Hey, Speedy Gonzalez, I can't keep up! I'm still reading the Aeneid. I mentioned 1984 at http://www.booktalk.org/christ-and-stal ... t8383.html

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Correction of texts must alter previous lies which depart from the party line.

Welcome aboard Gary


Robert, You read waaay faster than I do. I just didn't find anything inside the Aeneid worthy of too much discussion. Maybe you can find something in there that I didn't. Something I missed. To me it was just fiction. It definitely is a guy's book with plenty of war and even some lesbians thrown in for good measure. I enjoyed reading it.

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS KNOWLEDGE


I've already started to read 1984 and am very impressed with it so far. The pages turn very easily. From page one, Orwell or Eric Arthur Blair, does a great job of immersing his reader in the world of Winston Smith's Oceania. Now I know where the label "Big Brother" probably came from.

Double Talk. This is something that we are doing more and more of. Losing meanings in labels and creating a false reality that does too good a job of erasing and altering history. Sometimes mental gymnastics are necessary just to get at the truth in a society when history IS written down - imagine not having any credible resources available and to only rely on memory while lies are constantly bombarding you.

I've just closed the 3rd chapter. Winston is beginning to crack. He's bought a journal illegally. Just owning one is punishable by death. He doesn't care. Because he's already committed suicide by purchasing the journal he goes the extra mile and writes in it. As he does, he daydreams about an office worker who he desperately hopes shares the same opinions he does, who he hopes is stronger than himself, who has some answers, who may be a savior, who doesn't believe in Big Brother, who will help him, who is like him and can break away the shell that has already begun to crack around Winston.... when he looks back in the Journal he finds he has unconsciously written "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" 5 times in very large and attractive handwriting.

Child spies have already been discussed. How parents fear their children. This tactic has been used in Nazi Germany, Russia, Cuba... and really serves to mark evil regimes. Also, using ambitious or gullible people to keep low their fellow man.

The desensitizing of violence is also a theme. People cheer when they see helpless people and children murdered. Children clamor to see hangings. No one cares when someone is ushered away to be 'vaporized'.

Just in the few pages I've read I'm totally convinced that this is a real place. It's easily imagined to be a country maybe not so far away from our shores.

I wonder just how believable it was to someone who read it in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990. It seems as though it's a very real possibility in almost any era. Though I still wonder just how outraged a person would have been by reading it throughout the ages. I wonder how outraged someone will be who reads it in the year 3000. I wonder if as time goes on we'll get less and less appalled by it and feel more comforted that it was always the inevitable and seen as such as early as 1950.

I believe the book is a satire of Russian socialism, something that obsessed Orwell.

bookwormservice wrote:I believe the book is a satire of Russian socialism, something that obsessed Orwell.

Not as much as Animal Farm, but I'd have to agree.

President Camacho wrote:I've already started to read 1984 and am very impressed with it so far. The pages turn very easily. From page one, Orwell or Eric Arthur Blair, does a great job of immersing his reader in the world of Winston Smith's Oceania. Now I know where the label "Big Brother" probably came from.

Not probably, DOES. Which is why when the reality TV series "Big Brother" came out and everyone was so excited to watch it, I was terrified because I not only saw Orwell coming true, but that it was being twisted beyond governmental control to entertainment, thus desensitizing us even more to a government that can monitor your every thought. The Patriot Act was equally terrifying (if not more so), because the more we can monitor, the closer we get to thought police, an idea that scares me beyond anything I've ever been afraid of. Can you imagine being killed for a passing thought you didn't even realize you were having until they put a bag over your head and made you disappear? My hair is standing on end just thinking about it. Yikes.

President Camacho wrote:I wonder just how believable it was to someone who read it in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990. It seems as though it's a very real possibility in almost any era. Though I still wonder just how outraged a person would have been by reading it throughout the ages. I wonder how outraged someone will be who reads it in the year 3000. I wonder if as time goes on we'll get less and less appalled by it and feel more comforted that it was always the inevitable and seen as such as early as 1950.

This is a very interesting question, one that I always ask myself, as well. Orwell may have gotten the exact year wrong, but almost everything else he predicted in that dystopian world of his has come true in some form or another. 1984 is almost like a horror movie for me. We're getting closer to it all the time, and too few and far between are those who see the 1984 world coming ever closer and those who will act to keep it from happening. The rest of the world will be happy to welcome it in, if they even notice that it's happening.

Good thoughts so far, Camacho. I look forward to reading more.

President Camacho wrote:WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS KNOWLEDGE
I wonder just how believable it was to someone who read it in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990. It seems as though it's a very real possibility in almost any era. Though I still wonder just how outraged a person would have been by reading it throughout the ages. I wonder how outraged someone will be who reads it in the year 3000. I wonder if as time goes on we'll get less and less appalled by it and feel more comforted that it was always the inevitable and seen as such as early as 1950.

Hey Pres, many thanks for sharing. I've heard Blair wanted to call the book 1948 but his publishers reversed the last digits. I thought the slogan was 'Ignorance is Strength'. I wrote a Cassandric songabout this back in the early 1980s but have never performed it, in keeping with my general policy of total invisibility.

Berlin
Its a long distance from Sydney to Berlin
but you can make it, if you so desire, if its what you want.
Hallo Sydney, Hier spricht Berlin. Wie geht’s an diesem Tag?
Neunzehn hundert sechs und zwanzig, neunzehn hundert vier und achtzig.
Paris to Melbourne, Adelaide to Athens and London Town.
Bombs away when peace means war. Ignorance is strength in the brave new world. Lies are truth when slavery gets called freedom.
Head held up or head held down. Everybody living now on the ground.
Its a long way to the other side.

It is ignorance is strength. I got it wrong my apologies.

You're forgiven.

President Camacho wrote:ignorance is strength

Maybe that's the answer to the question my dad and I were discussing today -- Why is ignorance and stupidity something that many Americans not only accept, but are often proud of? Why wouldn't one want to seek out knowledge? Why is learning bad? Maybe Orwell knows the answer to the question that plagues me every waking moment? Too bad he's not around to answer it...

Camacho, do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, stroke of genius there, well done!

Well, a thinking society is somehow effeminate and evil in American eyes. It's nearly detestable. Americans prefer and glorify the star athlete that has a perfect physique, is able to save the meek, fights constantly to uphold good morals, and wears a red cape and has an S on his chest. The villain is the thinker. The mad scientist, the Riddler, the schemer, the brain.

Heroes are somewhat naive and want what's best because it's in their hearts. They work harder, not smarter because it's more noble and honest. To out think something would somehow be a trick, a lie, and wrong.

This goes all the way back to the days when 'magic' was persecuted.

There's probably a book out there about this, I'm sure. It's a very interesting topic.

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stu ... pd_sim_b_3

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectual ... 296&sr=1-1

Presidetn Camacho wrote:It's a very interesting topic.

It is, and it's something that really haunts me, as I've been picked on, ostracized, teased, and even tormented for being intelligent, knowing things, WANTING to know things, and reading books *gasp* for pleasure. Even my friends, who dabble in philosophy and politics and things that require thinking in general, consider me a "know it all," and often accuse me of "spoiling the fun" when I point out real answers to sincere questions that, to them, were some kind of joke. While I do know, myself, that I generally take things way too seriously, this goes even beyond that. Pointing out flaws in a movie's logic or mistakes in music that others may have missed leads to cold shoulders or huffy attacks in defense of...whatever they feel I've attacked by knowing something, so I've learned, over many years, to keep my mouth shut unless absolutely necessary, and it increases my social anxiety and strains my already feeble desire to spend time with people who don't know as much as I do or at least appreciate my knowledge and intelligence. I don't want special treatment, like "She is so smart we should treat her better," but at least an understanding that maybe something could be learned from what I know, just as I know I can learn from being around others.

I just hate knowing that because I know things and want to know more, and have the skills and intelligence to figure things out and have informed opinions on things, that if I share these qualities that I consider assets, I will piss people off instead of inspiring them to feel as excited as I do about knowledge, and it makes me really sad and lonely to know that I'll always be somewhat in a place all by myself, because no one wants to make the effort to see things from my point of view as well as their own.

If that sounded conceited, please believe that it wasn't meant to be, and that my opinion of myself is probably as far from conceited as one can get, but I do love to learn, and I consider my knowledge and ability to learn one of my better qualities, one I can't hate myself for, no matter what anyone else says. But it is discouraging to see people flaunt their ignorance, because for all my knowledge and powers of reasoning, I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would be proud not to want to learn new things about the world around them. I just cannot get it. I wish I could.

How's the reading going now, Camacho?

Ignorance is strength, ignorance can create a strength in numbers. A large group can develop quickily when each member of that group believe a certain way, and don't want things to change. Happy, happy stupidity. Add a thinking and knowledgeable person into that group, and the shell of ignorance may be broken, this may produce chaos. The group may start to question authority and civil rights bills, unions and revolutions result. So yes, ignorance is strength, to those who are in power.

President Camacho wrote:Well, a thinking society is somehow effeminate and evil in American eyes. It's nearly detestable.

Power is masucline and revered in our society. And you don't need to be particularly smart to have power. Our society places a great deal of importance on beauty, wealth and youth and these qualities constitute power in the eyes of many. Strength of character, and intelligence oftentimes are eclipsed by these trivial characteristics that the American culture hold so dear. We spend more time searching for youth, beauty and wealth, than we do searching for knowledge and truth. I'd rather be old, poor and ugly, than stupid.