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George orwell wrote about the curious effects of mechanization on our motivation to work, and even on what we consider to be work or leisure. I strongly recommend giving it a read.

Here am I, working eight hours a day in an insurance office; in my spare time I want to do something 'creative', so I choose to do a bit of carpentering--to make myself a table, for instance. Notice that from the very start there is a touch of artificiality about the whole business, for the factories can turn me out a far better table than I can make for myself. But even when I get to work on my table, it is not possible for me to feel towards it as the cabinet-maker of a hundred years ago felt towards his table, still less as Robinson Crusoe felt towards his. For before I start, most of the work has already been done for me by machinery. The tools I use demand the minimum of skill. I can get, for instance, planes which will cut out any moulding; the cabinet-maker of a hundred years ago would have had to do the work with chisel and gouge, which demanded real skill of eye and hand. The boards I buy are ready planed and the legs are ready turned by the lathe. I can even go to the wood-shop and buy all the parts of the table ready-made and only needing to be fitted together; my work being reduced to driving in a few pegs and using a piece of sandpaper. And if this is so at present, in the mechanized future it will be enormously more so. With the tools and materials available then, there will be no possibility of mistake, hence no room for skill. Making a table will be easier and duller than peeling a potato.

George Orwell does a great job of discussing the ideas of the depression era with respect to the consequences of increased mechanization of labor. In many respects not much has changed. Highly recommended reading:

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/11.html

What makes you think we haven't read it? It's been a few years since I last read it. 1984 is free online.

Could someone do me a solid and check to see if the following website is available to you?
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984
As of this morning, it is "forbidden" from all machines in my house. I know this because I read chapter 1 last night just before bed.

Works fine here (Finland).
I also have the book in both dead-tree form and in PDF, so that site is largely irrelevant to me.

I was able to access http://www.george-orwell.org/1984 a moment ago. Beginning to suspect server is getting slammed.

This is encouraging.

Could someone do me a solid and check to see if the following website is available to you?

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984

As of this morning, it is "forbidden" from all machines in my house. I know this because I read chapter 1 last night just before bed.

Thanks in advance.

This was an interesting observation, thank you. I have long been concerned about this observation of Orwell:

And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it--gives claws to the weak.

This is from an article he wrote about the atom bomb. When I look at the rising expense and sophistication of modern militaries, and at the neo-colonialism my own dear patria and its allies seem willing to engage in, the future looks quite dark. But the cheapness and effectiveness of modern small arms and guerrilla tactics may be just coming into its own.

There is a scenario where the new possibilities for independence may not lie with people but with large organizations like governments. What makes it possible for asymmetrical warfare to be successful on the part of the weaker defender is that he is able to inflict asymmetical costs on the attacker. Drones may be changing that. If drones do not also find their way into private hands, like small arms, or if they don't turn out to be easily hackable, then future wars will rarely involve liabilities like tanks. In several countries the U.S. in involved in, this is already the case.

'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'

'And what in hell's name is a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.

'Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'

'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre -- that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.

'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'

'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other customers.

You and this guy. I think Orwell was trying to make a point about history being altered or lost when he wrote this part.

For a little perspective on professional book reviewers, I give you this little essay.

Oh shut the fuck up. I'm saying there's a way for people to believe in both

No, you shut the fuck up!

He wrote:

GOD IS POWER

He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. He had never seen the photograph that disproved their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of selfdeception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except!

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

1984

Also, I really doubt this:

I do respect the beliefs of others

because I don't think you respect the belief of a [supposed] Muslim fanatic that blowing himself up together with a bunch of innocent people is a GoodThing(TM).

My dear Winston. I like you very much. I'm glad we met. However, you've the doubleplusungood luck of being insane. Whatever you say doesn't mater. Whatever the Party says is true. You are an unperson. If you sill don't get it, read again and adjust your sarcasm detector.

The 1984 "Big Brother" concept is 1984

By pure coincidence, I just started reading 1984 this morning. Orwell's books can be read on-line. I guess they pre-date the Disnification (aka fuckupification) of copyright.

people on the terrorist-watch-list

Am I the only one who read that as "torrent-watch-list"? I'm sure it's the same thing to most selected, er, elected reps working in the Ministry of Progress (as Orwell might have called it).

Disney extended the copyright term because they wanted to not lose copyright on their characters. It was originally something like 14 years. This is stupid; and doubly so since Disney still puts out cool shit. It's time Beauty and the Beast goes into the public domain, while people still pay every 10 years for a Disney official collector's edition from the vault. People still pay for 1984 when you can read it for free.

Making stuff available for free is not equal to making it copyright free. 1984 makes money, true, but you cant go out grab a copy of the book and upload it to Amazon and sell it because it still belongs to the original author, it's not public domain even if the author allows you to read it for free.

As for the game above, it's plain plagiarism. Sure, plagiarism itself is not really legal, but its widely hated and it's the reason why most slashdot readers automatically default to bash the clone maker.

We're allowed to perform Shakespeare and The Crucible and other old plays freely; we're not allowed to perform Beauty and the Beast (yes, this is a play, Disney owns it) without paying a lot of money. Pink Floyd's songs should be folk songs by now, covered by lots of cover bands.

You are in your full right to adapt the original Beauty and The Beast into a play, if you so wish. You can adapt that one word by word, or you can do like Disney and twist it in an original way, but you can't plagiarize theirs. I find it also interesting how you keep insisting on 14 year old works be set on public domain while claiming that Shakespeare and other classics are free for you to play with. France, for instance, in the 18th and 19th century, gave copyrights to the author for his entire lifetime, with works (at one point in that period, at least) becoming public domain only 5 years after the death of the author. Another window was 10 years from the works creation or for the duration of the author's life, whatever was longer.

Many of the classics you enjoy today were inherited by the world only after it's creator died, and citing them in a copyright conversation will very likely end in very unproductive results (unless your goals are to have Disney works be their property until the company itself dies.)

14 years is nothing, and so are 30 years as far as copyright works is concerned.

Disney extended the copyright term because they wanted to not lose copyright on their characters. It was originally something like 14 years. This is stupid; and doubly so since Disney still puts out cool shit. It's time Beauty and the Beast goes into the public domain, while people still pay every 10 years for a Disney official collector's edition from the vault. People still pay for 1984 when you can read it for free.

Disney's core business should be Disney Land (because hey, Cinderella is authentic Disney, and the props there are pure Disney, even if someone else is ripping them off) and Pixar; sales of old films should count on the value of authentic Disney collector's edition reprints in Blu-Ray/HDDVD/BetaMax/DVD/whatever and the fact that the new printing is copyrighted even though the old one isn't. If you copy the latest digital remaster, you deserve to get owned; if you're selling copies of the 15 year old version, that's fine. Disney still owns the master films and master tracks as a trade secret, too.

Tetris is quite old, and old things become part of our culture. The reason patent and copyright law used to release shit to public domain after 14 years--and trademark law still caveats a "Genericized Trademark" if your trademark falls into common use (i.e. Bandaid, Photoshop--Adobe HATES when people call shit "Photoshopping" because they'll lose their trademark--etc)--is to protect our culture from this sort of death-grip. We're allowed to perform Shakespeare and The Crucible and other old plays freely; we're not allowed to perform Beauty and the Beast (yes, this is a play, Disney owns it) without paying a lot of money. Pink Floyd's songs should be folk songs by now, covered by lots of cover bands.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/4.html

In other words, the thing that makes it great is often something the artist can't even articulate to himself, at least not in words -- instead, he articulates it in his work.

That Watterson gives rare and rather boring interviews is a point in your favour. But for the rest, I don't buy it.

From Wikipedia:

Watterson also lampooned the academic world. In one example, Calvin writes a "revisionist autobiography," recruiting Hobbes to take pictures of him doing stereotypical kid activities like playing sports in order to make him seem more well-adjusted. In another strip, he carefully crafts an "artist's statement," claiming that such essays convey more messages than artworks themselves ever do (Hobbes blandly notes "You misspelled Weltanschauung").

Few great artists work backwards from the desired effect on the audience. What you end up with is the worst of the early Woody Allen. He saved himself by turning the lens on his own pathetic need to hit the funny bone.

For that matter, there's not 30 seconds in Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks are less than 1000% aware of their own humour, but it still works. No-one makes movies like that anymore, because it's impossible to translate schwanzstucker into German.

Here's Vonnegut from Man Without a Country (small, but well worth owning). He doesn't seem to lack for insight into his own process.

It's damn hard to make jokes work. In Cat's Cradle, for instance, there are these very short chapters. Each one of them represents one day's work, and each one is a joke. If I were writing about a tragic situation, it wouldn't be necessary to time it to make sure the thing works. You can't really misfire with a tragic scene. It's bound to be moving if all the right elements are present. But a joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

Watterson had a keen ear for language, the emotional colour of a word employed for mischief. He'd fail to write a textbook on the subject, but I don't he suffered for lack of clarity in his own mind.

Unable to articulate to himself? Artists are writing about life. I can't articulate life, not in full measure, which doesn't mean I'm lacking in the articulation department. He could probably say more, but has the taste to stop while he's ahead, which is not my strong point.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch
Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--
woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the
morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered
sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for
person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long
sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side
and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up
on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream.
"Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at
Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but
then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner
on glass tables, and the tables sang, _Il mio tesoro_--not _Il mio
tesoro_ though, but something better, and there were some sort of
little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he
remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a
smile. "Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal
more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,
or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake."

Inarticulate or ineluctable? It's too bad Tolstoy neglected his own wisdom later in life.

Orwell on Tolstoy on Shakespeare:

Yes, I do. I don't see the relevance to this situation, although I'm sure you'll get plenty of PlusGoods for referencing 1984 anyway.

Only in the USA I think. It's public domain in many countries:

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books/1984.htm

http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

This gets more absurd (and ironic).

You can read the book free this web site. http://www.george-orwell.org/1984

Pssst! Only people from Oceania are allowed to read it... If you read it as an Eurasian, you have committed thought crime and must purge it from your brain!

(This is because Australia had a Life+50 copyright policy until 2004, so Orwell, Woolfe, Lovecraft and others are in the public domain. No longer, alas -- the US government have "convinced" them to adapt Life+70...)

You can read the book free this web site. http://www.george-orwell.org/1984

Step 1: Presume everyone breaks "the rules". Corollary: The more "rules" there are, the more people there will be who break them.

Step 2: Impose measures to prevent such "rule-breaking," through which permission is granted by some Higher Authority to do... whatever. Examples: Digital Restrictions Management, Treacherous Computing, Windows Genuine Advantage, PlaysForSure.

Step 3: Squelch the nay-sayers and their ilk, long enough for everyone else to accept it. The nay-sayers will eventually give in to the inertia. Make object lessons of those who don't. Example: the MafiAA.

George Orwell tried to warn us, but now even he has been silenced. By cowardly Amazon, no less.

There needs to be a "civil rights" corollary to this.

Do you earnestly believe the average world citizen has less access to information than their counterparts of 25 years ago? 50 years? 100? 250? 1000? How about the ability to listen to alternative / unpopular viewpoints?

Or the reverse: Could the average person a generation or two ago reach a larger audience than they can today? Are there more taboos?

Do you think that there are more political prisoners today (as a percentage of population) than there were in any previous era?

Of course, there are plenty of people still in the world who would love to curtail the rights of others—for profit, for control, or simply out of a misguided desire to avert "social decline". And if you narrow your gaze to the microscopic, you will find instances where civil rights have diminished in recent years. But in the broad view, the average person has never had access to so broad a spectrum of viewpoints, or such ability to express his own opinions without fear of persecution.

"We have always been at war with Eastasia" crumbles before the might—not of armies, not of kings, not of fascists or communists or religious fundamentalists—of Twitter.

Uh... I meant this:

http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized"

If you look in to it you'll find that it is rather rare to see someone who is homeless 100% by circumstance....

How would you "look into" this kind of thing? Would you trade your clothes for rags and go live on the street to observe? If you did, would you keep things to yourself or write a book so that others did not have to? That would be cool, but you know it's easier to read the last book and the overflowing literature written since about life on the street. When you do, you will drop your judgment like the turd it is. Here's a reasonable opinion by someone who did all of the above:

I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.

What you do from here is up to you, but recognize yourself in those less fortunate. RMS genreally buys people on the street food if they ask him for money. You have to walk them into the place and buy it because only a fool would trust food they did not see made like that. The world is full of people who ignorantly cast blame and would harm them for sport. Such are the extremes of behavior people with means chose.

A "grossly obvious fact" for your consideration: "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." http://www.george-orwell.org/Notes_on_Nationalism/0.html

Three, copyright law has gone way off the rails to the point where it is significantly impairing free speech, innovation, and creativity. Century-long copyright terms, takedown notices to block speech one disagrees with, DRM that seizes control of communications technology, and a tremendous concentration of cultural ownership in the hands of a few companies are bad enough. Strengthening the enforcement of illegitimate and unjust laws only increases the injustice.

I concur. The copyright law is a bright example of laws not serving the people but lobbyists. And, it's going to get worse and worse and worse, until *we, the people* wake up and make a shift in governance which puts the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the government in their place, serving the people.

Serving you and me, listening to our needs, proactively finding ways to support us and make our lives easier, cheaper, healthier and happier.

Currently, *money* is the most important thing to the government. And, government has found ways to collect its money from us, without accountability from our side. We have no control about giving our money or where our money goes. Lobbyists do have that control and they use it to steer the government.

When a shift happens that makes *us, the people, and our well-being* the most important thing for our government, then we will see policies that serve our interests.

This shift will not happen in the government before it happens for most individuals.

What we are seeing is the government acting as a greedy, insecure, vengeful child-king. Our last president was a wonderful illustration of that.

Our own insecurity, greed and separation manifest on a large scale.

Our laws naturally become more and more oppressive until we can't take it anymore and then get eased just enough to avoid violent response. After a while this is the new norm and a more oppressive version gets pushed again, and again and again. We are cornered and the walls are closing in, all the time.

This is how you boil a frog, this is how you enslave people under the illusion of freedom.

And, of course, there's always the power... http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/19.html

The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle which continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen, getting-up time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed -- naked, for a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons annually, and a suit of pyjamas was 600 -- and seized a dingy singlet and a pair of shorts that were lying across a chair. The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had swelled with the effort of the cough, and the varicose ulcer had started itching.

'Thirty to forty group!' yapped a piercing female voice. 'Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to forties!'

Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.

'Arms bending and stretching!' she rapped out. 'Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! ...'

The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of Winston's mind the impression made by his dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercise restored it somewhat. As he mechanically shot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during the Physical Jerks, he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood.

[..] he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles) [..]

'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. [..]

The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One- two! ...'

Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit. [..]

'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and -- one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency -- bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

'There, comrades! That's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

It's a scene from 1984 : Winston's trying to pry stories about pre-Ingsoc England from an old drunk in a pub:

Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'

'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre -- that's all we serve. [...]

'E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.'

If all you've read is "1984", you don't realize what a great commentator he was.

But there's nothing stopping you from finding out.

I personally recommend his Notes on Nationalism

If all you've read is "1984", you don't realize what a great commentator he was.

But there's nothing stopping you from finding out.

I personally recommend his Notes on Nationalism

I'd especially recommend the essays - Politics and the English Language is a classic, and as a rabid anti-Zionist, AntiSemitism in Britain always helps to bring a sense of proportion to any outrage I feel when Israeli misdemeanours~ are reported on the news.

Life imitates art once again.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.

While I accept this this Orwellian vision is not quite the same as the instance contained in the story, it seems the logical conclusion. If a law is secret how can one obey it? If a law cannot be read does it even exist? If we are to be punished for breaking laws that cannot be shown to exist then what hope is there for our Freedoms?

Specialization is nice, but it can go to far. I was thinking of the people whose job it is to process food. For them, food production isn't about feeding their families, it's about maximizing profits and producing units, as though they were making clocks or automobiles or shoes. There's an obvious problem with that -- food is so much more important, as all the poisoned-food-from-China-scares in the US as of late have reminded us. If people were at least closer to the food, so to speak, things would be better. Maybe not everyone needs to be a farmer, but maybe everyone *should* know the person who grows his food, and vice versa.

To start with, maximizing profits and maximizing production leads to cheaper and more plentiful food. The key is in making sure you don't lose quality in the process. Knowing your farmer, however, isn't going to change that - if we, China's best customer, are getting poisoned food from China, what is China giving themselves?

The other thing I was thinking is that people are generally less happy than they were before, at least that's what just about every older person (let's say 70+) I talk to tells me. Why? I'd wager it's at least partly because the pendulum has swung so far from the more agrarian society that existed even 50 years ago.

I'd wager that it's because they're feeling nostalgic and miss when the world made sense to them. Alternatively, it might have less to do with agrarianism and more to do with the fact that we can hear everyone complain more. Think back 50 years ago - how did people learn about each other? They'd have to meet and greet with each other. Nowadays, everyone can be acutely aware of the suffering of children in Darfur, see pictures, and chat with them online. Fifty years ago, the only way you really found out about the horrors of war was if you participated in one. Nowadays, you can find YouTube footage of Chechen rebels shooting Russian helicopters, you get live coverage of air raids from the news... well, you get the idea. Point being, fewer people are living in a self-enclosed Brigadoon-style cocoon, where nothing is wrong in the world, except some stuff that's just really far away.

Now, instead of having time to grow food, we don't even have time to eat healthy food and so we resort to food that is merely convenient.

This actually isn't anything new. Orwell was writing about this in "The Road to Wigan Pier" during the Great Depression. To quote:

When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water.

In short, it's not even an issue of time - the people Orwell was talking about were unemployed. They had plenty of time. They didn't have much money, though, and they had to keep themselves occupied, so instead of eating nutritious food, they ate cheap food with abysmal quality that tasted better. When you're well off, you don't have to choose between "tastes good" and "good for you" - you can get both pretty easily. The poorer you are, though, the more that choice faces you, and, when faced with that choice, 98% of the world will go for "tastes good" each and every time. The way to fix this is by making good food inexpensive and increasing the standard of living. Now, instead of living out of cans of potted meat food product, it's actually cheaper per weig

Specialization is nice, but it can go to far. I was thinking of the people whose job it is to process food. For them, food production isn't about feeding their families, it's about maximizing profits and producing units, as though they were making clocks or automobiles or shoes. There's an obvious problem with that -- food is so much more important, as all the poisoned-food-from-China-scares in the US as of late have reminded us. If people were at least closer to the food, so to speak, things would be better. Maybe not everyone needs to be a farmer, but maybe everyone *should* know the person who grows his food, and vice versa.

To start with, maximizing profits and maximizing production leads to cheaper and more plentiful food. The key is in making sure you don't lose quality in the process. Knowing your farmer, however, isn't going to change that - if we, China's best customer, are getting poisoned food from China, what is China giving themselves?

The other thing I was thinking is that people are generally less happy than they were before, at least that's what just about every older person (let's say 70+) I talk to tells me. Why? I'd wager it's at least partly because the pendulum has swung so far from the more agrarian society that existed even 50 years ago.

I'd wager that it's because they're feeling nostalgic and miss when the world made sense to them. Alternatively, it might have less to do with agrarianism and more to do with the fact that we can hear everyone complain more. Think back 50 years ago - how did people learn about each other? They'd have to meet and greet with each other. Nowadays, everyone can be acutely aware of the suffering of children in Darfur, see pictures, and chat with them online. Fifty years ago, the only way you really found out about the horrors of war was if you participated in one. Nowadays, you can find YouTube footage of Chechen rebels shooting Russian helicopters, you get live coverage of air raids from the news... well, you get the idea. Point being, fewer people are living in a self-enclosed Brigadoon-style cocoon, where nothing is wrong in the world, except some stuff that's just really far away.

Now, instead of having time to grow food, we don't even have time to eat healthy food and so we resort to food that is merely convenient.

This actually isn't anything new. Orwell was writing about this in "The Road to Wigan Pier" during the Great Depression. To quote:

When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water.

In short, it's not even an issue of time - the people Orwell was talking about were unemployed. They had plenty of time. They didn't have much money, though, and they had to keep themselves occupied, so instead of eating nutritious food, they ate cheap food with abysmal quality that tasted better. When you're well off, you don't have to choose between "tastes good" and "good for you" - you can get both pretty easily. The poorer you are, though, the more that choice faces you, and, when faced with that choice, 98% of the world will go for "tastes good" each and every time. The way to fix this is by making good food inexpensive and increasing the standard of living. Now, instead of living out of cans of potted meat food product, it's actually cheaper per weig

Nope, it's more depressing than that.

"He loved Big Brother."

The State doesn't just win by crushing its opponents. That's too easy. It wins by converting its opponents.

That's what was meant by the Inner Party doctrine that "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 do you begin to understand me?"

It's not enough for the Party to merely kill Winston. Dissidents must be made to love Big Brother, or the Party will eventually collapse from within. Winston isn't defeated by his torturers, he is cured by them.

20 years ago, the sort of people who said "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" were dirty filthy rotten Commies. 10 years ago, they were spineless wimps who might say something like that in private, but never in front of a "man on the street" news camera. Today, they're the norm. 10 years from now, they'll Outer Party members helping to make the world a safer place.

I appreciate the idea of guns as a power equalizer. George Orwell described them as inherently democratic, as they give "claws to the weak." Comes from his essay You and the Atomic Bomb. A very interesting read fwiw, particularly (although this is somewhat OT) because you can see him developing the ideas that become 1984. Cheers.

Umm...actually, a quick google reveals that fascism is "a philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism." Nowhere does it mention taking anything by force, as you suggest.
 
Another opinion of yours is that i "vote [my] bozo government out...", and i'd be interested to know which NON-bozo potential candidates YOU would suggest. Should i vote for our last president's wife, a carpet-bagging opportunist who's as 'left' as you are 'incorrect'?
 
You also suggested that we "stop bitching," which is probably pretty similar to what Dubya would say if he became literate and stumbled to this thread. Yes, I've read Orwell, and honestly, nowadays (esp. on /.), who hasn't? (Speaking of Orwell, what did you think of "Keep the Aspidistra Flying"? Or, perhaps, when you said "Orwell," you actually meant "1984.")
 
Next, you enlightened me by saying that the doctrines of socialism and communism are "offensive," when in reality, the ideologies behind them are sound, and even in their corrupted worldly manifestations, some would agree that they tend to be more peaceful than our de mock racy.
 
Finally, he didn't capitalize People; rather, he capitalized Rights of the People. Yes, "people" is a word in that phrase, but to ignore its larger context is to reveal how little you understand. By the way, don't spell capitalize with an "s" please - it gives me shivers. *yes, that last bit was a joke*

How does total garbage like this get marked as insightful

Because it's sceptical of the US government, and everyone knows that scepticism of your government is a sign of intelligence.

The sad thing is that if the grandparent had said the US was rational in having nukes, he would have got modded back to the stoneage.

But saying the same thing about Iran is apparently +5 Insightful. The more I see this, the more I realise that some people, have a sort of anti Nationalism. If Nationalism is "my country right or wrong", anti Nationalism is "my government is always wrong". Never mind that the enemies of the US have much nastier governments with much more evil objectives.

http://www.george-orwell.org/Notes_on_Nationalism/ 0.html
(v) PACIFISM. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure
religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of
life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there
is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted
motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of
totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that
one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings
of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any
means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely
against Britain and the United States.

If you can control what people know, you control what they beleive, and thus how they act. Right to the point where they're not even aware that they're being played.

The Iraq Invasion is a wonderful demonstration of the US Ministry of Truth. There are people in the US currently running around thinking the US invaded Iraq to "liberate" the people, not go after WMD which wasn't there.

You 1st worlders can't see it firsthand, it is so scary to watch.

That is what all good prescriptivists advocate.

Unfortunately, good prescriptivists are few and far between. Most prescriptivists primarily advocate rules which aren't actually useful for improving clarity and are generally impossible to follow precisely without writing things that are incomprehensible. This is, of course, because most of the rules which people routinely violate are the ones which aren't intuitively obvious to them as native speakers because they aren't part of the language.

That's not to say there aren't good prescriptivists, except that they tend to be considered simply people with good taste in writing style, and they always hedge their advice, because there's a situation for almost anything that a native speaker would write, read aloud, and not change. Take, for instance George Orwell. About the most important piece of advice I've ever seen about writing, and one many English teachers would do well to understand, is: "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous."

Did you pull this factoid from thin air or what? I'm just asking, 'cause I've yet to read any accounts from the war indicating significant refusal to obey orders within the republican army. Quite the contrary actually; there was reportedly more soldiers going AWOL on the nationalist side than among the anarchist militias.

I'd recommend reading "The Spanish Civil War" by Antony Beevor or "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell(online: http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/)
for reference and pretty much accurate recounts of what went on during the war.

Thanks for the pointer to Orwell; I quickly found an online version of "Homage to Catalonia" right here.
Should be a good read, me being one of those Damned anarchists and all. ;)

To put this in more direct language, you're saying that the notion that Saddam might have had significant WMD (or programs to produce them) was "mostly unfounded" or "poorly founded".

George Orwell discusses this kind of bullshit language in "Politics and the English Language" http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_Engl ish_Language/0.html -a must-read if you're interested in either politics or writing.

Here is a link to the full appendix about newspeak, often not present in various online versions of the book.

Please read that appendix; it will be one of the most important appendix you will ever read.

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain [United States? Europe?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein [Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing [pseudo?]intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese [Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN? 'world-community'], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many [pseudo?]intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain [United States? Europe?] must be in the wrong. As a result, [pseudo?] 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

One last thing ... I triple double dare you to watch the Iraq torture video clip

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain [United States?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein [Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing [pseudo?]intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese [Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN? 'world-community'], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many [pseudo?]intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain [United States?] must be in the wrong. As a result, [pseudo?] 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

One last thing ... I triple double dare you to watch the Iraq torture video clip

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the
[pseudo?]intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain
[United States?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in
many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the
[pseudo?]intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the
Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly
pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and
there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein
[Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of
Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing
[pseudo?]intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese
[Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not
help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and
wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN?
'world-community'], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics
many [pseudo?]intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by
Britain [United States?] must be in the wrong. As a result, [pseudo?]
'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy.
Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle,
the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

sent to "internal" exile (a la freezing starvation Soviet Gulag or Chinese Communist Laogai )

tortured a la Saddam's Iraq vice "abused"

deprived of their civil rights a la Manzanar

Many mention/imply that the USA is headed in the direction of Orwell's "1984" (perhaps F911 is an example of 1984 techniques in action). However, many are not aware of Orwell's other writings. For example, Notes on Nationalism:

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the intelligentsia [slashdotters?], a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain [United States?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia [slashdotters?], which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein [Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing intellectuals [slashdotters?] did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese [Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN? 'world-community'?], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals [slashdotters?] follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain [United States?] must be in the wrong. As a result, 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

One last thing ... I triple double dare slashdotters to watch the Iraq torture video clip

"truth" might not always be ethical truth "truth" might actually be a deceitful truth

... remember that Dan Randall (the Babylon 5 'news' reporter) was very truthful... he just strung the facts together in an unethically truthful way just like Mike Moore

From "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

From a second "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

From a third "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (spoiler warning)

And finally a fourth "Illusion of Truth" plot summary (minor spoiler warning)

Orwell - his other writings apropos to current events
Many mention/imply that the USA is headed in the direction of Orwell's "1984" (perhaps F911 is an example of 1984 techniques in action). However, many are not aware of Orwell's other writings. For example, Notes on Nationalism:

NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
(i) ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain [United States?] is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the [pseudo?]intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis [Islamo-fascist?] powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein [Iraq? Afghanistan?], or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English [Liberal Western Democracy?] left-wing [pseudo?]intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese [Islamo-fascist groups/countries?] to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia [UN? 'world-community'], or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many [pseudo?]intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain [United States?] must be in the wrong. As a result, [pseudo?] 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

One last thing ... I triple double dare you to watch the Iraq torture video clip