Orwell's Oceania was textured like the Soviet Russia I encountered in 1984: drab people, drab stuff, drab politics - one size misfits all.
Instead in today's Britain we have brightly lit, multifariously-stocked supermarket shelves. The universal elixir of consumer choice. Yet the brilliant cosmetics disguises the proliferation of an unpalatableness that's eroding our capacity for vital discernment.
Orwell thought it would all look bad, taste bad, feel bad. Instead it looks flawless and it tastes flavourless - just like the fruit and veg in our supermarkets. Nice enough looking, but insipid people, stuff, politics etc.
We don't know what we don't know and soon we may not even know that. And we won't be that much inclined to find out.
Orwell was mistaken to think that the critical choice would be between the cell and the organism - it has proven to be between breadth and depth. Orwell, Adorno and others associated the perpetuation of cultural depth with social inequality. Yet as our society has become more equitable we have sacrificed even those aspects of depth which hardly ever played a role in furthering class divisions and elitist taste.
Take Spain for example. Whilst the UK has cricket and Michael Palin, they have Los Sanfermines and the La Tomatina. The fresh produce in their shops has an individuality that ours long ago lost. However, you won't find a Chicken Tikka Masala ready meal all that readily. Over there quality, in this case sabor, has been preserved, at the expense of diversity.
The worldy-wise wares of Britain reflect a cosmoplitanism that has been spread very thinly. Here in London you can almost feel the melting pot re-congealing around you since 7-7. Some commentators are calling for a restoration of Britishness to plug the gaps, but how much of that is more than a memory?
Compared to the Latins we Brits are a rather reticent, ingenuous lot. We sense we are somehow being victimised by a hermetic nexus of bullies - supermarkets, brands, multinationals - but the same people that buy things for their comforting cosmetic value are doing the packaging and selling elsewhere. It's a defect within our collective consciousness.
Over in Guatemala breadth and depth are both expressed more patchily, but Antigua is like an oasis with a good little store of both.
