« When a Continental Philosopher Hasn't Heard the News that The War is Over | Main | The European Union's Pivotal Moment: On Brexit and CEU »

11/30/2018

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Michael Kremer

This is excellent.

Clifford Thurlow

Wonderful piece, thank you. One never gets bored being reminded of the genius that is 1984.

rita

excellent piece and now -2023, more timely than even 2018.

Charles Beckett

This exact passage from 1984 has been much on my mind recently, for various reasons, and your analysis of it is very interesting.

I agree that the reaction of the Prole in the cinema tends to imply that Orwell is suggesting a natural human reaction (untainted by Party brainwashing and propaganda) might be compassionate, and should be contrasted with the conditioned attitude of Party members.

But as you say, we witness again and again in our own society how the natural response from many people to this kind of barbarity is either one of outright support or one of total indifference, and that does seem to be an even more bitter and cruel reality than Orwell's dystopian vision.

In some ways, 1984, far from being read as a dystopia, now has to be considered a kind of romantic vision of the human spirit corrupted by totalitarianism when in reality such thorough political and ideological conditioning is ahrdly necessary to produce widespread sadism and cruelty.

Eric Stephen Schliesser

Thank you for your interesting reflections, Charles.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Here's a link to my past blogging (and discussions involving me) at: New APPS.

Categories

Blog powered by Typepad