Subject:
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More Orwell, for everyone!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 10 Jun 2004 05:39:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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1781 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> > Orwell has some passages that could easily be uttered by Rumsfeld today, for
> > example, and no one would notice a change in diction or message.
>
> For the sake of literary snobbery, I did a little looking over the weekend,
> and here are two examples I came up with:
>
> <http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/1984/4?term=question From Book
> One, chapter 4:>
>
> [Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and
> began dictating in Big Brother's familiar style: a style at once military and
> pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly
> answering them ('What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The
> lesson -- which is also one of the fundamental principles of Ingsoc -- that,'
> etc., etc.), easy to imitate]
>
> Anyone who's heard Rumsfeld speak should easily recognize this as his
> signature discursive style.
>
> And here's something interesting from
> <http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/1984/11?term=puritanism Book Two,
> Chapter 3:>
>
> [It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was
> outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if
> possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria,
> which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and
> leader-worship. . . All this marching up and down and cheering and waving
> flags is simpIy sex gone sour. . . For how could the fear, the hatred, and
> the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the
> right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a
> driving force? ]
>
> What's interesting to me about this passage is how it meshes with the FCC's
> authoritarian lockdown of all-things-carnal in the wake of Janet's breast.
> It's a good thing there are two wars to help us channel all of our obscene
> lusts away from sex and toward good, wholesome carnage.
Mmmmm. I have long advocated that 1984 should be required reading in the last
year of high school education.
And the older I get, the louder I hear it echoed in the world around me.
Maybe that's me, maybe its the world.
The other thing I have long advocated is giving every Australian who completes a
tertiary course of studies a round the world airline ticket, so that they can
actually go to a few other and far flung countries, and see how things are
different there. Its powerful mojo for getting people past the mindset that
thinks that 'everyone does/should/must think like me'. And it creates a deeper
respect for how we do things at home. There's a bunch of other cool outcomes
too (and an increase in greenhouse gases emissions unhelpfully higher in the
atmosphere - ahh well, precious few ideas are comepletely good).
Richard
Still baldly going...
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Question for the Conservatives out there
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| (...) For the sake of literary snobbery, I did a little looking over the weekend, and here are two examples I came up with: (URL) From Book One, chapter 4:> Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in (...) (20 years ago, 7-Jun-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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