Every time I read George Orwell it makes me angry with the world. It is very amazing writing, and is reading philosophy in fiction form. Anyone who wants to understand the human condition should read this first and probably last too.. He has this knack, though, for portraying the authoritarian and totalitarian experience so vividly that i feel like an auger, boring my way into the blackest part of the human heart. Relentless, pitiless. Excellent writer, but I have to space it out. Thanks for the comment. Cheers.
I think it’s no longer a social science fiction book, unfortunately, we live in it now. Orwell was definitely a visionary, I enjoy reading his work.
I think it's a must read piece for everyone, to understand the current world we live in.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
That's another thing about Orwell. No matter how smart I think I am, how well read I think I am, or how fluent I think I'm getting with the writing I'm doing, I read someone like Orwell, and all I can say is, yup.
I think most people don't have the life experience to comprehend power for power's sake. I grew up in a cult. I got out of it in time to see the rest of the world become one.
Out of the whole Abu Ghraib and the CIA torture revelations, I never once ran across anyone talking about torture for torture's sake. It may have other uses like instilling fear, but the powerful engage in all abuses of power, because they can, not because it works.
Every time I read George Orwell it makes me angry with the world. It is very amazing writing, and is reading philosophy in fiction form. Anyone who wants to understand the human condition should read this first and probably last too.. He has this knack, though, for portraying the authoritarian and totalitarian experience so vividly that i feel like an auger, boring my way into the blackest part of the human heart. Relentless, pitiless. Excellent writer, but I have to space it out. Thanks for the comment. Cheers.
I think it’s no longer a social science fiction book, unfortunately, we live in it now. Orwell was definitely a visionary, I enjoy reading his work.
I think it's a must read piece for everyone, to understand the current world we live in.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
That's another thing about Orwell. No matter how smart I think I am, how well read I think I am, or how fluent I think I'm getting with the writing I'm doing, I read someone like Orwell, and all I can say is, yup.
I think most people don't have the life experience to comprehend power for power's sake. I grew up in a cult. I got out of it in time to see the rest of the world become one.
Out of the whole Abu Ghraib and the CIA torture revelations, I never once ran across anyone talking about torture for torture's sake. It may have other uses like instilling fear, but the powerful engage in all abuses of power, because they can, not because it works.
One of my first posts was about an aspect of this. Torture and Voting, if you are interested.
https://steemit.com/freedom/@lifeworship/denial-seems-to-be-the-norm
This seems to be thematic in the steemit zeitgeist.
Thank you very much for the thoughts.
What's your position on EIP in HF21?