21–30 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orwell was a leftist, but also opposed totalitarian societies. "1984" was a dystopia to expose such totalitarian societies. Unfortunately, much of what he described as a horror scenario in "1984" is already reality today, without people being bothered by it anymore.
How do you define 'leftist'? Orwell also wrote Animal Farm, which is critical of communism.
"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible" I'm genuinely curious do the woke brigades of twitter not have the self awareness to recognize what they're doing? Or do they just not care? Would they be happy with a language designed to make 'harmful' thinking impossible?
https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herse...
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Orwell was a leftist, but also opposed totalitarian societies. "1984" was a dystopia to expose such totalitarian societies. Unfortunately, much of what he described as a horror scenario in "1984" is already reality today, without people being bothered by it anymore.
EDIT: I guarantee you everyone working at the ministry of truth thought they were the good guys, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orwell was a leftist, but also opposed totalitarian societies. "1984" was a dystopia to expose such totalitarian societies. Unfortunately, much of what he described as a horror scenario in "1984" is already reality today, without people being bothered by it anymore.
Perfectly reasonable comments like the grandparent being flagged and killed so quickly... looks like the ministry of truth is staying busy. EDIT: I guarantee you everyone working at the ministry of truth thought they were the good guys, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Orwell was a leftist, but also opposed totalitarian societies. "1984" was a dystopia to expose such totalitarian societies. Unfortunately, much of what he described as a horror scenario in "1984" is already reality today, without people being bothered by it anymore.
How do you define 'leftist'? Orwell also wrote Animal Farm, which is critical of communism.
Newspeak's goal of a complete regularization of English, and the elimination of all redundant forms, is actually an interesting idea IMO. Business jargon often moves in this direction, e.g. "learnings" instead of "lessons". And it's not always a horrible dystopian idea - Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration. EDIT: I apologize for my doubleplusungood thoughtcr…
Orwell believed if language is pared down, so too are thoughts.
Think of it like this: if we made English even less regular would it make us better and freer thinkers? Of course not! It would probably make it harder to think clearly. A good example is how counting is hard to learn because the words are weirdband illogical. It's like converting between roman and Arabic numerals.
To me, the euphemisation aspects of newspeak are the most "orwellian." IE, they're most likely to trigger that reference. Orwell himself complained about politicians and they're euphemisms. I think that's the part, above all that was drawn from current reality, and applies most readily in other times.
Somewhat related/noteworthy. Contrary to what I assume was common in his leftist circles at the time, Orwell was not enamoured with either Trotskyism or Irish Republicanism. I suspect the use of euphemism was one of the things that triggered him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you define 'leftist'? Orwell also wrote Animal Farm, which is critical of communism.
Orwell was a socialist, and he supported democratic socialism, but he vehemently opposed (and wrote Animal Farm as a mocking satire of) totalitarian Soviet communism[0], which he didn't consider to be socialist at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Politics
Esperanto probably inspired Orwell on this, at least to an extent. He knew several Esperantists. Most of the "A vocabulary" rules are similar, like valuing regularities. I wonder if he hated esperanto, or just conveniently borrowed the feel of an artificial language from it. To me, the euphemisation aspects of newspeak are the most "orwellian." IE, they're most likely to trigger that reference. Orwell himself complai…