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So? You say it like it’s a bad thing to use rhetoric. But even pg has his own sharp set of rhetorical tools.

Barrin92 4y ago
it's a bad thing to mistake rhetorical skill for profundity. The same is true for pg. Most of what he writes is trite but he's popular because he's mastered the skill of talking to his audience in a tone that has convinced them they're all secret geniuses with access to forbidden knowledge. If Orwell was alive today, he'd probably have a thriving substack. In reality much of Orwell's output was the result of his personal feud with Stalinism, deeply conventional and elitist, and not that deep, and it's not surprising that he is today probably the most mindlessly-quoted writer around.
- magpi3 4y ago
  Do you really thing a book like 1984 is "not that deep"?
  - adventured 4y ago
    1984 is a particularly shallow book. It borders on being so simplistic as to cater to a teen equivalent crowd intellectually. It'd be deep for a 12 year old reading it for the first time, maybe. It's a cartoonish dystopia, laughably absurd in structure; although it gets his points across, which is obviously important. Orwell paints the kind of fantasy dystopia one might envision if one knew absolutely nothing about totalitarianism firsthand. Its popularity over the decades owes primarily to being shallow, simplistic. People that otherwise can't or won't approach complex ideas can read 1984 and get it. It's also not very original, even Ayn Rand took a shot at the premise a decade before Orwell with her book Anthem (1984 is a better book however).
    - strangeattractr 4y ago
      This is what's so good about hacker news, morons that enjoyed the book can learn how deficient their minds are at grasping complex ideas in comparison to intellectual heavyweights such as yourself.
      - EdwardDiego 4y ago
        I too was blessed by the above comment illuminating precisely how shallow and dumb I am.
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      You must be so lonely, being so intellectually superior.

it's a bad thing to mistake rhetorical skill for profundity. The same is true for pg. Most of what he writes is trite but he's popular because he's mastered the skill of talking to his audience in a tone that has convinced them they're all secret geniuses with access to forbidden knowledge. If Orwell was alive today, he'd probably have a thriving substack. In reality much of Orwell's output was the result of his personal feud with Stalinism, deeply conventional and elitist, and not that deep, and it's not surprising that he is today probably the most mindlessly-quoted writer around.

magpi3 4y ago
Do you really thing a book like 1984 is "not that deep"?
- adventured 4y ago
  1984 is a particularly shallow book. It borders on being so simplistic as to cater to a teen equivalent crowd intellectually. It'd be deep for a 12 year old reading it for the first time, maybe. It's a cartoonish dystopia, laughably absurd in structure; although it gets his points across, which is obviously important. Orwell paints the kind of fantasy dystopia one might envision if one knew absolutely nothing about totalitarianism firsthand. Its popularity over the decades owes primarily to being shallow, simplistic. People that otherwise can't or won't approach complex ideas can read 1984 and get it. It's also not very original, even Ayn Rand took a shot at the premise a decade before Orwell with her book Anthem (1984 is a better book however).
  - strangeattractr 4y ago
    This is what's so good about hacker news, morons that enjoyed the book can learn how deficient their minds are at grasping complex ideas in comparison to intellectual heavyweights such as yourself.
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      I too was blessed by the above comment illuminating precisely how shallow and dumb I am.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    You must be so lonely, being so intellectually superior.