13 ms·

It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft, or i

by plg 13y ago

It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft, or in the story's context in society, as our world changes. It's also worth asking ourselves each time we re-read 1984, are we farther away or closer to the life depicted in the book, than last time we read it?

mindcrime 13y ago
I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that life now, than then.
- 3am 13y ago
  This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
        MartinCron 13y ago
        The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
      - Jare 13y ago
        > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
      - mhurron 13y ago
        http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
        MartinCron 13y ago
  - dil8 13y ago
    You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
        sliverstorm 13y ago
        That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
      - grey-area 13y ago
        I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.
  - bernardom 13y ago
    > The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.
- spindritf 13y ago
  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the communist block, we are farther than we have ever been since 1984 was written.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    I think, it's just the opposite. Since the fall of the communist idea (of course it has fallen already before), one religion now is dominant: Capitalism. Meaning, anybody that does not believe in the "true god", is guilty of Thoughtcrime.
    - spindritf 13y ago
      Except they're not thrown in gulags, persecuted, or even inconvenienced. Quite a few self-proclaimed socialists and marxists I know, with public blogs and other hallmarks of modern political activism, work for large corporations. No one cares. I live in Poland, a post-communist country. Just yesterday I heard an interview on (public) radio with some (state-sponsored) university professor arguing that life was better under the previous system. No one cares. There is proper thoughtcrime, like racism, or denying holocaust that can get you in trouble, fired, even arrested. But that is still really mild compared to 1984 or 1984.
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I think, we will see what will come. But when you state the wrong things even today you can get into trouble. Of course it is still not so obvious as in 1984 or in the USSR system, but things change rapidly today and I see it in "free" Germany as thoughts are forbidden and when you say them openly, you will be banned from the public. It is just a small step from there to be arrested, as we saw before. Even today, if you have the wrong name you can be disallowed from flying in the "land of the free". Because the government put your name on the list. Some woman fought against this list, but the government even played tricks, that the trial could not go on. Where is there democracy or freedom?

by plg 13y ago

mindcrime 13y ago

I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that life now, than then.

3am 13y ago
This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
      - MartinCron 13y ago
        The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
    - Jare 13y ago
      > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
      - MartinCron 13y ago
- dil8 13y ago
  You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
        PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!
- grey-area 13y ago
  Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.
- bernardom 13y ago
  > The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.
spindritf 13y ago
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the communist block, we are farther than we have ever been since 1984 was written.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  I think, it's just the opposite. Since the fall of the communist idea (of course it has fallen already before), one religion now is dominant: Capitalism. Meaning, anybody that does not believe in the "true god", is guilty of Thoughtcrime.
  - spindritf 13y ago
    Except they're not thrown in gulags, persecuted, or even inconvenienced. Quite a few self-proclaimed socialists and marxists I know, with public blogs and other hallmarks of modern political activism, work for large corporations. No one cares. I live in Poland, a post-communist country. Just yesterday I heard an interview on (public) radio with some (state-sponsored) university professor arguing that life was better under the previous system. No one cares. There is proper thoughtcrime, like racism, or denying holocaust that can get you in trouble, fired, even arrested. But that is still really mild compared to 1984 or 1984.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I think, we will see what will come. But when you state the wrong things even today you can get into trouble. Of course it is still not so obvious as in 1984 or in the USSR system, but things change rapidly today and I see it in "free" Germany as thoughts are forbidden and when you say them openly, you will be banned from the public. It is just a small step from there to be arrested, as we saw before. Even today, if you have the wrong name you can be disallowed from flying in the "land of the free". Because the government put your name on the list. Some woman fought against this list, but the government even played tricks, that the trial could not go on. Where is there democracy or freedom?