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Somewhere around age 27 I wanted the same thing. I think the answer is no, for two reasons. First, we already have blogs and newspapers. More importantly, the
by jzwinck 10y ago
Somewhere around age 27 I wanted the same thing. I think the answer is no, for two reasons. First, we already have blogs and newspapers.
More importantly, the same material is interpretable in many ways. For example if you ask someone what is the main point of Orwell's 1984, you will usually hear something about surveillance. But to me, reading it as an adult, far more important is the idea that we need war as an outlet for our surpluses. That might be in the Cliffs Notes but it won't be in the first blog post on Google.
- pjc50 10y agoThe war isn't primarily an outlet for economic surplus in 1984, it serves as a justification for repression, labelling dissent as sabotage, rationing (in a way that preserves the best for loyal party members), and the normalisation of violence. See also the "two minute hate". There are a lot of takeaways from Orwell's book, basically on how "Stalinism with English characteristics" might look, extrapolating from Orwell's encounters with actual Stalinists in Spain. Orwell is pretty much required reading for anyone who wants to be on the sensible left. But a need for war is not one of them. (Brave New World has leisure industry as an explicit sink for surplus, though).
- jzwinck 10y agoI think you have reinforced my point. Whether my takeaways from 1984 are orthodox or not doesn't matter...not everyone sees the same thing in it. This reminds me how in software they say most users only use a fraction of an application's features...but every user takes a different slice. So in reply to my original parent: this is why we can't have concise things.