The gay retconning is strong here. Orwell has been accused elsewhere of being homophobic. Neither side has a convincing case.
Orwell was an cynical observer, not an organizer. Orwell on socialists, from "The Road to Wigand Pier":
"In addition to this there is the horrible–the really disquieting–prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ’Socialism’ and ’Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ’Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England."
That book is about why socialism in England never got much traction. Yes, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the UK had "lemon socialism" - the government ended up owning the steel, coal, and railroad industries, all of which were in trouble. That was not a people's movement.
For the organizer's point of view, see Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".[1] Alinsky is all about how to organize and win, working from the bottom. Alinsky was a labor organizer. His approach is independent of political position.
Orwell offers cautionary views, but he's too cynical to propose solutions.
As someone who has adored Orwell a great deal in my youth I do have to say that his works are vastly overrated for as far a literally merits go.
They are popular because they offer an easy way to project your own political opinions and biases into them. They are tempting by their simplicity while offering a way to show off how intellectual your are. That thing you don't like? Literally 1984!
Again, I am saying this as someone who has been very fascinated by his works and always will be be. You can like something while recognizing its flaws. Orwell hasn't introduced anything substantial that hasn't been done better by other authors.
Some of the ideas he partially helped popularize like the concept of language shaping how we think has been pseudo-scientific nonsense that is still actively harming society today. Except instead of being applied by authoritarian regimes it is political activists that waste their energy on useless battles trying to police language. The childish idea that we could change society by changing how we speak is just too tempting .
Orwell was also not a great human being but I think it is fine to separate the author from the works.
> They are popular because they offer an easy way to project your own political opinions and biases into them. They are tempting by their simplicity while offering a way to show off how intellectual your are. That thing you don't like? Literally 1984!
That reflects Orwell's status as an observer. He himself did not initiate political action.
> Some of the ideas he partially helped popularize like the concept of language shaping
It's not well known, but "Newspeak" was quite real. During WWII, Orwell worked for the British Ministry of Information. One of his jobs was translating news broadcasts into "Basic English", a 1000 word vocabulary for non-native speakers. Those broadcasts were sent out to the colonies (India, Hong Kong, etc.). Political ambiguity had to be made concrete to fit into the limited vocabulary. Orwell thus discovered that translation into Basic English was a political act.
After that the blinds were off and he was right to report traitors to the people with red paintcoats to a democratic governments. Should have reported more of those holdomore supporting , imperialists with left decoration.
As someone who speaks English, Japanese, and computer programming languages, I will say that language absolutely affects how we think. My trains of thought are very different from someone who only speaks English or Japanese, let alone someone who doesn't speak programming; and I definitely can't fully relate to someone who speaks Spanish, Chinese, etc. either.
As far as I'm concerned, that theory is not psuedo science.
My experience learning Japanese, and more importantly living in Japan, has convinced me of the complete opposite: that linguistic differences are almost entirely downstream of cultural differences. The things you initially think are unique to the Japanese language are actually preserved fully when speaking with Japanese people in English (bearing in mind that a Japanese person who learns English fluently will inherently be atypical in various ways), and the experience of speaking with a Japanese person in English is far more "Japanese" than speaking Japanese with someone who has never lived here.
While I'm also multi-lingual, and I also strongly believe in (some version of) the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been demonstrated.
You may not see this but I am curious: do you have some ~expertise in this general area? The "I found what I have been looking for" comment seems to imply so, so I can't resist asking.
Note that Orwell promotes an hard form of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis called linguistic determinism meaning that a language would make it impossible think certain thoughts. This is obviously wrong.
Have you ever experienced anything for which you didn't have the words to explain? This already proves that you can feel and think things that are not easily expressed in the languages you know. Also some people don't even think in words but are more visual thinkers.
But even for the softer version, linguistic relativism, these is not much hard evidence.
You subjective experience is not easily measurable. Yes, the act of learning new languages can gives you new perspectives and enrich you as a person because it gives you access to a whole new culture but that is different to saying you can suddenly experience new forms of emotions because you didn't have the words for it before or see more colors.
I think its a mischaracterization to say Orwell promotes it. The State in 1984 wishes to reach this stage, but the book does not really demonstrate that they are able to.
> meaning that a language would make it impossible think certain thoughts. This is obviously wrong.
But is it necessarily actually wrong? Shame there's no word for this ubiquitous phenomenon, at least none that hasn't become so loaded it can't be used and taken seriously.
> Have you ever experienced anything for which you didn't have the words to explain? This already proves that you can feel and think things that are not easily expressed in the languages you know.
This is not the same thing - here you already have the thoughts, but lack the corresponding language. It is the inability to go in the other direction that is hypothesized. I'm pretty sure there's a word for this but I can't recall it....isomorphic, or something in that neighborhood?
> Note that Orwell promotes an hard form of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis
This is not what he was getting at at all. I think you've completely misunderstood an analogy in a work of fiction that was aiming to warn about the distortion of language for politics ends.
>Have you ever experienced anything for which you didn't have the words to explain?
Yes, and some of it I'm only aware because it can be easily expressed in one language but not another.
For example, "itadakimasu" in Japanese is a very simple phrase that you say when you start eating to signify appreciation for the food. It may surprise you that there is no suitable translation in English. "Thank you for the food." is awkward and strangely esoteric, "Amen." has religious implications that did not exist in "itadakimasu". "Itadakimasu" also means "to take", in this context meaning you will consume the food, but expressing that makes the English even more esoteric.
What's more, there's also "gochisou-sama", literally "Mr. Feast" (yes really), that you say when you're done eating to, again, signify appreciation for the food. "Thank you for the food." is again awkward and esoteric and doesn't fully translate the original phrase, but what's more Japanese clearly has two similar but very different concepts that cannot be adequately separated and expressed in English.
Moving away from Japanese, some languages like Spanish and French apply the concept of gender to their words and grammar. That's something completely foreign to me and I certainly can't think like that since I don't speak such languages.
The ease with which someone can conceptualize something depends significantly on their vocabulary, the language(s) they speak. If you don't know or can't speak certain words, you will naturally gravitate towards trains of thought that don't require as much complicated brain power.
Speaking more fundamentally, knowing or not knowing a language determines whether you can or can't understand someone. That difference is going to vastly change how you think about him, demonstrating once again that language affects thought.
This is why freedom of speech has become such an important human right and why it's a very good thing to learn more languages than just your native one. Speaking more languages opens your mind to more versatile trains of thought that would otherwise not be possible.
Suggesting that language doesn't affect thought is a very ignorant claim, particularly in this day and age when more people of all backgrounds desperately need to communicate more effectively with each other.
The less people communicate, the more misunderstandings and animosities there will be which will ultimately lead to Many Bad Things(tm).
Recently, people are greatly incentivized to join a group and excommunicate those outside of it. This is a problem if it goes beyond superficial things like Windows vs. Linux, into things like culture and politics.
I'm surprised and saddened this needs to be explicitly stated here of all places.
Sorry to nitpick, but not really. If we're being literal it's "honorably rushing about on your horse": chisō describes the work that had do be done to prepare the feast, running here and there to gather the ingredients. The "sama" doesn't mean Mr., it's just another honorific tag like go-/o-.
> Some of the ideas he partially helped popularize like the concept of language shaping how we think has been pseudo-scientific nonsense that is still actively harming society today. Except instead of being applied by authoritarian regimes it is political activists that waste their energy on useless battles trying to police language. The childish idea that we could change society by changing how we speak is just too tempting .
You're probably reversing cause and effect on this one. Orwell would have included Newspeak because he saw how other people were using it. H is reflecting reality, not leading it. Trying to control the linguistic parameters of the debate is just part of any argument. Political activists do like to take it into the realm of the silly it isn't just them doing it.
You're saying Orwell's concepts on language are outdated nonsense, but one of the biggest movements in modern politics is organized through a website literally called "Truth Social" where the content is mostly intentional lies about basic verifiable facts, and markets itself as an unbiased platform for free speech while silently censoring any dissenting opinions.
> They are popular because they offer an easy way to project your own political opinions and biases into them.
No, they are popular because someone who lived 80+ years ago got it right, when all the Pompous People got it wrong. When everyone who was anyone was a Communist and thought Stalin was just great, and the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War was the essence of Purest Virtue.
> Orwell hasn't introduced anything substantial that hasn't been done better by other authors.
Really now? Before 1948? If you wouldn't mind, please enumerate those "substantial" things and tell us who did them all better, before Orwell.
>No, they are popular because someone who lived 80+ years ago got it right
That's a very charitable reading, Asimov had a very different interpretation in his not very positive but I think great review of 1984 (https://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)
"The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain, for he was convinced that if he did not, he would be killed From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action. During World War II, in which he was rejected for military service, he was associated with the left wing of the British Labour party, but didn't much sympathise with their views, for even their reckless version of socialism seemed too well organised for him. He wasn't much affected, apparently, by the Nazi brand of totalitarianism, for there was no room within him except for his private war with Stalinist communism. Consequently, when Great Britain was fighting for its life against Nazism, and the Soviet Union fought as an ally in the struggle and contributed rather more than its share in lives lost and in resolute courage, Orwell wrote Animal Farm which was a satire of the Russian Revolution and what followed, picturing it in terms of a revolt of barnyard animals against human masters."
Lest we forget, the Soviet Union did a great deal to allow WW2 to happen in the first place, and fought as an ally of the Nazis initially - and remained friendly and economically supportive all the way up to the German invasion. Orwell was absolutely correct to treat that regime nearly as bad as the Nazis.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> No, they are popular because someone who lived 80+ years ago got it right, when all the Pompous People got it wrong. When everyone who was anyone was a Communist and thought Stalin was just great, and the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War was the essence of Purest Virtue.
What did he get right? His analysis of the Soviet Union that we read is Animal Farm is plain Trotskyism. I don't see any original thought. The idea that all would have been well if just Trotsky instead of Stalin won the power struggle does not hold up to any serious thought. If anything "mister world revolution" would have been by far the worse alternative.
What did the POUM, that weird Trotzkyist faction that he joined in the civil war, achieve again? Nothing. If anything the Republican movement suffered from lack of unity. Those weird sectarian splitter groups did more harm than good.
> Really now? Before 1948? If you wouldn't mind, please enumerate those "substantial" things and tell us who did them all better, before Orwell.
We could always cite the classic Brave New World but how about The Iron Heel by Jack London which perfectly predicted the rise of fascism. So many better takes out there.
> Some of the ideas he partially helped popularize like the concept of language shaping how we think has been pseudo-scientific nonsense that is still actively harming society today.
While the idea of language literally changing the way you think is probably not true, I think the weaker version of limiting the thoughts you can express is still interesting. What's the use of having revolutionary thoughts if it is literally impossible to articulate them in any meaningful way to anyone else?
Anyway, while the book is a cautionary tale, it's still science fiction at the end of the day. Orwell can hardly be blamed for people taking the Newspeak stuff too seriously.
"In logic, false[1] or untrue is the state of possessing negative truth value and is a nullary logical connective. In a truth-functional system of propositional logic, it is one of two postulated truth values, along with its negation, truth."
Orwell was an cynical observer, not an organizer. Orwell on socialists, from "The Road to Wigand Pier":
"In addition to this there is the horrible–the really disquieting–prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ’Socialism’ and ’Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ’Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England."
That book is about why socialism in England never got much traction. Yes, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the UK had "lemon socialism" - the government ended up owning the steel, coal, and railroad industries, all of which were in trouble. That was not a people's movement.
For the organizer's point of view, see Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".[1] Alinsky is all about how to organize and win, working from the bottom. Alinsky was a labor organizer. His approach is independent of political position.
Orwell offers cautionary views, but he's too cynical to propose solutions.
[1] https://www.openculture.com/2017/02/13-rules-for-radicals.ht...