Orwell's 1984
Sep. 21st, 2005 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
javasaurusCurrently reading Orwell's 1984. I haven't read it since I was in high school, and it's not really what I remember. Oddly enough, it's really hitting some strange chords with me:
In it is the idea that the purpose of war is to use up excess supplies (food, medicine, machinery, etc.) at a sufficiently high rate to keep the masses impoverished. Healthy, well educated masses have the ability to say no to the government, which cannot be allowed. Reduce education, specifically get rid of science. Make the political leader a quasi-religious figurehead, and the "enemy" is villified to a point of extreme hatred. Furthermore, make these changes in such a way that people think you are improving their lives, or at least tell them repeatedly that they are living better now than ever, and they will believe you, especially if you denounce and/or remove anybody who speaks otherwise.
In it is the idea that the purpose of war is to use up excess supplies (food, medicine, machinery, etc.) at a sufficiently high rate to keep the masses impoverished. Healthy, well educated masses have the ability to say no to the government, which cannot be allowed. Reduce education, specifically get rid of science. Make the political leader a quasi-religious figurehead, and the "enemy" is villified to a point of extreme hatred. Furthermore, make these changes in such a way that people think you are improving their lives, or at least tell them repeatedly that they are living better now than ever, and they will believe you, especially if you denounce and/or remove anybody who speaks otherwise.
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Date: 2005-09-21 04:28 pm (UTC)the majesty of that book
Date: 2005-09-21 04:37 pm (UTC)if you specifically looked at it in the 90s, when we all saw the great media conglomeration and consolidation especially in news and in "Clear Channel"'s takeover of broadcast radio, the pettyness of the clinton-lewinski affair, the passage of the DMCA, the continual extension of copyrights and the abuse of patents, and the growing over-reliance on AP and Reuters over home-grown investigative journalism (supposedly for financial reasons), and you'd see it all in there in some parallel as well...
...and completely overlook the "quasi-religious figurehead" and "get rid of science" portions of that world.
the world in that book is the ultimate in worst-case scenerios. as such, its unlikely to impossible that it all will happen, but at any point in time you can see *some* of it happening in the news of the day.
its impossible to read that book without the bias of current events. those who read it in the 60's missed most of what we've described but instead specifically noticed the examples of forced labor (in their eyes, the Draft), the repression of sex to reproduction only, the abuse of investigative powers over our privacy (remnants of the original McCarthyism) and the concept of a "conspiracy" where the powers in the public eye (Kennedy, Johnson, and congress) aren't the real power in the government.
Re: the majesty of that book
Date: 2005-09-22 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-21 11:18 pm (UTC)SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-22 04:04 pm (UTC)(hmmm...maybe soylent green on a stick?)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-27 07:21 pm (UTC)