21 ms·

Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun (1943)

• tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Judging by the list of "Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished." it seems many of us are living in a utopia yet we still aren't satisfied.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    Are you? Do you have no worries in the world?
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      If we take each of those issues: Ignorance - developed countries have never sent so many people to university. War - Is less common in recent history and the wars we do get involved have fewer casualties. I know people will raise Iraq but you only need to go back as far as Vietnam to find a conflict that was an order of magnitude worse. Poverty - Absolute poverty is very low in the developed world and decreasing elsewhere. Dirt - Soap is cheap. Disease - Smallpox, Malaria, Measles, Rubella, Syphilis, Rabies are all eradicated or falling heavily. Cancer is only so common because we live so long. Frustration - Liberal values have given freedom to a lot of people that had been oppressed. Hunger - Food has never been so cheap. Fear - I live in the UK, there is nowhere in my country that I feel is out of bounds for me. Overwork - Jonathan Sachs has a really good presentation on this, our hours have been falling for decades. Also technology has freed us from much backbreaking work.
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        I don’t disagree that it’s getting better, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that there aren’t still problems in the world that should be solved.
        • umvi 8y ago
          > but it’s disingenuous to suggest that there aren’t still problems in the world that should be solved I don't think anyone's arguing this. I think the argument is that we don't realize how good we have it since Orwell's time. What he described is many people's (especially on HN's) effective reality.
      • annabellish 8y ago
        >Ignorance - developed countries have never sent so many people to university. And yet, ignorance is still a significant problem in society, whether it be today's flavour of bigotry, a continued denial of the dangers of climate change, anti-vaxers, et cetera so on and so forth. >War Less war is certainly not none, and the consequences of our current wars are hitting as close to home as they have in living memory. Terrorism, both domestic and foreign, are problems for real people. >Poverty "Absolute" poverty maybe, but that doesn't mean that huge chunks of the western world aren't worrying about money constantly. Effective poverty is a tremendous issue. Well, I could keep going, but I won't - suffice to say, all of those things are still issues. They may not all be the same, or even as bad in some "absolute" sense, but they're still relevant.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • beaner 8y ago
      Many do not. There is a theory of something called the Power Process, which states that for people to be happy, they need goals which require effort, and need to achieve at least some of those goals. The lack of meaningful goals which require effort in the first world may be responsible for much of the depression, suicide, and other issues that plague us today. I found this Medium post which quotes the relevant parts: https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-power-process-16203dda87 https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-po...
      • fucking_tragedy 8y ago
        > There is a theory of something called the Power Process, This is not a theory in the scientific sense. It's an idea Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, wrote about in his manifesto.
        • beaner 8y ago
          Ok, not sure how that changes the point.
      • jvln 8y ago
        Might be the reason why endurance running is on the rise.
      • otakucode 8y ago
        What lack of meaningful goals? I find it very hard to believe that any human being is ever in a position where they find it hard to see meaningful goals to strive for. The lack of ability to achieve any of those goals, however, I could easily see being a problem. You can't really achieve anything that requires concentrated effort if you've got to work 40 hours a week so that you can eat.
    • umvi 8y ago
      I think GP's point was that measuring utopianess is difficult because it's all relative (like poverty or torture). In other words, you can't measure it directly. For example, if you went to the future and noted a person owned a flying car, had infinite food and a huge castle would you be able to measure the poverty level of that person? No - it depends on how much his peers have. If his peers own spaceships and planets, then he is rather poor by comparison.
  • moate 8y ago
    I'll wait for the list of places in the world in which there is no fear. Just that part of the list alone covers 100% of the population.
  • fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    The article details why utopias defined as the absence of pain or the abundance of a scarce resource present a problem in terms of happiness.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > Ignorance Ever present, if you look around. > war Always on somewhere on this planet, and always a threat when the relations between yours and other nations become tense. > dirt, disease, frustration All ever present, and experienced by everyone to great extent. > hunger In the western "utopia", it's usually a job mishap or a big medical bill away. > fear, overwork Ever present and experienced by most of us. > superstition Displayed by half of the population, if not more. Even if we happen to live without experiencing most of these for a while, it's only the most ignorant that don't realize how fragile such situation is.
  • 13415 8y ago
    Fear is everywhere nowadays, it seems to power capitalism or at least is encouraged by it. I suspect the reason is that actual capitalism (as opposed to the ideal construct) is more based on Social Darwinism and capital accumulation than on trading for the mutual benefit of all market participants.
    • pitaj 8y ago
      > Fear is everywhere nowadays, it seems to power capitalism or at least is encouraged by it. To the contrary, fear powers the State. > I suspect the reason is that actual capitalism (as opposed to the ideal construct) is more based on Social Darwinism and capital accumulation than on trading for the mutual benefit of all market participants. Depends on what you mean by capitalism. Capital accumulation is useless in a market economy if you don't re-invest it (which is a mutually beneficial trade in itself).
    • CryptoPunk 8y ago
      >>I suspect the reason is that actual capitalism (as opposed to the ideal construct) is more based on Social Darwinism and capital accumulation than on trading for the mutual benefit of all market participants. The ideal construct of a market economy is not based on "trading for the mutual benefit of all market participants". As Adam Smith so sagely put it 250 years ago: >>It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. The mutual benefit is an emergent outcome, not a conscious intent of any particular participant. Advocacy of market economics is largely based on a sober outlook on the nature of man, and a pragmatic plan for improving its condition.
  • skrebbel 8y ago
    Totally! You just described my life.
• draw_down 8y ago
  Come on
• ballenf 8y ago
  There's a fundamental conflict between conceptual Utopia/Heaven and the law of supply and demand. All literary conceptions of a utopia rely on abundance of some good that is scarce in the author's time. Usually ignoring that its ubiquity makes it tend toward zero value. Here's my stab at Utopia, but it requires a belief that Knowledge is infinite: Utopia is a state of unhindered, continual learning at your own chosen pace.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    It looks like we both independently came to the same conclusion, though I have a “solution” to the finite knowledge problem :)
    • hexomancer 8y ago
      Is it alzheimer’s?
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        No, although that is an interesting thought: selectively forgetting things so you can relearn them later.
        • Izkata 8y ago
          The immortals from the webcomic El Goonish Shive do something like this to avoid insanity, passing only important memories into their new lives. It tends to lead to panic (due to half-remembering important things) or unwanted obligations in their next life.
        • otakucode 8y ago
          It would be helpful, if still dealing with a human brain, to forget things in order to remain sane. Simulated brains which have the ability to forget removed end up acting pretty much exactly like schizophrenics brains.
          • 8y ago
• mc32 8y ago
  The problem, at least back then, was that fun and such “non-essential” things were considered either bourgeois or vulgar. Both of which were looked down upon because they were the opposite of work and progress and the greater good. At least to some in power.
  • gammateam 8y ago
    Where exactly? I know of a few subcultures in the United States that would have felt that way at that point in time. It wasn't universally true in the US, is there a particular region you are referring to?
  • Jolter 8y ago
    This comment looks almost entirely unrelated to the text of the linked article.
    • fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      I'd have to agree. Here's the thesis of the article: > The inability of mankind to imagine happiness except in the form of relief, either from effort or pain, presents Socialists with a serious problem. Dickens can describe a poverty-stricken family tucking into a roast goose, and can make them appear happy; on the other hand, the inhabitants of perfect universes seem to have no spontaneous gaiety and are usually somewhat repulsive into the bargain. But clearly we are not aiming at the kind of world Dickens described, nor, probably, at any world he was capable of imagining. The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which ‘charity’ would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable. But does that mean we are aiming at some painless, effortless Utopia? At the risk of saying something which the editors of Tribune may not endorse, I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood.
  • dmix 8y ago
    > Both of which were looked down upon because they were the opposite of work and progress and the greater good. At least to some in power. Only because their system was so fragile and wasteful that it couldn't be afforded... It's not a product of the 'times' but of the circumstances created by the community/state.
• apo 8y ago
  I'm always amazed at how readable and relevant Orwell remains. This essay is a good example. It would seem that human beings are not able to describe, nor perhaps to imagine, happiness except in terms of contrast. ... I wonder if this also works in reverse: humans are incapable of describing or imagining unhappiness except in terms of contrast. This reminds me of a line that goes something like: revolutions happen not because of poverty but through the process of a society becoming poorer.
  • daodedickinson 8y ago
    Hmm... I guess I'm not amazed that something written less than 100 years ago seems relevant when Aristophanes is still hilarious.
    • ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      Yeah, the human condition, and human nature, aren't exactly changing.
    • badcede 8y ago
      Almost nothing from 50 years ago is even remembered, let alone still read, let alone as fresh as Orwell. You make the same point by giving him Aristophanes for company.
  • empath75 8y ago
    > revolutions happen not because of poverty but through the process of a society becoming poorer. I don't think it's the case that most of them start because the society as a whole had become poorer, but because some particular segment has, while others accumulate wealth. It's not really worth having a revolution if there's nothing of value to seize. A lot of revolutions started as tax revolts by the wealthy, in fact -- the french revolution and english civil war come to mind. It was only after central authority collapsed that events outpaced the initial instigators.
    • mr_toad 8y ago
      > A lot of revolutions started as tax revolts by the wealthy ‘No taxation without representation!’
• saagarjha 8y ago
  This article focuses on a utopia of worldy pleasures, and goes on to explain why such a place would be a pretty boring place to live. But that’s just human nature: we’re never permently satisfied with what we have. The only way that we feel happiness from these things is if we get more of whatever it is, and that’s kind of impossible in a utopia. However, I still think there’s a way to get satisfaction out of a world like this: through learning. Even if we, at some point, discover everything there is to know, I think it’s still possible to find joy, since there people will be born unaware of this knowledge. Perhaps we might even mark a lifetime by the amount of time it takes to learn everything.
  • guelo 8y ago
    I would say through making. Making things gives life purpose, something to struggle against and triumph over. And you also get to learn. Learning for learning's sake doesn't give you the sense of purpose as learning in order to make something great .
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      > And you also get to learn. I lumped making under the broad umbrella of “learning”.
    • cfqycwz 8y ago
      Marx and others who elaborated on his work developed the notion of alienation under capital—the notion that capitalism really screws up the specific sort of pleasure you describe. The idea, if I'm not messing it up too badly, is that a worker under capitalism encounters the stuff they make as something alien to them—and in fact something that shapes and brings the worker into being rather than the other way around. I know I experienced this phenomenon all the time staring at code on a screen when I was working in tech.
  • freyr 8y ago
    Unless we radically alter the way the human brain works, there's no chance to "learn everything." We already know much more than any individual could learn in a lifetime.
• mactintyre 8y ago
  A great anti-elitist rant. Beautiful language: "Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. ... when [Swift] tries to create a superman, [he] leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms."
• all_usernames 8y ago
  This site is blocked by openDNS for malware distribution :-/
  • everybodyknows 8y ago
    umatrix tells me the site, orwell.ru, wants to load a script from yandex.ru. When Orwell wrote the essay he may still have been feeling his combat wounds from the Spanish Civil War, where he took a bullet in the neck from one of Franco's snipers. He also spent some days manning barricades in the streets of Barcelona, futilely resisting a coup within the Republican government, instigated by a Soviet-backed faction. Something ironic in that, with the page here coming from a .ru TLD.
• projektir 8y ago
  I never liked the formulation that utopia is not worth it because people lack the creativity to imagine what could be done for fun in it. It's like we've never tried but hey here's an explanation as to why you shouldn't want it! It should really not be a surprise that imagination is lacking here because for a lot of people, happiness is just defined as having things other people don't have, because that's simply how we came out to be wired and because we continue to live in a world that follows those principles. Until those principles have been modified, you have no idea what a utopia is and would look like. This has never, ever, been the case, not in any society you can think of. You might think you live in some super nice societies but you have never escaped those principles. Utopia isn't about making people not have toothaches or whatever anymore. That's not the point. Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want, not in the manner, currently, prescribed by the law of the powerful and the powerless. But if you really think that if suddenly your problems being solved, you'd find nothing to do, you are not thinking hard enough, and you are already too wrapped up in the thinking of having things other people don't have. It's a mindset problem of people born into a world working on that principle and it's a hard one to rewrite.
  • n4r9 8y ago
    > Utopia is about letting people live in a manner that they would want One of the lessons I learnt from Huxley's Brave New World is that this phrasing is very ambiguous and the meaning of utopia is more complicated, if the word is indeed meaningful. The people in BNW live in the manner that they desire, but not many would call it a utopia. Sure, those desires themselves are the result of genetic and environmental conditioning, but so are ours! It seems to me that Huxley is saying that some element of struggle and overcoming of adversity is necessary for human flourishing.
    • ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      Between Huxley ("Brave New World") and Orwell ("1984"), I think Huxley saw the future more accurately, although Orwell has amazing insights. I actually thought that "Wall-E" was a good, and particularly accessible, commentary on utopia. Without the need to strive, we might all just turn into human potatoes. I'm not far from that now, which is pretty frightening.
• jxramos 8y ago
  Is anyone else intrigued that this is hosted on a Russian domain? I’m thinking ideological honeypot, lol.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    It appears to be an unmodified essay by George Orwell, so I really wouldn’t call it an “ideological honeypot”.
  • aaaabbbb998877 8y ago
    Bizarre comment
  • stcredzero 8y ago
    Is anyone else intrigued that this is hosted on a Russian domain? I’m thinking ideological honeypot, lol. This sort of fake refutation by association is exactly the kind of anti-intellectual tripe that reduces the S/N ratio of the internet to almost nothing.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• daodedickinson 8y ago
  Of course, "brotherhood" is as impossible as "happiness" without contrast, even more so whatever replaces it when it isn't inclusive enough.
• petermcneeley 8y ago
  "This Christmas Day, thousands of men will be bleeding to death in the Russian snows, or drowning in icy waters, or blowing one another to pieces on swampy islands of the Pacific; homeless children will be scrabbling for food among the wreckage of German cities." - Should be some context for how completely alien the world of the writer is to us now.
  • ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    It may be alien to us, but there are millions of people for which this describes their reality.
    • e12e 8y ago
      Yeah, gp seem disconcertingly disconnected from the reality of Yemen, Syria or Palestine - just to mention a few places off the top of my head.
      • yourbandsucks 8y ago
        Or maybe they have a sense of context. Despite any media hype, the world is more peaceful than ever, and a fewer % of people are living in poverty than ever. Maybe they're exceedingly well connected with reality.
        • beat 8y ago
          My new favorite factoid... the percentage of people living in extreme poverty (less than $2/day) has dropped from 29% to just 9% in the past 20 years alone. The mind boggles. We've made as much progress against extreme poverty in the past 20 years as the past 20,000 years. Two thirds of it, just gone. Looking at the angry headlines of the day is a very misleading way of understanding the world.
      • Entangled 8y ago
        Or Venezuela.
      • 8y ago
• smacktoward 8y ago
  At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." -- Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931) http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/Features/danceswithfeminists.html http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/Features/danceswithfemin...
  • AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Goldman wasn't the kind of socialist that Orwell is describing. Orwell was obsessively critical of Authoritarian Socialism - namely big [S] State Socialism as represented by the Soviet Union. That is in stark contrast with Goldman's Democratic Anarcho-Socialism which shares little relation - philosophically or sentimentally - with the State Socialism that Orwell was writing about.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      Orwell was obsessively critical of Authoritarian Socialism - namely big [S] State Socialism as represented by the Soviet Union. I don't think George Orwell would necessarily be cotton to variations of Authoritarian Socialism implemented in very large corporations. That is in stark contrast with Goldman's Democratic Anarcho-Socialism which shares little relation - philosophically or sentimentally - with the State Socialism that Orwell was writing about. I have friends who claim to be "anarcho-" something, who at the same time espouse state socialist politics. Their action in aggregate is often authoritarian, and I don't see how any anarchic politics can prevent the oppressive rule of a majority. As such mechanisms play out in my private life, it seems that anarchy results in less diversity of thought and virulent oppression of minority viewpoints. EDIT: My corollary -- Oppressive tribalism is just a later stage development of anarchy.
• stcredzero 8y ago
  Here you have a picture of the world as Wells would like to see it or thinks he would like to see it. It is a world whose keynotes are enlightened hedonism and scientific curiosity. All the evils and miseries we now suffer from have vanished. Ignorance, war, poverty, dirt, disease, frustration, hunger, fear, overwork, superstition all vanished...But is there anyone who actually wants to live in a Wellsian Utopia? On the contrary, not to live in a world like that, not to wake up in a hygenic garden suburb infested by naked schoolmarms, has actually become a conscious political motive. This is a neat summary of the ideological contradiction of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Everyone wants edginess with safety, but no one wants the Disnified, safe version of edginess. We want the hard-nosed meritocracy of innovation, technical prowess, and commerce, but we don't want to let our children risk even the failure of losing in sports. All ‘favourable’ Utopias seem to be alike in postulating perfection while being unable to suggest happiness. 'Favorable' Utopias are like Mary Sue characters or fanfics without real conflict. There is no interest without real risk and real adversity. Even Iain M. Bank's Culture universe has imperfections, conflict, and death, even if there are untold trillions in it living idyllic lives of enlightened hedonism and curiosity.
  • TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Humans can't really tell the difference between real and simulated risk. Online games are incredibly compelling for the people who play them, but they're a lot less risky than taking part in a real war and risking real blood and real body parts. I don't see why we couldn't sublimate games like economics in the same way. The experience of winning would be almost identical, but simulations wouldn't have to be zero sum in the way that meatspace acquisition games usually are.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      Humans can't really tell the difference between real and simulated risk. Even so, some of us have our kids play baseball-like games where they're not even allowed to strike out.
      • adiusmus 8y ago
• eezurr 8y ago
  Note: I am responding to comments here, haven't read the article yet. Utopia is not possible because the desires and wants of millions of people (focusing on a country) don't overlap with everyone else's 100%, or sometimes not at all. We also don't live long enough to truly appreciate what we have today, as I'm sure people from hundreds of years ago would think today's society is a utopia: (basically) infinite potable cold and hot water, heat and air conditioning, electricity, sewage removal, relative privacy, trash removal, modern medicine, fast, cheap transportation, a wide variety of fresh food all year round, internet... I could go on. So maybe utopia is genuine appreciation on a personal level for what one has. You can't do this without contrast, and contrast is best developed from real experiences. Maybe one could spend a couple weeks out in the woods with canned food and a stream for water (and no electronics except a flashlight), and come back with a new found understanding for the amount of convenience and comfort one has in this modern life.
  • nradov 8y ago
    That's pretty close to some schools of Buddhist philosophy.
• badcede 8y ago
  Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKW7JkHKm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKW7JkHKm8
• bryanlarsen 8y ago
  1943 was the same year that Maslow first presented his hierarchy of needs. I believe that it goes much further to explain the requirements for human happiness.
• RangerScience 8y ago
  Perhaps it used to be the case that people had trouble imagining a utopia, but here's two solid utopias (or near enough) I've encountered in fiction: the entirety of Ian M Bank's "Culture"; and the second chapter of Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway". Also, there's the perennial example of Burning Man (and related festivals) - here's an example of people creating happiness that has little to do with the removal of scarcities, and plenty to do with the addition of abundance. To go off @mactintyre's selection: if "nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary", well, seems to me that's a failure of imagination and experience more than an incapacity in humans or reality. You could also look to Asimov's "Profession" (http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html) - again, while not exactly a Utopia, it's decently close - and more importantly: "It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not.’" These are the people that, when all scarcity has been eliminated, take that bland contentedness which results and turn into something more. Not to say the Orwell is wrong - he's on the nose: "Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
  • bitwize 8y ago
    Banks's Culture works in particular because Banks mainly wrote about contact (friendly or otherwise) with non-Culture societies. The general thesis still holds: man is not truly content without conflict and challenge. Hard SF provides a way for utopias to not stagnate and become boring: once humans have secured long life, prosperity, and harmony for themselves, they seek adventure in the big wide universe outside their dominion. This also applies to conceptions of heaven, the best description of which I found in the movie Defending Your Life, in which the worthy deceased ascend to become "citizens of the universe" and tackle bigger, cosmic challenges with their vastly increased intellect.
    • arethuza 8y ago
      "The humans of the Culture, having solved all the obvious problems of their shared pasts to be free from hunger, want, disease and the fear of natural disaster and attack, would find it a slightly empty existence only and merely enjoying themselves, and so need the good-works of the Contact section to let them feel vicariously useful." From A Few Notes on the Culture
• tim333 8y ago
  He never really gets to the point in the title about not believing in fun He says reasonably enough >...not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. But the fact you don't want an aircon paradise doesn't have to mean no to fun. Why not party / go surfing / whatever seems fun?
• sehugg 8y ago
  Lest the headline imply otherwise, Orwell was a proponent of democratic socialism: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
• DannyB2 8y ago
  Just an opinion here. The article says a number of things about the Christian Heaven. But fails to recognize the premise is that people who go there are changed. On the inside. There is peace, on the outside, because there is peace in the heart, on the inside. There is contentment, because it is on the inside. There isn't a lust for power and control over other people's lives. Nor any shortage of resources. And the biggest thing described as great about Heaven is being in God's presence. Not material things or power. The problem with all other utopias is that they seem to imagine something that people create without a change on the inside. People have tried to create ideal kingdoms for millennia. The problem is that its seeds of destruction are on our insides. It is us that is the problem.
  • jmawesome 8y ago
    The idea of peace in the heart in Christian Heaven is an idea entirely absent in the New Testament. Peace, in the NT, is always interpersonal--and it's this very thing that causes conceptions of heaven to fail. To describe it as peaceful, as tranquil is not the point. To describe it as peaceful, where all have been reconciled and relationships have been restored starts to capture an essence of what the purpose is.
    • rcoveson 8y ago
      Would it be fair to describe it as a place where nothing ever happens?
      • TimTheTinker 8y ago
        Actually, there's a lot of activity, responsibility, and work to be done once heaven arrives. A few thoughts: In the final state, there will be new heavens and a new earth (i.e. a very physical Earth like we know it now, with mountains, trees, grass, animals) -- a sort of Eden restored, but better, since God's throne and presence will be on the earth, instead of in a separate place (Revelation 22, Isaiah 11). There will be cities to rule, a lot of responsibility and work to do, many "ages to come" in which things will change (scripture references provided on request). Imagine the grandeur of Tolkien's and Lewis's fantasy novels -- the ages upon ages of interesting history and characters. I honestly don't understand how the narrative will work without any antagonists present, because we presently understand narratives via conflict and resolution. The "they lived happily ever after" seems rather bereft of content, and is kept for the very end of stories. I suspect that's because we have yet to see what the great, true "happily ever after" looks like. However, the boredom with eternity that Orwell alludes to will not be present, simply because of the person of God. He is full of infinite love, creativity, power, etc... and he will be the delight of all who are there -- that sort of ever-flowing fountain of life and "newness". Indeed, without God himself, everything would get incredibly dull after a while. Jesus says as much in his prayer to the Father in John 17: ".. and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." The "life" here is love, joy, and peace, not merely length of days.
• cafard 8y ago
  I guess the question is, "Which socialists?" Nancy Mitford professed herself a socialist, yet wrote frivolous social comedy about the English and French upper classes. Kingsley Amis at one point was a communist, and wrote very funny novels.
• CalChris 8y ago
  Interesting that Orwell adopts Eliot as an English writer. He was from Saint Louis and educated at Harvard.
  • vixen99 8y ago
    Eliot renounced his American passport and became a British subject. Orwell respected that decision.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• lordleft 8y ago
  My absolute favorite Orwell essay - it cemented my appreciation of him as an essayist and political thinker.
• notthegov 8y ago
  A perfect society requires demonetization.
• Koshkin 8y ago
  Socialism is like love - it does not work on a large scale.
• Semiapies 8y ago
  Seems like a good counterpoint to the silly, loaded argument of "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas", which boils down to "Can you imagine a perfect, happy, society and take that seriously?" The answer is that few people really can, even among those people who think society can be perfected.
• caf 8y ago
  The original 1943 title this was published under was Can Socialists Be Happy? The title used here was used in a later republishing.
• lostmsu 8y ago
  Most here can eat 3 times a day, have fresh water, warm home and go wherever they want. We are living in an utopia.
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  Socialists believe in fun. Socialists Orwell was familiar with 75 years ago may not have written much about fun (or, at least things Orwell found fun) in their utopian literature, but I suspect hat that's largely because recreation wasn't an area of society that they felt needed fixed, so it wasn't the focus of it utopian literature. In any case, I'm not sure how much relevance the observation (much less the explanation offered for it) has now, even if it had some in 1943; more recent left-wing utopian fiction does address recreation (whether Orwell would find the utopias described therein to be fun is, I suppose, an open and unanswerable question), notably including Callenbach’s Ecotopia, which certainly is more relevant to the views of the modern American (or Western, more generally) left than the works referenced in Orwell’s work.