Posted on 06/21/2009 11:56:34 PM PDT by malkee
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, opening line of 1984
Sixty years ago, Eric Arthur Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell) published his final book, 1984, months before his death. Other writers pictured the future in utopian terms—a golden age of bliss and enlightenment. Not Orwell. His dystopian novel pictured a bleak world where government was out of control.
As different from his earlier Animal Farm as Finding Nemo is from Moby Dick, Orwell’s 1984 conjured terms that are still in use today: doublethink, newspeak, thought police and Big Brother. Even Orwell's name became an adjective (i.e., Orwellian) to speak of all things repressive.
At the 60th anniversary of this novel, some 25 years beyond the title’s prophetic date, one wonders how Orwellian have we become? In a social sense, our world looks more like Huxley’s Brave, New World than the one depicted in Orwell’s 1984. Yet, there are some troubling signs that the Lilliputian Big Brother has been replaced by the gargantuan Big Government.
A small thing happened to our church that has probably been replicated thousands of times across the country. One of my nephews texted me recently saying that our congregation’s dozen wireless microphones could not be used any longer. The reason? The FCC has auctioned off that bandwidth for other, more profitable uses. Notification in advance of the fines would have been nice. Big Brother is at work.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Where we are all subservient drones who dare not question his totalitarian approach.
And those of us who dare defy him are either put into prison camps or summarily executed for thought crimes.
0bama would implement gulags if he could get away with it.
I've read and own both Animal Farm and 1984. I have not, in fact will not, watch Finding Nemo, neither have I read Moby Dick. I bet the writer is trying to say the're opposites, and if so, I'd heartily disagree. Animal Farm and 1984 are companion "must-read" books if there ever were. Other than the Bible itself, these two books do more to demonstrate the depravity of human government than any other literature I've come across.
Now if somebody wanted to release 1984 and do a simple find&replace "1984" > "2009", that would be the icing on the cake.
I’ve seen snippets of “Finding Nemo” (my nephews)(cute animation) and HAVE read Moby Dick ( a great read, you should—another great book about human nature)and agree with your points. I am looking forward to the new movie.
I thought the same thing. It is a potentially clever comparison, Finding Nemo vs. Moby Dick. Too bad that it doesn’t fit in this case. The author should have saved the idea for a situation in which it applies. Both Animal Farm and 1984 demonstrate why governments must be limited and why human nature, unless checked, inevitably exploits power.
bookmark
Moby Dick is quite simply the greatest American novel ever written.
"You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. Your fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system...that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand
“And those of us who dare defy him are either put into prison camps or summarily executed for thought crimes.”
that’s just crazy talk. If it were true, then they should be coming for me any min..
Remember all the crap about us voting against our own best interests? They will keep telling us that it is all for our own good, and plenty of fools will believe them.
In ‘1984’ Winston Smith was unaware of even the truth of the year ,, he thought it was 1984 because that is what the party declared.. perhaps it was truly 2009.
I thought Orwell named his book “1984” because he completed it in 1948, and to come up with a title merely transposed the last two digits in 1948.
Anyway, count on seeing more and more manifestations of the soulless bleak and cruel society which Orwell described sixty years ago.
After Huck Finn :)
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