6 ms·

Great to hear that science (neuroscience) here is catching up with Orwell. It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did h

Great to hear that science (neuroscience) here is catching up with Orwell. It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it? I think I know. I don't think Orwell (Erik Blair) was writing a book about a dystopian future. No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future. From personal experience with the BBC, he knew what news and history really were. As a connected individual (allowed to finish his work on the private owned island of Jura) he was aware of the plans that were in place. So, I don't see 1984 as a dystopian vision of the future. I see it as a far more straightforward projection of what was already in place. We may be unaware of our prison, but Orwell was not - and was telegraphing it to us. And most of us still do not get it, and cannot see it. We are glad big Brother is making us wear masks to help us breath better, that we are keeping away from our families because of love, that we will be 'cured' by a 'vaccine'. And if you draw attention to this around here, you won't be thanked! We're not coding a harder, more impenetrable prison - we're making a better future, right?

pjc50 6y ago
> he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of Correct. After signing up with the left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War, and getting betrayed by the Stalinists, he was one of the left-wing British writers who could see what Stalinism was and wrote about it. The whole "memory hole" business is a reference to the removal of Trotsky from photographs, for example. This has nothing to do with anti-maskism and COVID denialism.
- feralimal 6y ago
  If Big Brother hadn't told you about Covid, would you even know?
  - ukj 6y ago
    If Big Brother hadn't published 1984 would you even know how they really operate? (this comment is a tribute to https://xkcd.com/966/ https://xkcd.com/966/ )
    - feralimal 6y ago
      I'm not clear what your position is, but what does it say about one, in one can only see the tyranny in a book but not be able to see it in real life?
      - pjc50 6y ago
        That it's not there or at least looks radically different?
        082349872349872 6y ago
        Well, the part about Airstrip One having always been part of Oceania is due to hit at the end of the year... (although I guess we still don't know exactly how, yet)
      - ukj 6y ago
        I am able to see both Orwell’s tyranny AND Huxley’s tyranny. If I frame all dysfunctional human interactions through the lens of “tyranny” then I see “tyranny” everywhere. That is how all confirmation biases works. That is why they are all uninteresting. Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun... The world today is less tyrannical (as per Orwell’s concept) than it was when he was alive. Only when you ignore all moral progress do you get to paint contemporary society with Orwell’s brush.
        mistermann 6y ago
        Might there be some confirmation bias at work here?
        ukj 6y ago
        Might you be responding to half of my post?
        mistermann 6y ago
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    I mean, my wife is a nurse in an ICU that has had to triple capacity in the last 6 weeks and still has less than 15% capacity remaining, so, yeah, I'd imagine I'd have some inkling.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      Tripling capacity in flu season, after having cleared out the hospitals and cancelled all the operations in previous months, doesn't say anything to me. We are living in a clown show. If this was real, we would see bodies on the streets, and the government would be fighting to keep businesses open. We don't and its not. This is just the first stage to a transition of a new economic paradigm - technocracy - where there are no small businesses, everything and everyone is tracked and traced, were we will own nothing, and be completely dependent on government/corporations/military. And most people are cheering this on. Shout some more hate at Goldstein!!
    - kardianos 6y ago
      So, like 2018? https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ SARS2-COVID-19 is a novel virus. True. Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.
      - Enginerrrd 6y ago
        >Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced. With all due respect, this statement tells me with near-certainty that you've never worked a patient-facing role in healthcare. The fact that you feel free to espouse your opinion on the subject directly related to patient-facing care should be a red flag to you. I have worked in healthcare as a paramedic. My wife is a nurse. My mother is a nurse. My brother-in-law is an MD. The public-health policy makers usually have worked in patient-facing healthcare. My local public health director was one of the best and brightest physicians I've EVER met. He cut his teeth working on eradicating smallpox in his youth, and has remarkable depth in his knowledge of epidemiology. ...All of us agree that this definitely IS different than the status quo. It is NOT different from historical precedent though, and there are many people that are quite alert to these things. These same people would notice unusual clusters of patients suggesting a terrorist attack, chemical exposure, water contamination, etc. Just because it requires knowledge you do not have doesn't mean that experts wouldn't have identified this. Which, funny enough, is exactly what DID happen.
  - wittyreference 6y ago
    I'm a physician in a hospital that has literally entire floor units - plural - occupied by nothing but dyspnea, a respiratory step-down unit that has become an expansion of the ICU, residents pulled off of every non-internal medicine training program to supplement the internal medicine teams, fellows pulled out of their training programs to supplement the hospitalists, and an ICU so packed that it looks like a bathroom at football stadium. Eh, I probably would've noticed something's up.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Denialism conspiracy bullshit has no place here. If you're actually so sheltered that you cannot see it, you should give thanks. If not, I have nothing but contempt. Either way, take your black propaganda somewhere else.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    If anything, Big Brother in countries like Iran tried to downplay the information.
  - stordoff 6y ago
    After spending ten days in an ICU (with happy hypoxia[1]), and seeing it hospitalise a member of my family for about a month, leave one almost bedridden for days and with a metallic taste in the mouth for weeks, and two others with cough/fatigue/completely no sense of taste, I'd've probably suspected something was up. Could I rule known diseases? Maybe not, but it'd have to have hit us usually hard and with an unusual set of symptoms. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-unusual-coronavirus-effect-baffles-doctors https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-...
- feralimal 6y ago
  If you are a maskist, cheering on the vaccine, demanding everyone take it, isn't it the most extreme hybris to then point at 1984 as an example of a warning against a dystopian future? At what point do you respond to the warning? (I know the answer - never!) Submitting to rule with the promise of freedom as bait (freedom that the rulers took at away!) is a strategy for fools.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    What?
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    Honestly i say this not to be mean but to try and help, it sounds like you are not mentally well. There are many real threats to the well being of the masses enacted by various powerful people and groups but masks and vaccines are not one. they are just the best way we know how to deal with a virus that is killing thousands of people a day.
    - feralimal 6y ago
      My ability to comment has been restricted apparently - "I'm commenting too fast." My last post was 3hrs ago. I have expressed an opinion that Covid is a mass hoax being perpetrated on humanity to weaken the general population and entrench those who govern us still further - that we have been living in 1984 since at least 1948. Apparently this is not an opinion that can be allowed on HN - it needs to be quashed. (If anyone is inclined to read more, this is a good article: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/gary-d-barnett/the-states-planned-covid-hell-is-coming-and-death-is-coming-with-it/ https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/gary-d-barnett/the-state...) Back to the comment. Yeah, thanks for your 'concern', but as you feel empowered to cast aspersions on my mental health, can I ask you to please take a look in the mirror? Do you do that to people a lot, when people disagree with you? At the least, it is a pretty juvenile tactic. And you think I have a mental health issue? Ok. But then, you probably believe that people who argue against what the government and media say are mentally unwell, because? ... the government and media say so. If you think for a second, you will see how circular that reasoning is, and should even be a little embarrassed that you uncritically accept what you are told. As I see it, you seem to have bought the idea a re-branded flu is going to kill us all. Have you seen or have any reason to believe that the virus is a real thing in your life? Have you seen people dying? Is there anything to indicate to you that this is real except for what you have seen on TV? Did you believe that Independence Day was real too? Appealing to your reason now, do you think that wearing a mask will help you breathe better and enable you to avoid illness? That staying away from loved ones, is the way to show you care? That staying at home is the way to optimal mental and physical health? That putting something direct into you bloodstream, bypassing all your body's defences, where you have no idea of the ingredients, is a good idea? If so, why? Is it because you have been taught by Big Brother (government, military, corporations) that this is 'good'? Do you trust Big Brother over yourself and your own reasoning?
Hoasi 6y ago
> It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it? Not to diminish Orwell's prescience in any way, but Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We precedes Orwell's work by almost 30 years. It contains all the same themes, and without a shadow of a doubt, had a massive influence on Orwell's work.
- feralimal 6y ago
  I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    And - to go further still - Orwell, Huxley (and perhaps Zamyatin) fulfil the 'Goldstein' role, IRL.
  - Hoasi 6y ago
    > I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too. No, they were not part of any plan if there was ever one. Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley were participants and observers of civil war, revolution, and its subsequent corruption by totalitarians. Their books are a testimony to that and a warning.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Ah yes, a dissident who couldn't get published in his own country was obviously included.
- AlbertoGP 6y ago
  Zamyatin’s novel is being made into a movie for next year: https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk
bitwize 6y ago
> No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future. He was extrapolating mostly from Stalin's USSR. This is well-known.

pjc50 6y ago

> he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of Correct. After signing up with the left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War, and getting betrayed by the Stalinists, he was one of the left-wing British writers who could see what Stalinism was and wrote about it. The whole "memory hole" business is a reference to the removal of Trotsky from photographs, for example. This has nothing to do with anti-maskism and COVID denialism.

feralimal 6y ago
If Big Brother hadn't told you about Covid, would you even know?
- ukj 6y ago
  If Big Brother hadn't published 1984 would you even know how they really operate? (this comment is a tribute to https://xkcd.com/966/ https://xkcd.com/966/ )
  - feralimal 6y ago
    I'm not clear what your position is, but what does it say about one, in one can only see the tyranny in a book but not be able to see it in real life?
    - pjc50 6y ago
      That it's not there or at least looks radically different?
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        Well, the part about Airstrip One having always been part of Oceania is due to hit at the end of the year... (although I guess we still don't know exactly how, yet)
    - ukj 6y ago
      I am able to see both Orwell’s tyranny AND Huxley’s tyranny. If I frame all dysfunctional human interactions through the lens of “tyranny” then I see “tyranny” everywhere. That is how all confirmation biases works. That is why they are all uninteresting. Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun... The world today is less tyrannical (as per Orwell’s concept) than it was when he was alive. Only when you ignore all moral progress do you get to paint contemporary society with Orwell’s brush.
      - mistermann 6y ago
        Might there be some confirmation bias at work here?
        ukj 6y ago
        Might you be responding to half of my post?
        mistermann 6y ago
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  I mean, my wife is a nurse in an ICU that has had to triple capacity in the last 6 weeks and still has less than 15% capacity remaining, so, yeah, I'd imagine I'd have some inkling.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Tripling capacity in flu season, after having cleared out the hospitals and cancelled all the operations in previous months, doesn't say anything to me. We are living in a clown show. If this was real, we would see bodies on the streets, and the government would be fighting to keep businesses open. We don't and its not. This is just the first stage to a transition of a new economic paradigm - technocracy - where there are no small businesses, everything and everyone is tracked and traced, were we will own nothing, and be completely dependent on government/corporations/military. And most people are cheering this on. Shout some more hate at Goldstein!!
  - kardianos 6y ago
    So, like 2018? https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ SARS2-COVID-19 is a novel virus. True. Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.
    - Enginerrrd 6y ago
      >Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced. With all due respect, this statement tells me with near-certainty that you've never worked a patient-facing role in healthcare. The fact that you feel free to espouse your opinion on the subject directly related to patient-facing care should be a red flag to you. I have worked in healthcare as a paramedic. My wife is a nurse. My mother is a nurse. My brother-in-law is an MD. The public-health policy makers usually have worked in patient-facing healthcare. My local public health director was one of the best and brightest physicians I've EVER met. He cut his teeth working on eradicating smallpox in his youth, and has remarkable depth in his knowledge of epidemiology. ...All of us agree that this definitely IS different than the status quo. It is NOT different from historical precedent though, and there are many people that are quite alert to these things. These same people would notice unusual clusters of patients suggesting a terrorist attack, chemical exposure, water contamination, etc. Just because it requires knowledge you do not have doesn't mean that experts wouldn't have identified this. Which, funny enough, is exactly what DID happen.
- wittyreference 6y ago
  I'm a physician in a hospital that has literally entire floor units - plural - occupied by nothing but dyspnea, a respiratory step-down unit that has become an expansion of the ICU, residents pulled off of every non-internal medicine training program to supplement the internal medicine teams, fellows pulled out of their training programs to supplement the hospitalists, and an ICU so packed that it looks like a bathroom at football stadium. Eh, I probably would've noticed something's up.
- _jal 6y ago
  Denialism conspiracy bullshit has no place here. If you're actually so sheltered that you cannot see it, you should give thanks. If not, I have nothing but contempt. Either way, take your black propaganda somewhere else.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  If anything, Big Brother in countries like Iran tried to downplay the information.
- stordoff 6y ago
  After spending ten days in an ICU (with happy hypoxia[1]), and seeing it hospitalise a member of my family for about a month, leave one almost bedridden for days and with a metallic taste in the mouth for weeks, and two others with cough/fatigue/completely no sense of taste, I'd've probably suspected something was up. Could I rule known diseases? Maybe not, but it'd have to have hit us usually hard and with an unusual set of symptoms. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-unusual-coronavirus-effect-baffles-doctors https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-...
feralimal 6y ago
If you are a maskist, cheering on the vaccine, demanding everyone take it, isn't it the most extreme hybris to then point at 1984 as an example of a warning against a dystopian future? At what point do you respond to the warning? (I know the answer - never!) Submitting to rule with the promise of freedom as bait (freedom that the rulers took at away!) is a strategy for fools.
- pjc50 6y ago
  What?
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Honestly i say this not to be mean but to try and help, it sounds like you are not mentally well. There are many real threats to the well being of the masses enacted by various powerful people and groups but masks and vaccines are not one. they are just the best way we know how to deal with a virus that is killing thousands of people a day.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    My ability to comment has been restricted apparently - "I'm commenting too fast." My last post was 3hrs ago. I have expressed an opinion that Covid is a mass hoax being perpetrated on humanity to weaken the general population and entrench those who govern us still further - that we have been living in 1984 since at least 1948. Apparently this is not an opinion that can be allowed on HN - it needs to be quashed. (If anyone is inclined to read more, this is a good article: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/gary-d-barnett/the-states-planned-covid-hell-is-coming-and-death-is-coming-with-it/ https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/gary-d-barnett/the-state...) Back to the comment. Yeah, thanks for your 'concern', but as you feel empowered to cast aspersions on my mental health, can I ask you to please take a look in the mirror? Do you do that to people a lot, when people disagree with you? At the least, it is a pretty juvenile tactic. And you think I have a mental health issue? Ok. But then, you probably believe that people who argue against what the government and media say are mentally unwell, because? ... the government and media say so. If you think for a second, you will see how circular that reasoning is, and should even be a little embarrassed that you uncritically accept what you are told. As I see it, you seem to have bought the idea a re-branded flu is going to kill us all. Have you seen or have any reason to believe that the virus is a real thing in your life? Have you seen people dying? Is there anything to indicate to you that this is real except for what you have seen on TV? Did you believe that Independence Day was real too? Appealing to your reason now, do you think that wearing a mask will help you breathe better and enable you to avoid illness? That staying away from loved ones, is the way to show you care? That staying at home is the way to optimal mental and physical health? That putting something direct into you bloodstream, bypassing all your body's defences, where you have no idea of the ingredients, is a good idea? If so, why? Is it because you have been taught by Big Brother (government, military, corporations) that this is 'good'? Do you trust Big Brother over yourself and your own reasoning?

Hoasi 6y ago

> It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it? Not to diminish Orwell's prescience in any way, but Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We precedes Orwell's work by almost 30 years. It contains all the same themes, and without a shadow of a doubt, had a massive influence on Orwell's work.

feralimal 6y ago
I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.
- feralimal 6y ago
  And - to go further still - Orwell, Huxley (and perhaps Zamyatin) fulfil the 'Goldstein' role, IRL.
- Hoasi 6y ago
  > I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too. No, they were not part of any plan if there was ever one. Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley were participants and observers of civil war, revolution, and its subsequent corruption by totalitarians. Their books are a testimony to that and a warning.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Ah yes, a dissident who couldn't get published in his own country was obviously included.
AlbertoGP 6y ago
Zamyatin’s novel is being made into a movie for next year: https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk

bitwize 6y ago

> No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future. He was extrapolating mostly from Stalin's USSR. This is well-known.