Posted on 06/23/2015 2:54:46 PM PDT by No One Special
It is not too many centurions, particularly 100-year-old-plus writers, whose vision of the world is as relevant today as it was when first shared with the public over half a century ago. It is this vision of Orwell, the X-ray view through the cant, platitudes and lies to that ugliest of human drives, the lust for powers absolute, that still distinguishes the British writer, born 112 years ago this week on June 25, 1903. He was only 46 when he died on January 21, 1950. It is his frightening acuity that keeps him not only in the pantheon but even within the orbit of contemporary consciousness.
This is testament not only to Orwell's talents, but to the unhappy state of the human race. The totalitarian drive, cloaked in cant, platitudes and lies, is more vigorous than ever before, which explains why it is that Orwell's Cassandra cries resonate to this day. Frankly, how much better to live in a world where Orwell gathers dust on the shelf, an antique with nothing to say to us. But that, of course, would be a state of ordered liberty.
While Orwell is most widely famous for his dystopically prescient novels of totalitarianism, 1984 and Animal Farm, also Homage to Catalonia, his memoir of fighting in Spain (ultimately against the Moscow-run Communists purging the Loyalist coalition of non-Communists), his journalistic essays provide a kind of direct access to his ranging thoughts. In 1940, Orwell wrote "Inside the Whale," an essay on literature, noting:
While I have been writing this essay another European war has broken out. It will either last several years and tear Western civilization to pieces, or it will end inconclusively and prepare the way for yet another war which will do the job once and for all.
The counter-"court history" argument of "American Betrayal", of course, is both: WWII tore (Communist-subverted) Western civilization to pieces, which would be further pulverized in the "cold war" to follow.
Orwell:
But war is only 'peace intensified'. What is quite obviously happening, war or no war, is the break-up of laissez-faire capitalism and of the liberal-Christian culture. Until recently the full implications of this were not foreseen, because it was generally imagined that socialism could preserve and even enlarge the atmosphere of liberalism.It is now beginning to be realized how false this idea was.
At least Orwell had begun to realize how false this idea was. He continued:
Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships -- an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction.
Given historical models, the phrase "totalitarian dictatorship" does not conjure up our own increasingly restricted, dictated state of political or public being that is so far is able to exist mainly separate from apolitical life. (It is hard not to notice, however, that the definition of "political" life keeps expanding.) Our "Gulags" are professional, social; however injurious to career or reputation, they do not lead to incarceration, slavery, torture and death, like the real thing . But even without the aspect of physical coercion, Orwell's description of "an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction" is disturbingly familiar.
Orwell, cheery thing, doesn't mince words about what comes next:
The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.
This fits. In fact, collectivism -- totalitarian dictatorship, socialism, progressivism, etc. (don't forget Obamacare) -- depends on it.
As the "autonomous individual" goes, so goes "rugged invidualism." So, for that matter, goes "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And, as individualism disappears, the paternal/nanny/socialist state expands. Sound familar? It's American betrayal meets the death of the grown-up.
From "American Betrayal":
As far back as 1934, The New York Times trumpeted NEW DEAL PATERNALISM IMPERILS ALL INDIVIDUALISM. The article describes a speech by Massachusetts governor Joseph Ely at a conference of America's governors. "There is no stopping short of the end of the road," Ely said, "and at the end of the road we shall have a socialistic state." Invoking Stalin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany--all newly minted dictators--Ely pointed out that where these despots ruled, "individualism had passed from the people to dictators making the people the 'children of government.' "Echoes of de Tocqueville. One century earlier, the French visionary described the infantilizing effect of a paternalistic despotism in America. Imagining the "immense, protective power" of a state with "absolute" power, and likening such power to "parental authority," which keeps citizens in "perpetual childhood," he wondered, "Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?"
It would seem that the mortal blow against the "grown-up"--the free citizen--was struck, softly, once liberty was no longer paramount in this country, once ideology began to take precedence over facts, once we traded in the American ideal of "rugged individualism" for the material markers of "the American dream."
If once upon a time Americans subscribed to our Founders' belief that our Creator endowed us with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there came a time when we expected a package of perks--car, house Play Station--to sweeten the deal. Suddenly, those perks became darn near an entitlement, an attitude entirely befitting the subjects in Tocqueville's absolute state. In fact, measured in material goods as it is, the contemporary "American dream" is a vision driven by the Marxist belief in the primacy of the economic.
American Betrayal tracks these treacherous processes, paying close attention to the rise of ideology over facts. Not surprisingly, it is George Orwell, in an essay called "Looking Back on the Spanish War" probably written in 1942, who tells us when it all got started.
From "American Betrayal":
By 1936, after civil war broke out in Spain, George Orwell could sense a sea change in the writing of history, of news, of information, of the handling of what he called "neutral fact," which heretofore all sides had accepted."What is peculiar to our age," he wrote, "is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written." Or even that it should be, I would add. For example, he wrote, in the Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on World War I, not even twenty years past, "a respectable amount of material is drawn from German sources." This reflected a common understanding--assumption--that "the facts" existed and were ascertainable. As Orwell personally witnessed in Spain, this notion that there existed "a considerable body of fact that would have been agreed to by almost everyone" had disappeared.
"I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, 'History ended in 1936,' at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism generally, but more specifically of the Spanish Civil War." He continued, "I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed . . . I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened."
Then he hits it precisely: "I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines' " (emphasis added).
Ideology over all.
Happy Birthday, George Orwell. If only more could see what you saw so long ago.
ping
Not only inspiring content, but brilliantly written. Kudos.
America is indeed “ ANIMAL FARM “....
America is being farmed, milked, culled, butchered, sold, on the Socialist commodity market..
maybe even BRED, mated, grown, domesticated, and OWNED..
YES;......... I’M talking about YOU.. not someone ELSE...
You are property.. NOW, not later.... NOW..
Question: WHAT are YOU going to do about it..?
She is the best.
“The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.”
The first thing in destroying Individualism is removing the babies from the mother and father. Get them OUT of the Natural Family-—their biological mother and father who will naturally attach (if virtuous) and Love them and will embed humanizing emotions-—just by interactions with each other—male and female being essential to embed Knowledge and Wisdom-—and gain the basic understanding of Truth (Laws of Nature).
Autonomy (self-esteem) is learned by mastering Real Life Skills and learning self-initiative (do it themselves)....schools destroy that and destroy concentration and create dependency and no ability to reflect (the only way to Wisdom). They marginalize Virtue and instill vice on purpose and hyper-sexualize children at inappropriate times to destroy normal sexual identity formation and fixate them in immature stages so they never mature to love the “Other”-—true diversity/maturity.
Remove children from the Natural Family (all day kindergartens and “daycares——Marxist inventions)-—and you dehumanize-—you create a “group” thinker-—one who can NOT use critical thinking skills. Emotions always carry groups......insights don’t embed Virtue when a loving adult isn’t there to guide and nurture. Virtue is learned and habituated—children need to promote Virtue and the right attitudes (emotions) all the time. You NEVER want to have children practice and embed Vice (and evil attitudes) over and over, like a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson did. If an older sibling isn’t guiding the child toward Good, to a more mature action, peers can actually destroy Virtue formation in your child.
It is important to ALWAYS know WHO is influencing your child-—even TV shows can corrupt and embed evil desires or attitudes which today’s TV shows do-—to normalize and glorify vice. (Vice creates Slaves and collapses cultures).
Homosexual Marriage is to normalize the buying and selling of babies, and the removal of all Biological connections will become “Good”, instead of the Evil that it truly is-—all for the dehumanization process.
Study “feral children” from the ex-Communist countries, like Bulgaria-—those countries where the Maternal Instinct of girls was destroyed by the removal of a loving mother in infancy and early childhood—so proper attitudes and loyalty can never exist.
Institutionalization of children is dehumanization and the destruction of Individualism-—so is placing children in front of “artificial” screens (TV) which destroy the integration of the brain, destroys Creativity and Thinking outside the Box as group think factories do, and normal, flourishing growth becomes impossible. Human interactions which teach control of REAL emotions-—and deal with REAL human beings are essential in young children as the Amish always knew.
I would add that there is a whole lot of Brave New World going down too.
Bfl
Conservatives read stuff like 1984, Brave New World, Zamyata’s “We”, and regard them as warnings as to what an ever-growing totalitarian state becomes, as something to AVOID allowing to occur.
Liberals read stuff like 1984 and Brave New World and regard them as blueprints for what they desire to do to their “inferior subjects”.
“I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed . . . I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.”
This summarizes the media campaigns of 2008 and 2012 in a nutshell; a naked foreign Muslim emperor was selected by our overlords and forced on us. Seven years and countless lost jobs and foreclosures later, and still not a peep. European Jews lamented that Hitler was the only one who was honest back then...
And why the military, the manned space program, climate deniers, and the Tea Party must be diminished and de-developed until they are no longer symbols and the path is cleared.
From this link: Exceptionalism and space exploration: a variety of views you'll find a link to her Chapter Spaceflight, culture and ideology - citing academic study after academic study; if you browse it you understand how they fight "rugged individualism" the western, "cowboy" spirit that hangs on and must be removed. [comes from this book: "Societal Impacts of Spaceflight" (2007)]
Yes, I had generally he same idea of American exceptionalism. It is because we are the only nation where the people are sovereign and we are founded on protecting the rights of the smallest minority, the individual. This leads to a nation of doers if the gov. would just get out of the way.
Thanks for the ping!
thanks for the links
bump
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