1984
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Re: 1984
So this is my little anecdote with the book, In my opinion it's a book every teenager should read and then revisit at different stages of life just so he can witness the effect created by the different interpretations of a book we make as our own personalities change. It's a great book, by a great author.
- Idleheim
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Look at the current American Voting process and parties. In the beginning there were almost as many parties as there were candidates. Social Party, Bullmoose Party, Do-little Party; the list goes on ad absurdum. However, by careful, purposeful and strategic maneuvering, their now exist only two parties of any real power and notoriety, the Democrat and Republican. Left-wing and Right-wing, or for the purposes of this example, Blue and Red. Yes, we throw in words like "centrist" and "extremists" to provide shades of "meaning" but everyone uses the same "red to blue" dichromatic scale and a false dichotomy, if one agrees with political theorists like Noam Chomsky, another VERY politically active linguist.
We do still have a plethora of parties and constituents in existence today, sure; Libertarians, Communists, Anarchists, Greens, etc. But by and large those parties are not even given attention. Soon, if left unchecked, attention will completely atrophy and the parties will dissolve and become inert. Likewise, the concept behind the party, say "green" (Not picking on the greens, just using them as an example) will no longer apply when talking about the political makeup. Without that concept, context becomes more fixed to the desired effect. Green no longer has a context in "Red and Blue" and therefore cannot be expressed without defaulting to a derivation of Red or Blue. Without the concept of a "Green Party", one removes it from the ballot and thus the political makeup, making it harder for someone of a Green-ish tint to fully express themselves, from a political party standpoint. Green is no longer a Referent to the Concept of "Green" Party.
Thus the Green Party no longer "exists" and, more importantly becomes harder, if not impossible, to manifest in the future, since the word green no longer has meaning, politically! That is how words are destroyed.
In the book, Syme saw the beauty in this destruction. Unfortunately, by virtue of having the concept well enough to destroy it, he becomes a target as well. Getting rid of the people who hold the words completes the "loop" left in the concept. The concept becomes a demiurge, with no meaningful name to pin it, and thus understand it.
Or perhaps, I simply do not have the words to grasp this concept myself, because they no longer exist.
- saviolo
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If most modern authors wrote this it would end up with a teenage girl overthrowing everything at the end of the third book. It was just a better class of pessimism.
- FunDuhMentalist
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- saviolo
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Well put.Sianselina wrote: Nevertheless there seems to be an uncrosable threshold; the gap between a government controlled robot, and a human being.
I think what Orwell could not predict was the growth of communication technology. Governments today are struggling to control the messages we receive and even very oppressive regimes are being challenged by the free slow of information. We don't all think alike. I'm based in England but have a lot more in common with friends in the USA and France than the people who live next door to me. Funny that.
- sarahstark
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So we might not be at "that point" yet. The government does certain things, but it also doesn't. But Orwell's warning is timeless, and applicable to any and every government and time period. He warns to not give complete and total power to the government.
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- ZackandMack
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- subzerowon
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- ZackandMack
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Perhaps it was this flip--the peace pact between Stalin and Hitler prior to Operation Barbarossa--that Orwell observed fellow communists twist themselves logically to support the pact prior to Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. We saw this in the New York Times with reporter Duranty writing nothing by skittles and cream about the Soviet Union, when it was an absolute falsehood. We see it today with members of the Journal-list group singing the praises of the government and covering for any of its failures.
Orwell saw this is real-time from the late 1930s through the war. It was not a great leap to think that the role of government were to not contract, but expand its power of its "subjects"
Huxley wrote the same thing some time later in Brave New World, which he proudly claimed was a blueprint of things to come. It is on track, disturbingly so...
- kasi33
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