(Note that there's also an index on the right-hand side.)
We have supercomputers in our packets and websites can't even do a thing as basic as showing a list of posts, all the posts, on one page.
> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow!
(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).
Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth.
By doublethink, internally you know there are two meanings although you can never actually do the crimethink of believing or saying any ungood connotations. Edit - added quote:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, [and remember it if necessary]. To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
Also I never said anything about a ministry of lies. I only spoke of a ministry of truth of course.
(That is, if the 2 h edit window would not have been already over now)
I think Orwell would find this all very familiar.
Paper on the other hand they at least will pick it up to throw away, likely flipping through it just to look for anything of monetary value.
He even wrote a book a year before this (1984) denouncing societies that had people denouncing each other for political heresy. Psychological projection. What a htpocrite.
The George Orwell Paradox: From Spy Target to Informant https://spyscape.com/article/surveillance-state-how-british-...
The Germans announce over the wireless that as the inhabitants of a Czech village called Lidice [...] were guilty of harbouring the assassins of Heydrich, they have shot all the males in the village, sent all the women to concentration camps, sent all the children to be “re-educated”, razed the whole village to the ground and changed its name.
[...]
It does not particularly surprise me that people do this kind of thing, nor even that they announce that they are doing them. What does impress me, however, is that other people’s reaction to such happenings is governed solely by the political fashion of the moment. [...] In a little while you will be jeered at if you suggest that the story of Lidice could possibly be true. And yet there the facts are, announced by the Germans themselves and recorded on gramophone discs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lond...
Semi-autobiographical about when he was nearly homeless and living in poverty in Europe. He also went after how hospitals mistreat patients and poor people in Paris.
Lots of very terse household entries like, "July 11: 12 eggs".
Brave New World describes a world saturated with endless streams of information and entertainment and yet almost everyone basically acts the same way; everyone chooses to engage in the same kinds of 'pleasure seeking' activities; they all think the same and they all want to watch and experience the same things, despite the fact that many alternatives exist.
Ironically, it might be partly because BNW is becoming real that those in charge are drawing attention towards 1984; this form of subtle attention manipulation is very BNW-like.
Another thing though is that as the world becomes more like BNW, the book itself becomes less interesting to read for younger people. For example, I remember being surprised when characters in the book asked each other if they had watched a 'Feelie' (a Movie with sensory experience) about 'Swimming with whales'.
I remember thinking that the way the characters kept asking each other about their opinions on the same boring things and expecting them to answer in the same predictable way as some kind of status symbol was weird... But nowadays it's basically the reality; people praise each other for compliance. Basically for being boring and having predictable boring thoughts.
I suspect young people reading BNW wouldn't pick up on that... It would go right over their heads that things were once different and expressing compliance with the mainstream ideology didn't earn you any social status (at least not in the west). It was kind of the opposite.
A few of the things from 1984 that I’ve noticed or have been told about and often reflect upon:
* 1984 is a book that is concerned with the physical body and the deprivations experienced in Oceania — ie Winston’s gastric distress is articulated on the first page; many of us experience meaningful bodily distress on account of our food systems, stress, disconnection, and other issues
* 1984 is largely about alienation — many of us prioritize our work and other fears over connection in the same ways that Winston and Julia do (engaging in sex is taboo in Oceania); although engaging in sex is not forbidden in our culture, taking the time to really connect with others when so many of us feel so much constant pressure to work can feel “wrong”
* stirring up hatred among the populace in 1984 is a common theme; in our culture, on both the right and the left, an insistence on hating others, other political parties, other countries, and injustice (ie as opposed to cultivating love and compassion for those suffering) form the basis of profound issues we face today
Another interesting example of a meta-reflexive dystopia is the British series Utopia. Its plot revolves around a fictional comic book of the same name, which is believed to predict a conspiracy to cause population reduction through forced vaccination following an engineered pandemic. There is something fascinating about these narratives; intentionally or not, they seem to call fiction into reality. It’s as if Orwell genuinely tried to create a transcendent critique to out-compete the very system whose rise he was witnessing. Ultimately, he may have failed, not because the system is inherently stronger, but because our thoughts are never entirely our own to begin with.
Edit: what I'm talking about is no stranger to what is called "predictive programming", and whichever meaning you attach to this phrase, I believe the poster I'm replying to is sensing its effects.
The question then becomes: to what extent are we merely engaging in hindsight bias or reacting to engineered shifts in attention? Furthermore, is it possible to analyze these mass manipulation techniques, even just for one's own clarity, without the guarantee that your own line of thinking won't become a mental trap?
After all, if I were one of "them" – subtly pulling the strings in an open society where consent is manufactured rather than coerced, where events are influenced rather than dictated – the social stigma against "conspiracy theorists" would be a far more efficient and durable tool than any of the impossibly risky plots those theorists imagine. In fact, it would be the only tool I would dare to use.
So perhaps the safest way to run a conspiracy is to first astroturf a community of conspiracy theorists.
Yet even this thinking keeps us trapped, circling the idea of 'them.' The crucial idea I must utter is this: it's not about their existence or non-existence. It is that at the genesis of these roles, there is an infinitely nested psychological bedrock. Isn't thi common ground from which the mind of the conspirator, who seeks to impose a hidden order, and the mind of the theorist, who seeks to reveal one, both arise ?
I mean, this article doesn't mention 1984 at all.
vodou•7h ago
George/Eric paid a lot of attention to how many eggs his hens laid. It almost became somewhat of a joke in the comments. But good content!
https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/11238/
Lots of great quotes (quite a few hen related):
> This morning a disaster. One hen dead, another evidently dying.
I am pretty sure he wrote more about hens and other birds than the ongoing world war.