5 ms·
Some would argue, that he wasn't wrong...
by Jaruzel 5y ago
Some would argue, that he wasn't wrong...
- DocTomoe 5y ago1984 was meant as a warning, but used as a manual.
- verisimi 5y agoYes. 1984 and Brave New World - written by old Etonians and Oxbridge students (Blair and Huxley) - were imaginative works that were about setting goals for the ruling elite. A visionary guide for the governance administrators and an (unheeded) warning for the rest of us.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoI think it can also be seen as a survival manual for someone who finds themself inside such a system already.
- arethuza 5y agoNot a very effective survival manual - by the end of the book Winston Smith has been broken and will soon be executed.
- gidorah 5y agoYeah, but Big Brother loves him! Always has done, always will.
- bell-cot 5y ago"survival manual" is perhaps not quite the right phrase...but watching someone else's failed attempts at a task can be very instructive.
- arethuza 5y agoPerhaps 1984 was itself written by the Thought Police to demonstrate the futility of rebelling against Big Brother....
- n4r9 5y agoThe atmosphere I remember from 1984 was one of futility. The state had locked down sufficiently that individual rebellion of any sort was infeasible. Am I misremembering?
- KineticLensman 5y agoThat's what I remember. The state itself has the rebellion, such as it is, totally under control, like everything else.
- agumonkey 5y agoA cautionary tale.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI consider it a memetic inoculation - certain things, like newspeak and erasing the past, just stand out as warning signs when one has read 1984 when otherwise one just thinks, "that's kinda weird".
- agumonkey 5y agoMatrix too.
- pjc50 5y agoIt (and Animal Farm) were depictions of Stalinism from the inside - historical fiction rather than science fiction.
- zaarn 5y agoNot really? 1984 was more written in reaction to the british intelligence appartus harassing him rather than Stalin, Orwell was quite a devout communist and that brought down the hammer of the british intelligence organisations on him, trying to censor him and make his life difficult. It isn't really a historical fiction of stalinism and more of living as a communist under the red scare in the western world.
- pjc50 5y agoWhile it's true that British intelligence were interested in him, he handed them a list voluntarily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list He was a democratic socialist, which put him strongly against actually existing capital-C Communism which was totalitarian and Stalinist. The "memory hole" bit is clearly based on how Trotsky was edited out of the official history, for example. This article cites opposition to Lysenkoism as a direct influence, as well: https://lithub.com/orwells-notes-on-1984-mapping-the-inspiration-of-a-modern-classic/ https://lithub.com/orwells-notes-on-1984-mapping-the-inspira...
- zaarn 5y agoVoluntarily handing over lists didn't seem to change much. And I don't believe one part of the story aligning with Trotsky quite erases that this story much more closely aligns with the treatment of Orwell at the hands of british authorities rather than Stalin's communism. For the "democratic socialist" part I would point out that Orwell sympathized with Anarchists in the Spanish revolution at minimum.
- thisNeeds2BeSad 5y ago[flagged]
- 5y ago