Like a story can literally beat someone over the head with a theme or moral and people somehow come to the opposite conclusion?

It’s like “Tyler Durden is so manly and cool” except every bit of media feels like it’s misinterpreted like that now.

  • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    19 days ago

    Right at the beginning of the book, it says most of the surveillance state is pointed at government employees and that it doesn’t matter too much what the average workers say and think. But for some reason, nobody responds well when I remind them of that.

    • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      33·
      19 days ago

      Yeah 1984’s assessment of the average worker is basically that they are meat robots who have no effect on the world and that it doesn’t matter what they do or think because nobody does or should give them or their affairs the slightest thought

      Orwell was a “socialist” though agony-shivering

      • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        27·
        19 days ago

        Bri*ish socialism has always been deeply aristocratic at its core and Orwell can’t help but exemplify that colonial cop mentality in his writing

            • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              15·
              19 days ago

              I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a super­abundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it.

              Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President’s speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views, and insists on the scientific reorganisation of human society. Your class-war propaganda has not kept pace with these facts. Mentality changes.

              goddamit, yet another tally in the “modern US is where Britain was a century ago” column

              • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                16·
                19 days ago

                Stalin: The Communists base themselves on rich historical experience which teaches that obsolete classes do not voluntarily abandon the stage of history.

                Recall the history of England in the seventeenth century. Did not many say that the old social system had decayed? But did it not, nevertheless, require a Cromwell to crush it by force?

                Wells: Cromwell acted on the basis of the constitution and in the name of constitutional order.

                i-cant

              • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                14·
                19 days ago

                "The material conditions are such that the treatlerite strata of society is demanding more treats because their treat allocation has been somewhat reduced.

                Therefore a materialist analysis of the political situation is uncalled for given that these people are demanding more treats. Also I got invited to the king’s court to speak to him, which further proves my point somehow. The only conclusion that can be gleaned from this is that class conflict, which is based on material conditions, can be abandoned as it is deprecated by the current material conditions and it is trumped by the centrality of idealism."

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      19 days ago

      Oh that’s interesting. I’m gonna use that next time.

      I read 1984 when I was young so it’s been a long time and I never really got into it so it didn’t leave a big enough impression on me that I could recall more than the broad brush strokes so this is handy info to have at my disposal.

      At the risk of coming off as stuffy, I’m not a big fan of the internet neologisms because they’re kinda cringey and we already have so many good euphemisms that we could use instead. (I guess it says something about literacy when the discourse demands a single word replacement which is prosaic instead of using something that has a little bit of metaphorical flair to it.) It always baffles me that someone who is mildly opposed to those neologisms, who refuses to use them, and who also is a very vocal critic of Orwell that takes any opportunity to shit on him ends up being the #1 defender of Orwell’s work and of internet neologisms.

      I really don’t want to be in that position lol

      • Wheaties [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        19 days ago

        Honestly… I never finished it. Made it through the first coupla chapters for a high school class, and I bullshitted my way through the rest of the group discussion. From what I gathered, I had read more of it than most of the other students.

        • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          19 days ago

          I did finish it but it was a hell of a grind and there was nothing notable about the final act that it left any impression on me so I doubt you missed out on anything.

          1984 really felt like Orwell had a hot idea for a dystopia so he wrote the world and then… idk that was about it. The End.

          • LeninWeave [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
            7·
            19 days ago

            1984 really felt like Orwell had a hot idea for a dystopia so he wrote the world and then… idk that was about it. The End.

            It’s worse, he really hated the Soviet Union and used any tiny excuse or premise he could invent as an opportunity to “criticize” it, including during WW2 (notably, he did not do this to the fascists of the time). You can tell because he truly tortures the plot and setting of 1984 to make sure you couldn’t possibly mistake the antagonists for fascists or any other ideology than his warped view of the USSR. If you haven’t read the Isaac Asimov review of 1984, it’s worth reading. He makes this point a lot better than I could.

            • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              19 days ago

              The review you mentioned, in case anyone wants to read it.

              I know that everyone here is probably already aware of this but, on the odd chance that someone isn’t already, did you know that Orwell not only straight up plagiarised the concept for the story of Animal Farm but he also decided that, instead of the story being an anti-nazi, it would be better if it was an anti-Soviet parable instead?

              Never ask:
              a man his salary
              a woman her age
              an enby whether they’re a man or a woman
              Eric Arthur Blair how he felt about Hitler

      • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        19 days ago

        I find it so weird how people don’t just use sayings, like “punched his own ticket” or “caught the bus” or something new, and instead make a coinage that is comically crass in its grasp on language (De-alived would be more appropriate, for example).

        • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          19 days ago

          I’m really partial to “clocking out early” but I’m totally with you on this.

          I haven’t looked into this but my hunch is that since it’s very online terminology that it’s probably an adaptation of unsubscribe, hence the un- prefix.