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I am trying to read this comment as read by a history buff in 1995 and I'm finding it hilarious. People can just read history and interpret them... This trend

I am trying to read this comment as read by a history buff in 1995 and I'm finding it hilarious. People can just read history and interpret them... This trend of interpreting every politically adjacent thought as originating from one propaganda source or another is insane and absolutely destructive to having any sort of reasonable discourse.

somenameforme 4y ago
Were I a valueless entity of influence endeavoring to convince society of concepts 'less than well supported' then reasonable discourse would most certainly be the first to the guillotine. "He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you--something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?" Interestingly enough the original title for that work was intended to be "The Last Man in Europe." It was only commercial interests that drove it to "1984."

somenameforme 4y ago

Were I a valueless entity of influence endeavoring to convince society of concepts 'less than well supported' then reasonable discourse would most certainly be the first to the guillotine. "He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you--something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?" Interestingly enough the original title for that work was intended to be "The Last Man in Europe." It was only commercial interests that drove it to "1984."