On Paths Unknown discussion
UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA - ORWELL
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1984 Part One
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Oops, and there's a huge spoiler there...
Anyway, it is certainly valuable food for thought. I do agree with him that we should be more vigilant and not just conveniently give authors the thumbs up because "they were a product of their times". Some things really were almost unavoidable- I mean even most women were sexist back then, and some still are. But maybe some books have something to say in spite of some evident sexism? (After all, Shakespeare was also sexist and racist and all the rest of it, and so was Socrates (...and, it can be argued, the Judaic Old Testament too)). Just a thought...
But thanks so much for the link and making us more aware of the MPDG. I admit I had not been familiar with the term, although aware of the phenomenon. So, thanks!
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Ok--deleted my post just in case. It's a different book the second time around but everyon..."
No no... LOL, you didn't have spoilers in your post, Poingu! I was just nervous because I'd claimed to have read the book before... wanted to , you know, come clean with that I'd forgotten it. :P
Here's my take on the article in The Atlantic:I can kind of see the author's point is that it's not a straight from "awful" to "not as bad" to "okay" to "pretty good" as we have today: some parts of the world are still very firmly racist and sexist, and other parts were less so than European culture at various times. Moreover, some segments are still very bad: just look at Westboro Baptist Church, for one example in what is largely a progressive society.
That said, I think you can point very firmly to the evolution of law and say "WE ARE BETTER!" A century and a half ago women were little more than property (legally speaking) and certainly could not vote. Some people literally -were- property, and if you were homosexual, it was not only frowned upon, but grounds for you to be thrown in jail. Times have indeed changed.
Still, we cannot be complacent: all we need is a Hitler or a Franco to undo a lot of progress very quickly.
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I hope that you're not going to hate me for quoting that very cute typpo, Puddin! Were you referring to the Berlatsky article there?
Yes, I was speaking of Roman-style monarchism, there... ^.^
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Rexism! Thanks for bringing that delightful new term to our attention as well, then! :D XD
...and may I add that that is certainly a good point- one need only look at how much our legal systems have changed over time to realize that what is acceptable and/or PC to us today is definitely not the same as what was acceptable and the norm to our forebears.
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What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.
But granted, it is still early on in the book...
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The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time [...] – the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened – that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
[...] And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
Orwell himself wrote an entire article on the phenomenon: http://alexpeak.com/twr/hiwbtw/
and here are some examples of actual, RL negationism in practice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaus...
topical of late the Spanish civil war 'memory' debate:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/...
(if you're nervous that might be too left-biased, here is a more neutral source) http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/sc...
also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic...
and here is the Wikipedia entry for negationism :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic...
If you think about it carefully, the whole concept of evidence being destroyed to hide what actually happened is a rather terrifying thought. Without evidence, whose version of events are you going to believe? Can you see what this could mean regarding our interpretation of the world and what a powerful tool of control controlling 'history' is?
How fragile the whole concept of history is?
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His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.
That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the world ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.
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it was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years.
More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another.
Yeah, and that also fits in perfectly with both Stalin's, Franco's, and I believe of late, the Republic Of China's methods, where political dissidents would simply disappear. In Franco's regime, they were taken for "walks" in the woods, shot there and buried in shallow graves, many of which have been discovered by now. In Russia you were sent to Siberia, and, apparently until now in China your body would be cut up for organ trafficking See also: http://nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-l...
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In any case, in Chapter V, when we're given the rationalization for Newspeak, I was reminded of Karin's earlier reference to Jacques Derrida and Ferdinand de Saussure and to the thoughts we covered when discussing Embassytown
"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.
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Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
Hahah, and he has jumped 30 or 40 years ahead to pre-empt late 20th early 21st century US culture:
How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal – tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree – existed and even predominated.
Except that now they do exist - thanks to plastic and dental surgery and hair dye.
Also, of course, there's the irony of the Party claiming to have made everything so plentiful - and yet there are not enough razor blades to go around!
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Is there still anybody out there? Am i the only one finding things in the novel to comment on? :P
Those of us who had read We, do you remember how aseptic sexual relations were in that scenario as well? Also, Winston's wife is obviously the equivalent of O, except that Winston dreads their "appointment sex" more, which shows him to be more of a rebel, in my eyes, than the protagonist in We had been, who seemed not to mind it.
Btw, I'm also quite often seeing whiffs of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in this novel.
Also, I think Madonna would have slapped Winston/Orwell for describing a 50-year old woman as ancient and toothless! (The prostitute in Chapter VI). I suppose that is hard to imagine in our plastic culture of today, but before modern medicine and technology, people were already old at 30.
Regardless, I definitely view that bit of age-ism as a strike against Orwell. I suppose it could be partly due to him having felt old when he wrote this. He had tuberculosis for quite a long time, and was sickly and quite sadly died at age 48.
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Since Marx's writings was in direct reaction to the British industrial revolution, we see mention of that here where we didn't see it in WE. Also, in We everybody was in the same class - society was completely classless and faceless. Here in 1984, expressed very clearly in Part 1 chapter VII), we see the cynicism Orwell regards the so-called classlessness of the new Soviet dispensation - as Derek and Nataliya remarked just yesterday in another thread, in Russia all that really changed was who was in charge.
Traveller wrote: "I'm not there yet, so can't comment, but in the meantime, in Chapter III, VERY interesting are his insightful comments about historic negationism: The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten ..."
I liked Plate's quote, shown in the last of your links: "those who tell the stories also hold the power."
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Yaye, so glad to see another face around here! *happy dance* :)))))))))))))) This thread was starting to feel like I was in one of those places with the many mirrors and echoes that you get at those Halloween ghost houses... hmm, but then it is still early in the morning on a Sunday morning, most places. My enthusiasm is running away with me! :P
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Check his work out, it's great!
http://www.kuriositas.com/2011/06/ext...
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http://www.oddee.com/item_66536.aspx
Here are some more images and articles about propaganda posters. I find it an absolutely fascinating subject.
https://www.tumblr.com/search/anti%20...
http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2010/...
and
https://shanebrowne.wordpress.com/201...
Traveller wrote: "Does anybody know if Rutherford represents a real person? I know there was a German Jew around that time, who was a severe critic of Hitler who also did a few posters/cartoons against fascism.Che..."
I realize how lacking my understanding of that period is when I look at Heartfield's work since I don't get all of his references. Still, it is fascinating, and bold. Enough to get one killed over.
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There's just so much in here that's just pretty awesome.
This quote is also an excellent reply to the Berlatsky article that Garima had pointed to earlier. It demonstrates just how hard it was, especially in repressive times like Victorian times, medieval times and the early 20th century, to kick against the pricks.
That last bit in Chapter VII, of course, also refers to kind of epistemological pressure that religions and other perceived sources of authority tend to exert on populaces. The extent of 'faith' that people are prepared to take hearsay on further proof of what people are prepared to believe if everybody else around them believes it- just think of what people are prepared to believe when it comes from positions of authority - when people's parents, teachers or religion tells them something, or if they see it in print.
Traveller wrote: "Here are some more posters. Check out these US posters to get an idea of how sexist those times really were.http://www.oddee.com/item_66536.aspx
Here are some more images and articles about pro..."
My favorite of these posters is the one of the Taliban against the Soviets.
Unfortunately it looks like I won't really be able to contribute much about the novel since things have turned out for me in a way that I still haven't had a chance to start re-reading the novel (and the first time was too long ago to remember anything useful) but I am greatful for all of the historical, political etc. information that certainly helps in gaining a much deeper understanding of 1984 and I will continue to read the posts and refer to it when I do read it again. I think I overestimated my reading time for the last portion of this month :(
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Oh, boo. Okay, Yolande, thanks for notifying.
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I suspect you are further on in the book than I am, Poingu. It's a pity you weren't around to read We with us, the book that 1984 was based on - I think the divide between author and characters was a lot clearer in that book.
But these are dystopian books. They are supposed to make you feel uncomfortable; the entire goal in mind when they are written is that they are meant to be a warning - they are meant to make people feel uncomfortable and meant to make people even feel appalled at the scenario that the author sketches.
So if this one does make you feel uncomfortable, then I would suspect it shows that the author did his job well. :)
You will find that much of Jeff Vandermeer's (whom we are doing in March) and also the next author we have coming up, Catherynne M. Valente's work will make you feel uncomfortable... sorry! :P
Of the dystopian novels I've read so far 1984 was one of the most despairing ones for me. The novel is so sad and yet only the truth when you see what is happening in the world. Orwell got the way people are being controlled by governments and media spot on I think.
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"We" sounds very intriguing and I will add it to my TBR pile.
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I feel like I'm living in a world where the control that any all-powerful state has on its people has been proven illusory, or at least unsustainable. We live in a world where a handful of committed individuals can fly planes into buildings and send the most powerful country in the world into a spiral for years, nearly bankrupting it. Where anyone with a weapon and a videocamera can make front page news for days.
So Big Brother isn't doing it for me. 1984 feels like a dystopian novel whose warning no longer feels valid for the time I'm reading it in. For me, it feels like it's time to replace it on the Great Books shelf with a more likely dystopian warning for our time.
And then: once I stop buying into the main premise and start to think of this book as something other than Great, it seems I'm also able to see other cracks, such as the sexism and classism in the text, both of which for me bleed out from the boundaries of Winston Smith as character, and reflect instead the prejudices imposed by the times in which the book was written.
Ok, I've written all this now, but I also feel uncomfortable because I don't want to impose my harsh judgments on anyone who is really moved or made thoughtful right now by this novel.."
I've copied all of that just in case you decide to delete your on comment again. No, that is very valid of course, and thank you very much for that comment and for speaking your mind candidly.
Discussions like these are exactly for this kind of debate. They are simply no use if only one person has a monologue.
And for the record, you don't have to feel you have to be extra polite to me just because I happen to have that 'mod sticker' on (which I've been trying to remove, btw.)
But here's a point of debate: I don't see how 9/11 changes anything.
In fact more than anything, to me it illustrates the power of propaganda that Orwell was talking about. You don't think that Bush's invasion of Afghanistan and all the Islamophobia which has replaced the anti-communism panic - the Mc Carthyism that we mentioned earlier, is exactly big brother?
You don't feel the fact that Obama's administration has failed to rectify the huge problems with fiscal policy which was partly to blame for the global financial meltdown is yet another example of Big Brother? I urge you to think again, and I invite you to debate me on the matter. I don't bite, I promise! :))) (Well, okay, I don't bite Poingu's in any case.. :x )
Poingu, I think the aftermath of 9/11 has actually made the Big Brother concept more relevant. Yes, we had pervasive surveillance before, but it's clear that it's been taken to a greater extreme since. Not only with surveillance have things become more controlling, but with searches (particularly at airports), and limits on freedom of assembly, and with arbitrary detention (this was very stark here in Toronto in 2010 for the G20 summit). Are we there yet? Not be a long way, perhaps, but when you have people going on CNN and Fox News saying that there are no-go zones in Paris or Burmingham where Muslims have free reign and everyone else dares not go, and the people saying this are for a (fortunately still short) time taken seriously, we're slipping ever further.
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Ah, I had even forgotten about the surveillance aspect - so embroiled have i become with all of the propaganda aspects. I don't think that Orwell pointed his warnings to the US specifically - I mean, he was British after all - and it is true that with the US phobia of socialism, one wouldn't expect the US ever to become anything like the USSR did in that respect (totalitarian communism) - but the US public has always been gullible and very good fodder for propaganda, and yeah, now that the Big Brother of the 21st century (read the Global corporations) have their surveillance claws firmly stuck into everybody PC's, well, that right there is a very strong aspect of 1984, as you say, Puddin.
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I think I am going to wait until I am completely done with 1984 before I comment - but, Poingu, if former Soviet citizens or those who lived Franco's dictatorship were to tell you: "It was that bad" would you believe? Because in many respects it was. Do you know how bad it is in China right now? ..and China is big and powerful...
See, adjunct to the positive propaganda is the fear. Any good dictator makes use of fear and terror to intimidate and terrify its citizens into toeing the line.
Poingu wrote: "The part I'm not buying is that any "all-powerful State" can control its citizens to the point where Orwell's vision in 1984 makes any sense. His premise from the first page is that an individual's..."Poingu, I see your point. I wonder if it would be correct to say that government/corporate surveillance & manipulation is still dangerously pervasive, but in much more subtle rather than overt ways. I mean, we offer huge amounts of private information through social networks, such as Facebook and Google searches. The government, corporations, and whoever wants to can track our lives--and we gladly hand over our info.
My kids are busy putting something in the fish tank (bubble solution?), so I hope this makes sense. I'm still reading 1984 and want to comment on other ideas later :)
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I'm back, and the fish have been saved :)I was trying to say that 1984 still seems hugely relevant today, but in more subtle ways, at least in Western societies. For example, Edward Snowden revealed just how much information the NSA collects through monitoring phone calls. And in a way, Facebook and Google remind me the telescreens in 1984: they track our lives and are most likely monitored.
Additionally, in Orwell's book, there is an endless war, which sounds similar to today's seemingly endless "war on terror."
I'm also fascinated by Traveller's mention of controlling/eliminating memories. I see that happening today: we can wipe out entire hard drives or present want we want to present on social media, leaving out huge sections of our lives.
While 1984 might not be obviously relevant in the USA or Europe in 2015, I see definite parallels :)
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Poingu, I'm glad we're playing good cop bad cop here - often it is I who am criticizing the book under discussion and others that defend, so this time, the tables are turned! But I aim to come back to your point to try and put my points across with perhaps more detailed examples.
But I am still only a third into the book, so maybe I should read more first, eh? ...because i also still need to see if I'm going to agree or disagree with Garima and that article's accusation of inexcusable sexism, and i haven't read that part yet either. :)
For the third time, let me try and post the link to the thread for Part 2: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Traveller wrote: "Hmm, I know some of us did linguistics and Theory, but for those of us who might need a slight brusher-up on our semiotics, you might want to have a peep at the Chandler's online book on semiotics,..."Sorry for going off topic again, but I remember this other book I read at University of Daniel Chandler - Semiotics: The Basics which was also very helpful.
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Thanks Yolande! Yes, that is the pay-for version I was talking about. I have that one as well, and they are slightly different, so if you already have that one, the online version is slightly different. And aww, I see he's not offering the one "for beginners" for free anymore? But it's worth it if you teach/study anything that includes semiotics/linguistics, in any case.
Traveller wrote: "Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Hmm, I know some of us did linguistics and Theory, but for those of us who might need a slight brusher-up on our semiotics, you might want to have a peep at the C..."Oh ok. No I don't have "Semiotics, the basics." But I do want to get it in the future :)
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Yolande, i know you had entered a gajillion discussions over at the women's group, so please don't feel bad about not even getting time to start on this one.
Also, no hurry about eventually posting, you guys. You can always come and post when you do get the time.
Traveller wrote: "Are there absolutely no comments on Part I that anyone wants to make? The people who are reading it, I mean. "I'm only just getting properly started...
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I'm only just getting properly started..."
Oh, that's a relief! I don't have as much time to read in the week, so you're not that far behind. But I made LOTS of comments on this section! Will hold back a bit with the next one. :P
Traveller wrote: "Well, this passage doesn't seem too misogynistic, quite the opposite?"Perhaps it's not, but Winston himself admits to being misogynistic, at least in its most simple definition: "He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones."
As well, we get introduced to antisemitism right off the bat, but it's very clear that the Party is indoctrinating them in that antisemitism.
I don't see either the misogyny or antisemitism as being Orwell, but clearly the things he's attacking.
"But here's a point of debate: I don't see how 9/11 changes anything. "
Partly, that's because you and I aren't American. Americans take it more personally. But the aftermath of 9/11 changes a lot: but really only to make the US more like Britain has been since the IRA started bombing in England. The PATRIOT act gave up a lot of personal freedoms, with the near-complete (if not necessarily fully knowledgeable) acceptance of the public, but they're freedoms that were happily relinquished in the UK long ago.
Poingu wrote: "So Big Brother isn't doing it for me. 1984 feels like a dystopian novel whose warning no longer feels valid for the time I'm reading it in."
Not to me. It seems more and more real with every passing day...
Me, too, Traveller. I'm still catching up on the reading. I think there is so much more to comment/expand on! I'm almost to Part 2 :)
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I meant in the sense of making the novel 1984 any less universally relevant. The kind of human rights abuses described in the novel is happening in many countries to this day as we speak.
...and to think that the US is some kind of eternally unassailable bastion - well, exactly, 9/11 proved that it isn't, in a very uncomfortable way.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones."..."
Oh, as you read on a bit you'll very soon see the reason for that. ;)
Yes, I remember, but that doesn't change the fact that he IS a misogynist.But the sexism, racism, and all the other -isms, seem like a necessary part of the story. Turning your populace into "us" and "them", and turning everybody against their neighbor is exactly how authoritarian states control the people. The Thought Police can only go so far without the help of the policed.
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Oh good, I was wondering if you're actually reading or just casually dipping in - glad you're still with us!
...but tell me, did you also discern a bit of a homoerotic feeling there with O'Brien? To me "attracted to" points to...-well, to attraction! Maybe 70 years ago people simply expressed themselves differently... Though in the next Part certain things do change a bit.
Finished part 1. Scattered thoughts...Some things seem a little off. Winston says "the arrests invariably happen at night", and then writes in his diary "they always shoot you in the back of the neck". How does he know? Some people do get temporarily rehabilitated, so maybe they are prepared to talk about their arrests—though nobody's prepared to talk about much, so getting arrested by the Thought Police doesn't seem like a topic anybody would discuss—but how secret executions are handled seems like something that would remain secret.
And others seem more timely now than they were when Orwell was writing: "Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made." The technology didn't exist to do that in his day, but now Amazon admits that they do that to your e-books.
Wikipedia and others all tell me that “The office cubicle was created by designer Robert Propst for Herman Miller, and released in 1967 under the name "Action Office II".” And yet Winston works in a cube farm with its "double row of cubicles".
The stew served in the workplace cafeteria contains "cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat." Pink slime, anyone:
I found Syme's comment that "Of course the great wastage [in Oldspeak] is in the verbs and adjectives" to be a little odd from somebody with the ability with English that Orwell had. I would have thought adverbs would be the "great wastage". But "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller." Somewhere I have a Bible In Basic English. However you feel about the Bible, you'd have to agree that it covers a lot of territory. Now, imagine it written with a vocabulary of 1000 words. Consider that for a large part of European history, the only book most people knew (even though they couldn't read it, many memorized huge parts of it) was the Bible. I think I'd agree that the mass's consciousness would be much less if their Bible had had only a thousand words. Maybe there'd never have been a Reformation...
Nobody should be cold with all "the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed."
The selling of gin in the workplace reminds me of the tradition of the Navy grog ration.
It's interesting that in a world where most architecture is considered either post-Revolutionary or medieval, the "Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces." Of course, they had to be pre-Revolutionary, because if they'd been built after the Revolution, they wouldn't be falling apart; but you might expect that in a place where you still have buildings hundreds of years old, you could expect housing to last more than 50.
I was also interested in the disparity between the fact that there's still a Tube, but no St. Pancras Station above ground—so maybe no surface rail at all—and that the antique shop owner remembers "Oranges and Lemons" as naming all the principle London churches. My recollection is that it names only the churches of the old City of London—not the London of Orwell's day. Has Winston's London shrunk again? It can't have shrunk to the size of the old City, or they wouldn't need the Tube. Or does the shop owner just not remember that it isnt "all" the churches of London? Is travel between towns restricted to the point that there's no need for surface rail? Or at least all five (I think) major surface terminals? If King's Cross is gone, too, where's platform 8¾?
Our favorite word from Miéville: "All history was a palimpsest…"
Poingu wrote: "The scene where he visits an "old" prostitute has no hint of compassion for her in it, only revulsion and dehumanizing descriptions of her."
But she's a prole—and Syme had said "The proles are not human beings". So Winston really can't be expected to give anything but a "dehumanizing description".I found it more interesting that Winston says "quite an old woman, fifty years old at least." To find somebody old enough to remember before the Revolution, he had to seek out proles. Winston believes that he's 39, and that the Revolution occurred after his birth. So there should be Party members who remember the pre-Revolution days. Have they all been purged? Is 50 really old?
It was when Winston was talking to the old prole in the pub that I had my only moment of total incomprehension: "And ‘yenas—‘e definitely called ‘em ‘yenas." I must have stared at that for minutes before it struck me that it was simply a dropped Cockney "Haitch".
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About the old prostitute; oh, I hadn't realized that that was the bit that Poingu had referred to - for some reason i was looking out for a beggar woman who had been mistreated or something. Well, many people to this day feel disgusted by prostitutes, they tend to be pariahs, unfortunately. Also remember that Party members had not only been brainwashed not to enjoy sex, but also to scorn 'proles', and in view of that, we have to remember he was committing an act that was supposed to be doubly disgusting for Winston. Not only was he seeking sex for it's own sake- already hugely frowned upon, but he sought it with a prole, worse, a prostitute prole, and even worse, after he realized he didn't find her physically attractive, he still did it - which points to the level of his sexual frustration. But I think this deed of his and his reactions of disgust (probably more disgust at himself than anything else), is to show that although he is physically sexually frustrated, just animal deeds of sex is not enough for him. He wants something more, he wants affection and reciprocity and romantic love along with his sex, and I can't fault him too much on that.
Back in those days, love and sex were still largely romanticized - if you had sex without love, you were basically viewed as an animal. I agree that in 1984, there is slightly less of a clear divide between love and sex as there was in We, but Winston makes it very clear that he abhors sex without love - that he abhors the way his wife reduced it to just an cold, mechanical act for procreation. What Winston craves, is love.
Re the bit where he says he hates women - well, Winston hates a great deal of things, and in the same two minutes that he hates Goldstein, he also hates Big Brother. So: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. HATE WOMEN LOVE WOMEN.
On Paths Unknown
Books mentioned in this topic
We (other topics)We (other topics)
Bible In Basic English (other topics)
Semiotics: The Basics (other topics)
We (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Catherynne M. Valente (other topics)Jacques Derrida (other topics)
Ferdinand de Saussure (other topics)
So... I know that and I can deal with it. I know people in the 30's 40 and 50's and even a bit into the 60's were so puritan that the norm was to have sex only in the missionary position, partly clothed and in the dark, for example. These were the norms. ...but it is exactly this kind of follow-the-norms behavior that I already see Orwell speaking out against in the book.
I think that Mr Berlatsky is er..well I don't agree when he avers that the norms and mores of society do not change over time. Of course they do! Otherwise we'd still be afraid of technology like people in the Middle Ages were. And the world has made many strides as far as racism sexism, homophobia and religious tolerance is concerned. Certainly it's far from being perfect, and not all societies have changed, but certain parts of the world have changed a lot, so I find myself respectfully having to disagree with some of the things Mr Berlatsky says.