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Orwell’s Escape

theatlantic.com

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Re: Orwell’s Escape

#21

Post by nonrandomstring »

panarky wrote: post #13

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner life. If he thought solitude was hard to obtain then, one can only imagine his reaction to today's constant connectivity. I'm sure many people do their best thinking collectively, but I'm with Orwell, and value long periods of solitude and nurturing my inner life…

It's quite a common concept in existentialist philosophy. Heidegger's "The They" and Sartre's "The Gaze". In psychoanalysis Lacan's "Big Other" is related. (I actually have no idea whether Orwell riffed on that.)

Not to get into it deeply, but it's a force that has two sides. One is external, the group's desire to overwhelm the individual a la communism/the Borg. And another is internal, the fear of being overwhelmed by the group, stripped of identity. Of course that whole concept is itself the flip side in tension with its opposite; affinity/coviviality/socialbility and love/belonging of the group.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#22

Post by lostlogin »

zvmaz wrote: post #11

I have fond memories of reading his essays, notably Shooting an Elephant [1]. They left a vivid impression on me when I was younger. [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Stuck in my mind are that one and his account of trench warfare in the Spanish civil war (Homage to Catalonia).

The account of hand to hand trench warfare is horrifying.

Down and Out in Paris and London is good too - that he lives the life he described is just bizarre. A driven man.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#23

Post by nonrandomstring »

johnea wrote: post #17
panarky wrote: post #13

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner life. If he thought solitude was hard to obtain then, one can only imagine his reaction to today's constant connectivity. I'm sure many people do their best thinking collectively, but I'm with Orwell, and value long periods of solitude and nurturing my inner life…

> "terror at the thought of never being alone" Yea, I think the very concept of this will be very difficult for anyone who's childhood was in the internet era. I mean, imagine the horror of turning the cell phone off 8-)

And yet an irony is that generation suffer from deep loneliness.

I guess we always knew that 1000 Facebook friends and constant IMs doesn't add up to a single IRL friend if you're physically isolated in your room. The mind-body knows the difference.

Maybe we have to make a better distinction between connectedness/company and being disconnected/alone for that conversation to make sense?

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#24

Post by joe_the_user »

lcuff wrote: post #19

>>> In place of anything like a novel proper, we get a would-be bildungsroman breaking through to the surface in disparate fragments. These scraps are Winston’s yearnings, memories, sensual instincts, which have, as yet, somehow gone unmurdered by the regime. The entire state-sponsored enterprise of Pavlovian sadism in Oceania is devoted to snuffing out this remnant interiority. The details of Orwell's life were inte…

I think the tortured prose comes from an effort to acknowledge 1984 isn't a conventional "good novel" but still avoid saying that Orwell's popularity comes because his writing has a lot of relevance because the modern world can certainly seem "Orwellian".

This quote gives an idea how much the author discounts the validity Orwell's political insight: The meeting had been ominous to Orwell: It placed in his head the idea of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin divvying up the postwar world, leading to a global triopoly of super-states. The man can be forgiven for pouring every ounce of his grief, self-pity, paranoia (literary lore had it that he thought Stalin might have an ice pick with his name on it), and embittered egoism into the predicament of his latest protagonist, Winston Smith.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#25

Post by 082349872349872 »

lostlogin wrote: post #22
zvmaz wrote: post #11

I have fond memories of reading his essays, notably Shooting an Elephant [1]. They left a vivid impression on me when I was younger. [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Stuck in my mind are that one and his account of trench warfare in the Spanish civil war (Homage to Catalonia). The account of hand to hand trench warfare is horrifying. Down and Out in Paris and London is good too - that he lives the life he described is just bizarre. A driven man.

> A driven man.

I've had beers with the homeless and with billionaires, and I've slept rough and lived in five stars.

But compared to Blair, I've only ever been a tourist; whether posh or tramp, he committed.

At least he didn't go as far as cup-less Diogenes, in his tub.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#26

Post by alpinisme »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #21
panarky wrote: post #13

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner life. If he thought solitude was hard to obtain then, one can only imagine his reaction to today's constant connectivity. I'm sure many people do their best thinking collectively, but I'm with Orwell, and value long periods of solitude and nurturing my inner life…

It's quite a common concept in existentialist philosophy. Heidegger's "The They" and Sartre's "The Gaze". In psychoanalysis Lacan's "Big Other" is related. (I actually have no idea whether Orwell riffed on that.) Not to get into it deeply, but it's a force that has two sides. One is external, the group's desire to overwhelm the individual a la communism/the Borg. And another is internal, the fear of being overwhelmed…

A tangent but Lacan just distinguished Autre and autre (Other and other), but more recent philosophers in English (especially Zizek) popularized the more pronounceable distinction between the big and the little other.

To be fair though, “l’objet petit a” does occur in Lacan, though, so he wasn’t above the “big”/“little” terminology himself

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#27

Post by nonrandomstring »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #16
panarky wrote: post #13

The article argues that Orwell’s greatest fear wasn’t torture or totalitarianism, but the loss of solitude, and he fled to Jura Island to preserve his inner life. If he thought solitude was hard to obtain then, one can only imagine his reaction to today's constant connectivity. I'm sure many people do their best thinking collectively, but I'm with Orwell, and value long periods of solitude and nurturing my inner life…

Sure but you need to be careful not to reflexively reach for modern-style revanchist individualism as the solution. All of our notable achievements have been the result of people acting together, and maintaining a collaborative, even collectivist approach is reconcilable with deeply private individual inner lives. Not that, reading your comment, I think you're approaching it that way. But I could easily imagine someo…

What popped into my head at your mention of the libertarian outlook is I was watching an anthropology/history show about all historical cultures/tribes having something similar to Aboriginal "going walkabout". In Nordic tribes and native Americans too, its okay to just go "tread the earth". The point being to feel joy and gratitude returning to the group. In fact I'm sure it's a biological hard-wired need. I often have to just pack a bugout bag and go wild with no phone etc. It's always lovely to come home to family and friends.

But isolated urban living of the technological libertarian seems like an attempt to do that all the time, alone within the group. I think that's a mistake because one is stuck in limbo, neither alone nor in company, getting the joys of neither.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#28

Post by andy99 »

hnbad wrote: post #20
sublimefire wrote: post #9

I did not like the article, it was like the author was trying to connect the environment Orwell experienced to the book. IMO this is just guesswork, speculation and worst of all denying the author the intellectual prowess. Think about it, if you were to write a book you would not want the circumstances to affect the work and you’d be conscious about it. Saying that author somehow slipped in text because of the condit…

It's really not subtle. Both 1984 and Animal Farm are critiques of the Soviet Union from the left. Orwell fought on the side of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and the betrayal by the Soviet Union soured him on the prospect of its interpretation of communism. This doesn't even require reading his biography, he explicitly wrote about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia . Where it falls apart is when people…

> Both 1984 and Animal Farm are critiques of the Soviet Union from the left.

I'm sure this is accurate and I've heard it before. In practice though, at least 1984 feels like a non-partisan criticism of power hungry bureaucracy run amok. I think that's why it's timeless, it criticizes political systems in practice more than making any argument for a particular ideology. There's would be lots of disagreement on the solution, but we mostly all agree the Party and the world it creates are bad, as are the similar things we see in real life, which again aren't really party specific but are part of all systems of government.

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#29

Post by nonrandomstring »

alpinisme wrote: post #26
nonrandomstring wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite a common concept in existentialist philosophy. Heidegger's "The They" and Sartre's "The Gaze". In psychoanalysis Lacan's "Big Other" is related. (I actually have no idea whether Orwell riffed on that.) Not to get into it deeply, but it's a force that has two sides. One is external, the group's desire to overwhelm the individual a la communism/the Borg. And another is internal, the fear of being overwhelmed…

A tangent but Lacan just distinguished Autre and autre (Other and other), but more recent philosophers in English (especially Zizek) popularized the more pronounceable distinction between the big and the little other. To be fair though, “l’objet petit a” does occur in Lacan, though, so he wasn’t above the “big”/“little” terminology himself

where capitalised (B)ig other is a more spiritial (God) thing? I don't read French so that's a nuance I miss. Thanks.

Edit: sorry tired and getting mixed up with Heidegger's being/Being

Re: Orwell’s Escape

#30

Post by 082349872349872 »

andy99 wrote: post #28
hnbad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not subtle. Both 1984 and Animal Farm are critiques of the Soviet Union from the left. Orwell fought on the side of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and the betrayal by the Soviet Union soured him on the prospect of its interpretation of communism. This doesn't even require reading his biography, he explicitly wrote about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia . Where it falls apart is when people…

> Both 1984 and Animal Farm are critiques of the Soviet Union from the left. I'm sure this is accurate and I've heard it before. In practice though, at least 1984 feels like a non-partisan criticism of power hungry bureaucracy run amok. I think that's why it's timeless, it criticizes political systems in practice more than making any argument for a particular ideology. There's would be lots of disagreement on the sol…

Animal Farm is as well; what is a farm but a piece of geography containing multiple living beings but organised for the ultimate benefit of only a few of them?

Remember: very few dystopias are as much about the other, as they are about the society in which they were written.

Animal Farm is the book-length exploration of what in 1984 gets a single sentence: "Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.", while 1984 depicts why the pigs (the former Middle) just become the High with no real attempt to produce animal equality.

Goldstein poses the question "why should human equality be averted? ... Here we reach the central secret. This motive really consists..." and after that cliffhanger we get the torture, in the frame story, of Part 3, revealing the answer (an answer which young EAB may have implicitly learned at his boarding school?) to Goldstein's question: the cruelty is the point.

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