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It's inspiring to imagine subversive writers bravely speaking truth to power, when the reality is they're just observing the mundanity of their own time, then l

It's inspiring to imagine subversive writers bravely speaking truth to power, when the reality is they're just observing the mundanity of their own time, then later as world shifts into insanity their commonplace objections to ordinary injustice look like unspeakable challenges.

mejutoco 3y ago
Not saying that does not happen sometimes. In this case, Orwell was a volunteer in the Spanish civil war. I think that places him pretty strongly in the speaking truth to power and not hypocritically.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Definitely not hypocritically. I would never say that of Orwell who was the real deal. Just saying that most of us cannot see the implications of our thoughts in our own epoch. Most dystopian authors playfully hope they're wrong. So I think when Orwell penned his best anti-fascist works the world was already on an optimistic post-war trajectory, seeing an "arc of history that bends toward justice". Nobody had anticipated technofascism is its emerging forms.
  - nyokodo 3y ago
    > his best anti-fascist works Fascism has no false pretense of equality across races and peoples, which is clearly what Animal Farm was referring to, but Communism does. Orwell deliberately doesn’t name the ideology but clearly Fascism isn’t the only authoritarian ideology that Orwell was criticizing in his body of work.
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      Absolutely right. But what I've noticed is, it's acceptable to characterise technological authoritarianism and anti-humanism as "technofascism". Because we "all hate fascists" right? It's almost de rigueur. But naming it as "techno-communism" [0] or mentioning the Cosmist connection to techno-utopianism normally gets me marked down in these parts. Odd what waters flow underground. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_automated_luxury_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_automated_luxury_communi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism
      - georgeplusplus 3y ago
        As someone who has lived in a communist country It hurts when I hear communism is good in theory or that true communism has never been tried. Yes it has and its awful.
coldtea 3y ago
There are authors who wrote about common sense things about ordinary injustices or follies of their time, which because of today's brand of insanity come to appear uniquely poignant and prophetic. But Orwell wasn't that, or wasn't mainly that. Orwell had lived through a hell of a lot of non-mundanity (British colonialism, Spain's civil war, Nazism and World War II, Stalinism) whose injustices he wrote about. It's not like he just wrote about 1940's common places against ordinary injustices.

mejutoco 3y ago

Not saying that does not happen sometimes. In this case, Orwell was a volunteer in the Spanish civil war. I think that places him pretty strongly in the speaking truth to power and not hypocritically.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
Definitely not hypocritically. I would never say that of Orwell who was the real deal. Just saying that most of us cannot see the implications of our thoughts in our own epoch. Most dystopian authors playfully hope they're wrong. So I think when Orwell penned his best anti-fascist works the world was already on an optimistic post-war trajectory, seeing an "arc of history that bends toward justice". Nobody had anticipated technofascism is its emerging forms.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > his best anti-fascist works Fascism has no false pretense of equality across races and peoples, which is clearly what Animal Farm was referring to, but Communism does. Orwell deliberately doesn’t name the ideology but clearly Fascism isn’t the only authoritarian ideology that Orwell was criticizing in his body of work.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Absolutely right. But what I've noticed is, it's acceptable to characterise technological authoritarianism and anti-humanism as "technofascism". Because we "all hate fascists" right? It's almost de rigueur. But naming it as "techno-communism" [0] or mentioning the Cosmist connection to techno-utopianism normally gets me marked down in these parts. Odd what waters flow underground. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_automated_luxury_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_automated_luxury_communi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism
    - georgeplusplus 3y ago
      As someone who has lived in a communist country It hurts when I hear communism is good in theory or that true communism has never been tried. Yes it has and its awful.

coldtea 3y ago

There are authors who wrote about common sense things about ordinary injustices or follies of their time, which because of today's brand of insanity come to appear uniquely poignant and prophetic. But Orwell wasn't that, or wasn't mainly that. Orwell had lived through a hell of a lot of non-mundanity (British colonialism, Spain's civil war, Nazism and World War II, Stalinism) whose injustices he wrote about. It's not like he just wrote about 1940's common places against ordinary injustices.