Thoughts from George Orwell

Unknown | April, 1946 | George Orwell

[Renkluaf]

Methinks he was ahead of his time.

[gildafarrell]

Ain’t that the truth. And its practiced daily by Congress and upcoming congressional wannabes.

[niteowl77]

Sometime in the 1970s, my public school system no longer had students read "1984" or "Animal Farm." Gee... I wonder why?

Side note: When my son started reading "Atlas Shrugged" in the 1990s, his english teacher was quite clearly annoyed with him.

[rey]

He was an atheist and a socialist.

Orwell stated in “Why I Write” (1946): “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”[181] Orwell’s conception of socialism was of a planned economy alongside democracy.

[ComputerGuy]

I don’t remember the title of the book, but Orwell’s account of his days ‘observing’ the Spanish Civil War makes for interesting reading. He settled for communism-lite.

[DIRTYSECRET]

I read 1984 in ‘74. Read it a 2nd time in ‘84. Third time just recently. I forgot Winston met up with Julie to say he was sorry after the state broke both of them.

Animal Farm-128 pages. I was finishing it up for a 2nd time on a flight. A young 17 year old sat next to me-innocent. I explained how if animals could talk we’d be in big trouble. I gave it to her with instructions to tell her parents she got it from an old man. Really appreciated it.

[rlmorel]

Orwell was indeed a visionary, way ahead of his time. I always think of this passage from 1984" that exemplifies the Leftist approach to language and symbology:

---

'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in The Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

---

And it is primarily the Left that is involved in the manipulation and destruction of language today. Add on top of that the natural progression away from physically printed books that you could take anywhere and read anywhere and have the same experience on a plane or next to a swimming pool towards an electronic medium that is physically presented differently depending on the device, along with the fact that the human brain is more attracted towards multimedia and moving images (rather than the printed word) and it all pushes us towards less reading.

Worse still-multimedia can present far, far more information to be absorbed into the brain, but a huge amount of that is not conscious absorption, it is passive absorption, which I view as very dangerous. It makes us far more susceptible to deliberately implanted propaganda or misinformation.

When you read, the printed word doesn't go directly to storage in your brain. It has to pass through a language filter, which is linked to an analytic/intellectual filter. That is, you have to parse it and think about the printed word before it is stored.

These last three paragraphs are not from some kind of class I took in school-they are observations I make because I am forced to listen to audiobooks and watch movies. I could be all wrong about this. But I don't think so, because in my own personal experience, I have listened to thousands of audiobooks, and pondered on the different way my own brain stores the information, and how it stores it.

I used to be a nearly rabid reader, when my eyes could handle reading. If I went on a vacation meant for relaxation, I would bring five books with me, and could get through all of them. Now, I cannot read more than a few pages at a sitting. So, I definitely see a big difference in the way my own mind handles physical printed text versus a computer screen, even one that displays an eBook. One would think it is the same, but it just isn't, at least for me.

[DIRTYSECRET]

**He was an atheist and a socialist.
Orwell stated in “Why I Write” (1946): “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”[181] Orwell’s conception of socialism was of a planned economy alongside democracy.**

He saw the light just like Jack London.

**I don’t remember the title of the book, but Orwell’s account of his days ‘observing’ the Spanish Civil War makes for interesting reading. He settled for communism-lite.**
Homage to Catalonia-very good.

[dfwgator]

Orwell’s conception of socialism was of a planned economy alongside democracy.

---

Which is basically what FDR’s “New Deal” was.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Didn’t he and Jack London turn against socialism in the their final year of life. I know London influenced him.

People of The Abyss, Down and out in London/Paris and the one about working on the Pier could have been written by both-interchangeable.

[6ppc]

Check my tagline

[Secret Agent Man]

Government is almost always a bully. It may use words, but those words are from a thug ready to use physical force or their own legal system to tyrannize you.

[lizma2]

Bkmk

[jcon40]

Agree. Check my tagline.

[Secret Agent Man]

Yep, but I’d call them crybullies. :)

[jmacusa]

“George Orwell’’, aka Eric Blair identified himself all his life as a ‘’Democratic socialist’’. His political views were some what complex and he did reject the authoritarianism of Stalinism.

[jmacusa]

“Syme’’ went down the ‘’Memory Hole’’.

He knew too much and talked too much.

[tumblindice]

Homage To Catalonia. It was during this time that he became disillusioned with socialism, as well as getting shot in the neck. And he was never a particularly healthy young or middle-aged man, dying at age 50.

[rlmorel]

No kidding…in the end, I think that’s the message…

[jmacusa]

Yes. In the end they all got it. ‘’Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I sold you and you sold me. Here lie they and here lie we/under the spreading Chestnut Tree’’.