Thursday, August 5, 2010

Orwell's 1984

ORWELL’S 1984:


Re-read Orwell's 1984. Reconsider the worldwide drift towards the rule of the collectivized by the collectivizers. What does it matter, whether the collectivizers are called Imams, Nobles, Nomenklatura, or International Cronie Capitalists? If those whose primary goal is projection of power over the collective manage to prevail over those whose primary goal is empathetic appreciation among the free, then the result will be the same, regardless of whatever the label applied to the political system, whether "socialism" or "capitalism." That result, as Orwell noted, will be a boot on the face of humanity -- forever. For conservers of liberty, who believe in human freedom and dignity, the battle is against collectivizers, no matter what the label they may apply to themselves. In that light, I don't see present trends as necessarily favoring conservers of liberty. Indeed, individual decency can hardly expect automatically to prevail over collective brutality, absent eternal vigilance.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

1984 -- From A.T. –

@Jacksprat said, "I suggest to you that reason for the excessive regulation and resulting fines is simpler than you think. The reason for this is that the creditor of the Untied States corporation wants to be paid. .... We are ruled by a cartel of foreign banks and others and they want to be paid."

I think you're right! To ensure the power and prestige of the international ruling cartel, it is important that the worker bees must be kept within a strict regimen of health and need. Must not let them get wealthy, soft, or fat. Must keep them busy, even if only to dig holes and refill them. Must not allow them to create excess production, but must incentive them to create all the luxurious production the cartel can consume.

No one nation of middle class thinkers can be allowed to get too rich or to have too much time to think. Instead, the new world order must be reduced to control of competing cartels. That way, even as the power of individual members of any cartel fades, at least the power of the cartel system itself will persist, in perpetuity.

The saving grace for the proles is that many of them have been led by Dear Leader's minions and media to actually believe Dear Leader only wants what is best for them. The saving grace for Dear Leader's scientists is that they receive funding in perpetuity, provided only that they support Dear Leader's programs. And the convenient thing about Dear-Leader-science is that it is so easy to dispose of variants that have become politically inconvenient, simply by casting them down the JournOlist's collective memory hole.

Anonymous said...

CIRCULAR REINFORCEMENT OF COLLECTIVIST POWER: A republic lasts until the powers that be discover they can bribe the electorate with their own money and siphon great gobs to crony capitalists. Economically, the regime has become judge, jury, and prosecutor in its own behalf. With that much economic power, the regime soon becomes a total political power. Where are the so-called checks and balances from the judiciary and the states at large? Why have three fourths of our governors failed to raise holy hell against the Obama regime?

Anonymous said...

PERFECTION OF COLLECTIVIST SOLIPSISM:
From A.T. -- @Ender noted (astutely), "Just like airport security, it is the appearance that must be kept up to keep people in line, competence is not required and complaining will only make it worse."
I read Orwell's 1984 at 20 years old and thought I understood it. I read it again at 61 and was blown away. He wrote it in 1949, before he was 50, and then died a few years later. In it, he addressed the notion of historical cyclicity, i.e., that regimes come to power, grow soft, get replaced, then rise again, and so on. He showed how Big Brother would learn, and did learn, how to end the cycle by institutionalizing not solipsism but collective solipsism, so that the ugliest kind of power imaginable -- impersonal power, not individual power -- would live and repress human freedom and dignity forever. That is the enemy that is choking us now. And it does not care whether you want to call it communism, Islam, or international crony capitalism.
I think "evil" is to fail to acknowledge or respect the incompleteness of one's perspective, and to demand that others must entirely yield to one's system of thought, rather than join in empathetic respect and pursuit of the encompassing perspective of the whole. Evil is to be willing to use all means to ensure the other side does not get a hearing. But Big Brother POWER is only an evil, incomplete aspect of a more encompassing drive: EMPATHY for all our perspectives.
Regarding Collective Solipsism's death grip on carrots and sticks:
POWER VS. EMPATHY: Conscious power is expressed as effective will. Will is conscious purposefulness. Purposefulness is to an end. To beg a question: What, if any, is the proper end? Is the proper end power in itself (i.e., Big-Brother-like perpetuation of impersonal power)? Or is the proper end to assist in order that various perspectives among the whole of Consciousness may empathetically communicate their arts in relative harmony? Is the end for power, or for empathy? Is the end for impersonal collectivism, or for individually communicable freedom and dignity? Is evolution driven to preserve collectivism, or to communicate individual expressionism? What is the fundamental antagonism that drives history? Is it not an attempt to reconcile Mohammed to Jesus, i.e., forced collectivism to invitational individualism?
I think a higher Source drives empathy in a way that is superior to localized networks of power. But the local strength of such higher Source may be proportionate to the local faith in it. IOW, failing to reinforce faith in empathy, we will succumb to a collectivizing horror of impersonal power, pretending to be looking out for our best interests. Obama is not by himself very much at all. But he is the face of something that is indeed very sinister.

Anonymous said...

From A.T. -- @PJPony, re: "... the same religion based loosely on Islam and earth worship"
I concur that Islam could easily be used as proxy for a new Frenchified version of authoritative terror, i.e., the Cult of the Supreme Being, replete with state collectivizing, imposing rituals to so fill and occupy all minds of the masses as to leave no time for idle reflection, questioning, or trouble making. Such a mix with Islam could dress the Cult of the Supreme Being with what it never had: a tradition of sacred stories and sacraments. Potential thug rulers salivate all over themselves by anticipating how to control the masses by throwing religious opium their way. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being.