Civilization VI and The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

 Perhaps most defining to the later half of Part II is the long excerpt of Goldstein's book which the reader reads along with Winston. Within that, I'll zone in on the discussion of how the three superstates function and how Goldstein theorizes that this produces and is produced by the waste of surplus goods/labor and war. 

Firstly, I'll try to explain the causation (mostly for myself) in simple terms:

1. We have a small group of people in power who want to stay in power.
2. We have the trend of mechanization occurring all across the world.
3. This trend, which explodes the production power of the world, also raises the standard of living for many.
4. Raising the standard of living too much is dangerous to the people at the top. (Personally I question this, because I expect there to be a disproportionate amount of production power going into further bettering the positions of the rich & powerful in this scenario. Through an economic lens, when the poor aren't so poor but the rich are incredibly rich, what's really to worry about as a rich person?)
5. Somehow a state of general poverty and scarcity is needed to amplify the class divisions. (Again, issues. Why would the people at top determine that relative power is worth the drop in standard of living? Oh well.)
6. A large waste of production surplus is needed.
7. Constant, draining war does the trick.
8. Once the war has started, it's relatively easy to perpetuate it. The stronger state dominates for a bit, causing the others to pour extra resources into fighting back, and they regain their lost ground. The particular distribution of geography in this situation helps - the huge equatorial disputed territory provides a buffer between much of the concentration of power.
9. Once the war has gone on a while, it naturally perpetuates itself - in another sense, it's difficult to back out of the war. Because of the waste of all surplus resource and labor, technological innovations that may help within and outside of the war effort stagnate. 
10. On the one hand, this could spur the superstates to want to devote energy towards rebuilding infrastructure for technological development, but on the other hand, the state that holds on and gets the opportunity to attack while the other tries to rebuild infrastructure succeeds in battle.

Okay, not sure how well the "simple terms" ideal worked out, but there. I feel like I've determined for myself that a lot of this nonsense can self-perpetuate, at least. And this is where I want to connect this theory to what I've seen playing Civilization VI. The second paragraph of this Wikipedia article explains the game, which most people refer to as Civ 6 or just Civ, better than I can. So go read it please <3

*elevator music while you're reading it*

So now that you're back: What I find fascinating about Civ is that it acts almost as a history simulator. (Flashbacks to playing Civ in freshman history class here) Because so much gameplay is based off of how real scientific, cultural, religious, and military development happened over the ages, having experience in how Civ games turn out can weirdly inform you about how history is likely to play out. And here's where I mention that not only do I play Civ, I also watch other people play Civ on YouTube, and more notably, I watch this one guy's YouTube channel where he run simulations in Civ 6 of only computer-controlled players. (I won't link the channel because he also does a lot of other irrelevant stuff and is actually a pretty annoying narrator, but he's not too hard to find.)

In many of these simulations, the computer players develop crazy militaries and war with each other so much that the expectation for any given civilization in the late game is that they're at war with somebody or other. They often neglect developing internal infrastructure and their cities whose populations aren't getting decimated by war stagnate.

In an eerily similar way to 1984.

I'd love to get some Civ nerds in the comments here, because it would be fun to target these ideas of militarization as simultaneously the path of least resistance and the hard-earned goal of the oligarchy from both the perspective of a 1984 reader and a Civ player...

P.S. I must say that I became disoriented from Goldstein's logic in more than a few places. For one, I found the idea baffling that avoiding providing everyone with near-equal health, wealth, and security requires active effort of behalf of everyone at the top. To me, it seems that equality in even these bread-and-butter senses is so impossibly difficult and contrary to the natural order of human social organization that the active effort would have to be towards the development of a more equal state, not against it. (Clarification: When I say "natural" I don't mean it in a good sense. I mean natural as in the state that arises when people don't stay vigilant; that is, when people just kind of let their rights and privileges come and go, they generally go and don't return. Could we call it the result of the path of least resistance?)