> All views of freedom are paradoxical other than the most basic view, which is that everyone has the freedom to do anything to anyone. No, there is a valid view of individual freedom that is limited by other people's freedom. In fact, that's the traditional American view of freedom. I have the freedom to do anything that doesn't actively restrict the freedom of others. I can walk into an empty space. I can't walk into a space you occupy. > Political philosophy consists of more than a worrisome story written eighty years ago. If only 1984 was just "a worrisome story written eighty years…
There's nothing ambiguous or misleading, what you're actually objecting to is the concrete and specific use of language to describe ideas you don't like and which you don't want to see proliferate. You aren't objecting to people being mislead, you're objecting to people understanding. Do give 1984 a read, I think you'll find the irony that you are appropriating a term used in that book in order to invert it's meaning and to take the very actions that the book is criticizing quite amusing, and then we can be in on the joke together. Heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and indeed,…
>The immediate conclusion that you can take from that is... Your problem is assuming there's an immediate conclusion to be drawn. Maybe you can take a step back and understand that this is a guy writing an article about some good books he read this year, rather than a treatise on the uselessness of fiction. Look at the context. Because I certainly didn't come to "the" immediate conclusion that you did. A big component of reading comprehension is understanding context. Do you really think the purpose of what he wrote was what you imply? Maybe, but I doubt it. I'll give him the benefit…
I kind of think both are true. I will remember Winston as great thinker who is extremely aware his world. And the tragedy or death of him is death of his awareness. His ability to think. In all the protagonist I have seen in tragedies, he is peculiar. While reviewing one another writer's work, Orwell said > ‘... was a bad writer, and some inner trouble, sharpening his sensitiveness, nearly made him into a good one; his discontent healed itself, and he reverted to type. It is worth pausing to wonder in just what form the thing is happening to oneself.’ In the first act, the writing was so…
You don't want to hold up the author as intellectually honest. He sneaks in a propaganda organ on par with the Party from 1984 as one of his sources without admitting that is what they are. :/ http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/aboutus/ runs some of what he is using as "evidence". They are pretty clearly a political organization with an agenda. If the author wasn't in the same vein, he'd have disclosed that or used someone else. --- EDIT: For example this guy: > Your post feels eerily reminiscent of pro-industry conservatives pointing at snow and saying,"Global Climate Shift is a…
While the author has a couple good points [there is alot of 1984 kind of Doublespeak in Western culture and it is getting worse] and there are those overzealous individuals who will use false information to push an agenda... > The fact of the matter is, this particular brand of millennial social justice advocacy is destructive to academia, intellectual honesty, and true critical thinking and open mindedness. We see it already having a profound impact on the way universities act and how they approach curriculum. The first link in this paragraph is: >…
1948. War just over. The 57 Chevy and the culture it represents, one which I consumed in Hot Wheels form as a 70s kid, did not exist yet. No society, not even America, had put in a thoroughly modern highway system (aside from the Autobahn, maybe, but...), let alone rearranged their entire society's topology around individual use of high-fuel-consumption pleasure vehicles. Even here in North America, that was being planned, but not here yet. And Orwell was an Englishman writing in bombed-out, austerity-ridden, digging-itself-out-from-an-apocalypse England. Even today, they don't have the car…
> which definitely included motorized vehicles to carry troops Yes, I'm not saying cars or motor vehicles didn't exist. I'm saying they were not available to anyone except the most elite and so they don't appear on the streets in the book. Orwell was painting a picture of a world so impoverished by useless and anti-human totalitarian bureaucracy that common things of his time were practically non-existent. > I am aware of the Model T I think you're confusing decades here. Model T was 1908 to 1927. By 1948 you already had pretty much all of the big names in car manufacturing established.…
Art helps facilitate communication. You can communicate an entire, massive, powerful idea by just saying "1984." That's where the power lies. The thought experiment aspect is nice too but you can write any old book to push any old narrative if you think enough people will buy it. I think that's neither here nor there. This analysis is uni-dimensional. There is nothing special about Democracy, per se, or even about standard political issues. We are highly political creates and you'll notice the very same patterns of calling the other side stupid or assuming they have an agenda with regards…
I am curious: could a story like this happen in the United States? According to my reading of the legal case (I am not a lawyer, but it would be interesting if any of you are could comment - grellas, perhaps) regarding Amazon's remote deletion of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, the settlement involving that case appears to protect what happened in this story from happening to users in the United States. Of course, it goes without saying that I do not agree with how things went down in this story, where a person has absolutely no recourse with Amazon, with the proverbial door…