
1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell - plg
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell
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fennecfoxen
People interested in Orwell's _1984_ might also be interested in C. S.
Lewis's' _That Hideous Strength_ , a pre-Atomic treatment of the dystopian
sci-fi future from an unexpected author that actually predates _1984_. Here's
a review... by Orwell.
[http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/](http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/)

> His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a
> nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or,
> perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human
> feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then
> the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the
> universe under their control.

>...

> There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a
> moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” –
> has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it
> sounds all too topical.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Interesting to note that Orwell railed against tyranny, control of the
understrength masses by a powerful few, and the obliteration of individualism
and C. S. Lewis wrote thinly-disguised Christian propaganda targeted towards
children.

~~~
fennecfoxen
_That Hideous Strength_ is anything but "thinly-disguised Christian propaganda
targeted towards children." First, as a novel, it's openly Christian (which,
combined with the sci-fi dystopia, makes it a pretty unique entity - I find it
fascinating, myself). It may also help you understand the sort of things the
Christian right fears from the likes of people like yourself.

Secondly, it's not targeted towards children. Even assuming a child would be
paying attention after the first ten minutes' read: there's a sadistic lesbian
police chief (a character of the sort whom Lewis is theorized to personally
fancy), several open (if brief) discussions about sexuality and eroticism...
to say nothing of the violent murders, suicides and tiger maulings.

It's not exactly what you'd consider child-safe, let alone targeted.

But I guess if you already know all there is to know about Lewis from the
five-minute treatment in your local left-leaning literature class, or if you
gleaned most of it secondhand from reading Neil Gaiman's _The Problem of
Susan_ , then you have no need to see anything that might interfere with your
expectations. Go ahead and congratulate yourself on truly understanding the
man.

Also be sure to avoid: his WWI poetry.
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2003/2003-h/2003-h.htm)

~~~
pstuart
> Christian propaganda targeted towards children

I think this is a reference to The Chronicles of Narnia

~~~
saraid216
More a reply to oneeyedpigeon than pstuart, but,

Most people seem to think C.S. Lewis wrote nothing except Narnia. This isn't
the case; Lewis was a _convert_ to Christianity and wrote forcefully and
critically about it, even while he subscribed to it. A good example of this is
Mere Christianity.

Narnia itself was a critique: yes, Aslan is Jesus, but Lewis' point wasn't
"Jesus loves you!" It was "Jesus is a force of nature and he is REALLY FUCKING
SCARY."

He's not the kind of man I like defending, but Lewis wasn't doing "propaganda"
any more than Dante was doing "propaganda" when he wrote Inferno. He was
trying to speak truth to power and using fiction to do it.

------
iaygo
It's an interesting article but of course the writing deadline was only a part
of what killed him. His health declined during the period of being a tramp and
working menial jobs in France where he was hospitalized with pneumonia. It
didn't help being shot through the neck by a fascist sniper in the Spanish
Civil War and also being a heavy smoker. Lastly, wintering in cold, wet
Scotland isn't a good plan for anyone with bad lungs.

------
mindcrime
I read that book my senior year in high-school, and to this day I will cite it
as one of the - if not THE - most influential books I've ever read. I know
Orwell was no libertarian, but what I took from the book (probably influenced
by a genetic proclivity towards rebellion and anti-authoritarian thinking) was
a tremendous mistrust of government... which I suspect was a strong influence
on my eventually settling into a libertarian worldview.

Some people say that Nineteen Eighty-Four wasn't written to be a warning, and
maybe it wasn't - but I have a hard time seeing how anybody could read it and
not discover something of a warning inside. And I think that's even more true
given the various revelations over the past few years, vis-a-vis surveillance
and diminishing civil liberties.

I encourage anybody who hasn't read Nineteen Eighty-Four to go read it
immediately. If you aren't either angry has hell, or sad as hell, or both, at
the end, you're a rare breed.

[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt)

~~~
cma
Left-libertarian, or royal-libertarian?

[http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html](http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html)

~~~
mindcrime
Meh... I don't much care for labels, and leaving it at "libertarian" is
probably specific enough. But if you really care, I associate a lot with the
"voluntaryist" and/or "anarcho-capitalist" schools of thought. My beliefs
about the ownership of land are in a state of flux and I'm not actually
convinced there is any truly objective way to settle that issue.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Look up Henry George, specifically "Progress and Poverty."

His land taxation regime is to say the least controversial, but it's still
compelling and it's _something_. It's also considered responsible for much of
the rapid progress out of medievalism in the Far East late in the 19th/early
in the 20th Century. Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan all had periods of very rapid
industrialization under land taxes.

No less than William F. Buckley referenced Henry George more than once.

------
PythonicAlpha
It seems to me, this book is more relevant today than ever. Orwell might have
erred with the date, but I think he didn't with the direction of human kind.

~~~
bananacurve
The state of the world is improving, sorry but it is, but that doesn't fit
into the epic narrative that so many want to believe. Your life is not as epic
a struggle as your parents or their parents, all men are essentially kings
today in terms of freedom and opportunity and a million other metrics. No one
reports good news, progress is not as exciting as doom.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I don't want to believe, that the world is rapidly being corrupted, but it is.

Freedom and opportunity?

Opportunity might be true in some areas (particularly IT), but not in other
areas. Just because you think you are king, you are not!

Freedom, no, not at all. Democracy has brought much freedom to the people and
after the 2nd WW freedom lived up to it's maximum, it seems to me. But in the
last decades it declined rapidly.

Do you mean, freedom in Iraq? Or in Afghanistan or other Arabian countries?
Think twice! There might be some countries, yes, but they are far away from
being real free.

Freedom in western countries? Europe?? The US???

Think again! Just think!

~~~
saraid216
Yelling "think" is not actually the substitute for evidence that you seem to
believe it is.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I do not yell. I am just wondering. I am wondering, how people have been
blinded. Maybe I have just to big expectations.

------
Perceval
The world of _1984_ was based on James Burnham's book _The Managerial
Revolution_. Orwell even wrote a couple reviews of Burnham's work. Here's the
first:
[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh](http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh)

------
plg
It's worth re-reading this wonderful book every couple of years. Every time I
do, I see something new, either in the story itself, or in the writing craft,
or in the story's context in society, as our world changes.

It's also worth asking ourselves each time we re-read 1984, are we farther
away or closer to the life depicted in the book, than last time we read it?

~~~
mindcrime
I last re-read it about 5 or 6 years ago, IIRC. I'd say we're closer to that
life now, than then.

~~~
3am
This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The
NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most
pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the
criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to
accomplish that
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak))..
in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).

~~~
grey-area
Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use:

Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National
security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation

Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive
surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria
and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa,
Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood
enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice

It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in
these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy
intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict
prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.

~~~
MartinCron
It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on
abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.

~~~
grey-area
I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think
it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x
is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat
segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and
blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with
members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of
vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue
of a government pronouncement.

War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that
as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the
government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential
struggle.

------
simonebrunozzi
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Brave New World" so far. IMHO, much
closer to actual reality than 1984.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Might be. I must admit, that I do not know Brave New World as good as 1984.

Might be, that there are more exact descriptions of our future around. But one
thing I think is dominant and alarming: The "free" world does not converge to
a system of even rights and freedom for all, but into a new system of control
and inequality, that might in turn even top the system of the middle ages.

------
ArkyBeagle
Orwell had tuberculosis, not uncommon for people from urban environment in his
day. That's why the "bad lung". Whether he smoked or not is probably quite
irrelevant.

Orwell fought against _Fascism_ ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and
_mercantilism /empire_. Not _capitalism_. Something can be one of those, but
not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific
meanings.

The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's
more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped
wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences better
as they simply stopped thinking at all.

------
dallos
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29)

George Orwell averred that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) must be
partly derived from We.

Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in
a French translation and wrote a review of it. Orwell is reported as "saying
that he was taking it as the model for his next novel."

