3 ms·

It seems to me, this book is more relevant today than ever. Orwell might have erred with the date, but I think he didn't with the direction of human kind.

bananacurve 13y ago
The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is. Freedom and opportunity? Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not! Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the last decades it declined rapidly. Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries? Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from being real free. Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US??? Think again! Just think!
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Yelling "think" is not actually the substitute for evidence that you seem to believe it is.
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I do not yell. I am just wondering. I am wondering, how people have been blinded. Maybe I have just to big expectations.
- BugBrother 13y ago
  You are totally correct in all you write. Yet, it is still quite easy to think of future 1984 scenarios. For instance, consider the Chinese version of NSA, it is an ideal tool for a free economy (i.e. a working economy) with control of the population. The country has already got a capitalist economy married to a dictatorship. We expect China to open up and democratize, now that it is getting better and the average education is increasing. But what if the communist party instead starts to integrate with the military, increases automatic surveillance and goes the other way? "The future as a foot that stamps in a face" (iirc from 1984) might seem lika a nice scenario for quite a few guys in boots. Will it happen? Afaik, the risk is small. But it certainly exists.
saraid216 13y ago
> Orwell might have erred with the date Not really.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  >Not really. What do you have in mind? I was thinking about it, but could not get anything fixed to 1984 that could make it a relevant date.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    1984 wasn't about "this is the big event that happened in 1984". It was about "The year is 1984, and history has led us to this point."
- cafard 13y ago
  Anthony Burgess writes somewhere or other that Orwell wanted to use 1948 but was talked out of it.
cafard 13y ago
If taken at face value, it suffers from the same problem as "The Godfather", i.e. the picture of a perfectly consistent, always working system. That fit nicely into notions of the totalitarian state popularized about that time, and lasting into the 1980s and beyond. The alteration of the leading Communist regimes into whatever they have become--how do you characterize the PRC?--has not entirely destroyed the appeal of these notions.

bananacurve 13y ago

The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is. Freedom and opportunity? Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not! Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the last decades it declined rapidly. Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries? Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from being real free. Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US??? Think again! Just think!
- saraid216 13y ago
  Yelling "think" is not actually the substitute for evidence that you seem to believe it is.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    I do not yell. I am just wondering. I am wondering, how people have been blinded. Maybe I have just to big expectations.
BugBrother 13y ago
You are totally correct in all you write. Yet, it is still quite easy to think of future 1984 scenarios. For instance, consider the Chinese version of NSA, it is an ideal tool for a free economy (i.e. a working economy) with control of the population. The country has already got a capitalist economy married to a dictatorship. We expect China to open up and democratize, now that it is getting better and the average education is increasing. But what if the communist party instead starts to integrate with the military, increases automatic surveillance and goes the other way? "The future as a foot that stamps in a face" (iirc from 1984) might seem lika a nice scenario for quite a few guys in boots. Will it happen? Afaik, the risk is small. But it certainly exists.

saraid216 13y ago

> Orwell might have erred with the date Not really.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
>Not really. What do you have in mind? I was thinking about it, but could not get anything fixed to 1984 that could make it a relevant date.
- saraid216 13y ago
  1984 wasn't about "this is the big event that happened in 1984". It was about "The year is 1984, and history has led us to this point."
cafard 13y ago
Anthony Burgess writes somewhere or other that Orwell wanted to use 1948 but was talked out of it.

cafard 13y ago

If taken at face value, it suffers from the same problem as "The Godfather", i.e. the picture of a perfectly consistent, always working system. That fit nicely into notions of the totalitarian state popularized about that time, and lasting into the 1980s and beyond. The alteration of the leading Communist regimes into whatever they have become--how do you characterize the PRC?--has not entirely destroyed the appeal of these notions.