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Last post Author Topic: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984  (Read 19277 times)

Jimdoria

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Re: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2008, 03:27 PM »
The thing I found intersting was coming back and reading 1984 as an adult, and seeing so much more in it that when I had read it in the high school/young adult area of my life.I know political discussions are a verboten topic, but this is a political work, so it's kind of hard to dicsuss without discussing politics. However, while it's always tempting to compare our current political situation to this dystopia or that utopia, there's more to be had from 1984.

Interstingly, pervasive 24x7 surveillance of everyone in society was never part of the 1984 vision. "Animals and proles are free." The vast majority of the populace, the "proles", were not watched nor even terribly harrassed by their government. The class analysis of IngSoc stated that revolution took place only when the middle class incited the proles to violence against the upper class. When this happened, the middle class displaced the upper class as rulers, relegating them back to middle class status, where they would eventually perpetuate the next revolution.

Only the Outer Party was watched in 1984 - the managerial/professional classes. The ruling Inner Party watched them like hawks and oppressed them mercilessly, because they recognized them as the only leginitmate threat to the status quo. The proletariat was happy consuming government-produced beer, gin, pronography and pop culture, and picking up little extras here and there on the black market.

Incidentally, the basis for IngSoc seems to be both Soviet and Burmese. Orwell served in Burma which at the time was a repressive military dictatorship. But IngSoc is really a pastiche of various oppresive regimes, with a wee bit of sci fi thrown in. As for how it relates to our current situation in the west, note that IngSoc owned the means of production as well as the organs of the state. Its power was what we now conisder corporate as well as govenmental. We live in a society where corporate power and governmental power exist separately but side by side, but it would be naive to say this consitutes an impermeable separation of powers, or that there is never an alignment of agendas between those at the top of society. There's hardly a thick, black line separating coprorate and state power. Corporate economies and state economies - and spheres of power - are often of comparable magnitude.

Finally, I always thought it was kind of pointless to discuss 1984 without also bringing Brave New World into the picture. It's a far more beguiling and subtle vision of the future, and far more relevent to the state of the western world today, even though it's the older work. To parapharase Aldous Huxley, the great danger is that freedom will become not illegal, but irrelevant.
- Jimdoria ~@>@

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide everybody into two kinds of people, and those who don't.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2008, 03:48 PM by Jimdoria »

Edvard

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Re: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
« Reply #26 on: March 18, 2008, 04:41 PM »
Well put.
I preferred Huxley's vision over Orwell's anyway.
So long as you're mentioning Huxley, may I also mention Illuminatus and Slaughterhouse Five?

tinjaw

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Re: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
« Reply #27 on: March 18, 2008, 05:36 PM »
So long as you're mentioning Huxley, may I also mention Illuminatus

Thanks for that link. I know of the concept of the Illuminati from playing the Steve Jackson game many years ago, but I never put two and two together and realized there was a book trilogy as its roots. I now feel quite stupid for not figuring this out on my own. I will have to read it/them.

And when I read the Wikipedia entry you linked to, I learned that the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1986. And then I learned that the award is designed to honor classic libertarian fiction. As I stated earlier in the thread, I am a libertarian. So I was delighted to learn that such an award even existed. So now with the list of award winners my reading list has grown dramatically. (As we know the best way to insure I remain ignorant and brainwashed is to read only books I know ahead of time I will agree with, and not challenge, my views. LOL)

Any way...

Thanks for opening up this little rabbit hole.

P.S. Let's not leave out Philip K. Dick's Minority Report  ;)

Edvard

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Re: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
« Reply #28 on: March 18, 2008, 05:49 PM »
How could I forget PKD?
Confessions of a Crap Artist depressed me for weeks, and now I'm going to go into a depressive coma over Alanis Morissette being given a lead role in the film version of Radio Free Albemuth :gag:

As we know the best way to insure I remain ignorant and brainwashed is to read only books I know ahead of time I will agree with, and not challenge, my views.

Reading Robert Anton Wilson's books not only challenged me on many levels but strangely enough managed to help me critique my own position to the point of strengthening it.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2008, 05:54 PM by Edvard »

Cpilot

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Re: Top 10 Most Depressing Quotes from Orwell's 1984
« Reply #29 on: March 18, 2008, 08:53 PM »
Out of respect for mouser I'll let this drop, but first I would recommend that before anyone takes "1984" at face value as some sort of blue print for oppression around the world, that they also read Harlan Ellison's "the Glass Teat".
Maybe get a little perspective on the difference between reality and fiction.  ::)