Question About Steroids
 

triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless
pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I
can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will
do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of
it.'
Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. 'You can't!' he
said weakly.
'What do you mean by that remark, Winston?'
'You could not create such a world as you have just described. It is a
dream. It is impossible.'
'Why?'
'It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and
cruelty. It would never endure.'
'Why not?'
'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit
suicide.'
'Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting
than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that
make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we
quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what
difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the
individual is not death? The party is immortal.'
As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helplessness. Moreover
he was in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would
twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without
arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of
what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.
'I don't know -- I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will
defeat you. Life will defeat you.'
'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that
there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do
and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men a