Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Sunday, July 31. 2016

A final warning from George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen name, George Orwell, remains an iconic figure in literature to this day. He's most famous for writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both books which warn against oppressive totalitarian authority and the nature in which power corrupts. 



Posted by The Barrister in History at 13:05 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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I was just reading ''Mauthausen, The Concentration Camp, 1938-1945'' after visiting the Mauthausen Memorial in Austria. The boot crushing the face is an apt description of the horrors that happened there. It's hard to believe that humans are capable of such atrocities.
#1 LP on 2016-07-31 13:14 (Reply)
No, it's not hard at all to believe he human capacity for doing evil. If you travel the world, visit conflict zones, see some developing world hell holes, or even look at a place that went from modernity to medieval during a fight (e.g. the Former Yugoslavia, with an assist from Iran and the Saudis) then it's all too believable. After a while, what becomes wondrous is not that evil happens, but that so many people and so many places fight against it, rather than allowing the baser motivations to dominate. We all have the potential for great good or great evil. It can happen here.
#1.1 Jablonski on 2016-08-01 12:37 (Reply)
Note that the words are Orwell's, the face and voice are not. Actor's portrayal in a BBC docudrama. Worth watching, of course, regardless.
#2 David Smith on 2016-07-31 15:53 (Reply)
CS Lewis noted that Orwell's focus on sex was generational, rather than consistent with his overall beliefs. Orwell was from a time when anti-Puritanism was a given among intellectuals. Everyone thought that the free expression of sex was going to be the key to defeating evil.

Lewis also greatly preferred Animal Farm to 1984, for reasons he gives here: http://artsandfaith.com/index.php?/topic/27800-1984-vs-animal-farm-c-s-lewis-on-george-orwell/
#3 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-07-31 17:32 (Reply)
Control with pain vs control with pleasure

https://therionorteline.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/huxley-vs-orwell.jpg
#4 juice-qr on 2016-08-02 14:04 (Reply)
ever notice orwell has disappeared from the American educational system.
#5 salg on 2016-08-02 19:10 (Reply)

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