the book

The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, were those that tell you what you know already.

--George Orwell, 1984

I finished re-reading 1984 (yesterday, actually), and it generated some strong impressions. I'm sure it made an impression when I last read it early in college, but in many respects I certainly wasn't ready for the book at that time. I repurchased the book the other day, since my original copy appears to be yet another book that was somehow bequeathed to my ex-wife during the divorce. It's not actually necessary to buy the book now. You can read it online here: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html

The passage I've cited above is just after Winston Smith has finished reading a section of "the book", the underground treatise by Emmanuel Goldstein and the shadowy Brotherhood of resistance to The Party. Smith's sentiments echo some of my own reactions to "the book", and to Orwell's book in general. I expected to sense some echoes of today in the themes of this classic, but there were more than echoes. I think that in many ways 1984 already happened. Take, for instance, "the book"'s description of the ideal Party member:

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he have a mentality appropriate to a state of war.

-- excerpt from "the book", George Orwell, 1984

I know these guys!

The shock of recognition occurred all too frequently throughout the book, and "the book". We have, in too many ways, allowed ourselves to become a managed society, with narrow parameters for the range of thought we're actually allowed to have, and certainly for what we're allowed to read and hear from the media. The first quote reminds me of my own reaction to Chomsky. He presents a framework, not for my paranoid fantasies, but rather for my human instincts with regard to the world around me. Orwell's book is a companion volume in that collection.

I might turn this into a longer rant, and perhaps will at some point. Right now, I'm trying just to make the thought somewhat coherent, and publish.

Down with Big Brother.

Down with Big Brother.

Down with Big Brother.