. Well, those are examples of this, right? And people nowadays kind of look back and, ha ha ha, we laugh at how silly it was for the Soviet scientists. They got everybody to believe this, right? Or the Teutonic philosophy of the superiority of some German tribe. Ha ha, how do people believe this?
2:52:32 Well, now we live in a situation where we're told the exact same types of lies. It's just a different lie. And everybody believes it, right? Because everybody believes that we are just simply to trust the science. There's no better example of trust the science, right? Dr. Fauci saying I am science. That's what O'Brien says. Do you see this? This is O'Brien level stuff. He's saying I'm the science. If you define me, you're defying science. That's like straight out of O'Brien's playbook. Wow. Right. And Winston says, so you're telling me basically a form of solipsism, and this is the philosophy that all that exists is what's in your mind.
2:53:18 And O'Brien says, no, no, no, you misunderstand me. You're still thinking in terms of philosophy. And he says, Winston, metaphysics is not your strong point. He says, because you're missing the point that I'm making, which is far more simpler than you're making it. Which is, again, it's not a theory of what's out there in the world. It's just a theory of mind control, you see. What is Fauci say? Fauci says, you just do what I say. Just do what we say. Just take your damn shot. So again, it's not a philosophy system that's out there to discover truth, that's trying to figure out a consistent logical approach to the world and blah, blah, blah. All that stuff, O'Brien just laughs at. And this is why, in my view, O'Brien is really one of the greatest villains in all of fiction. Because what he says is so horrible, so horrifying, so terrifying, and so plausibly real,
2:54:18 that that makes him far greater a villain than anyone like Darth Vader or whatever, right? And then it moves into the torture and the power is pain, pain is power. You cannot have family, you cannot have free associations. We will decide that you are a heretic. And he basically, it's couched as kind of religious, right? The big party is likened to God in this final great discourse between O'Brien and Winston. And he says, basically, you are no more than an animal in our zoo. You are no more than a test subject in a lab. The world is our lab. You're an animal test subject in that lab and you will dutifully do what you're told, right? And what happens? Of course, the story is a great warning tale because Winston goes through this process. He rats out his girlfriend and basically he finally learns to love big brother. And so this conditioning process, right, it works. And that's what we have to be aware of.