On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened. It was night, and the white faces and the scarlet banners were luridly floodlit. The square was packed with several thousand people, including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren in the uniform of the Spies. On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.
if there's one flaw in George Orwell's writing, it's that he takes so long to get his point across. I get that the elaborate description he presents here helps sell how ludicrous the situation is, but it's really hard for normies and today's ADHD individuals to read through. there needs to be a condensed version of this book that keeps the spirit of the original.
We truly live in the ashes of civilization. The second part here is an editorial written by an uneducated 19th century English prostitute. Victorian gutter trash makes Ivy League graduates look like drooling primitives.
Continuing to lower our expectations instead of forcing peoples to be uplifted can only hasten western Man's degradation. By this I mean to say, fuck that.
For further examples, look at 19th century exit exams from primary education... an 8th grader in 1905 was expected to know more than a graduate student today.
I’ve often said that my grand parents high school education in the 1910’s and 20’s included Latin. They could read a lot of texts in their original language.
The ability to speak does not make one intelligent. Drawing out your point and padding your book with page-long paragraphs does not make it better, it just makes it dull. There's better flow in the fucking Bible, which I would argue has the opposite problem than Orwell's books.
Instead of attacking your argument, downvoting you, or telling you "You're wrong!" I'll instead take a different approach...
The wordiness isn't just about padding out the descriptions for events and character motivations, feelings, etc., it's about setting a mood and luring the reader into the atmosphere. We call it world-building.
The prose is structured in a way to flow like the melody of classical music. You wouldn't cut off all of the slow parts of a popular piece just to get to the loud or fast parts, because the loud and fast parts need the slow build in order to be appreciated. It's the whole journey that makes the experience worthwhile. It has its strides, its pauses, and the crescendo effect.
The idea is to hook you, so that you follow the melody of the prose so you understand what the outcome of the scenario is in those two paragraphs; you're drawn into how contemptible and disgusting the whole thing is, but you also want to know how it ends. It's about patiently soaking in all of the details.
Orwell was attempting to setup just how believably exaggerated the situation was, but at the same time give people the harrowing image of how easy it is to be roped into authoritarian propaganda that has the throng willing to kill thousands in one second, and then willing switch enemies in the next.
A few simple sentences like, "Eurasia was no longer the enemy. The thousands persecuted now free of guilt's yoke. Eastasia had been announced as our new foes, and no one batted an eye at the proclamation."
Same thing, written differently, and with far less emotional impact.
Now you may think that brevity is the virtue of grabbing one's attention, but the melodic structure of Orwell's prose is what draws you into the world. You can envision the stage, the lighting, the banners, the jeering, the anger, and even the little man with an imposing will making the announcement to people. Simplifying all of that strips away the mood, the atmosphere, the emotion, and in turn, the impact that it has on the reader.
It's not just about length, it's about setting up the scene, making you engaged in what's happening, and then giving you the payoff by eliciting the details.
The entire book is written that way, and it serves a HUGE purpose leading up to Winston's torture and reconditioning at the Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, where we get excruciating details of WHY he changed the way he felt about Big Brother, Julia, and the society in which he lived. Those details were absolutely essential for understanding his psyche and his pain.
All of this is foreshadowed with all of the other minutiae that Orwell paints with exquisite precision throughout the previous chapters of the book. It all helps the reader to accept the payoff in the end: that Big Brother wins.
And when you understand how it all works, it makes it easier to accept Winston's decisions and his place in that totalitarian society.
I doubt this will change your mind about the book, but hopefully it helps lay out the process of why some things are written the way they are.
The original version was 328 pages long, page counts differ depending on the print version, but that's beside the point. Fucking harry potter
books were longer, yet normies and zoomers can quote them verbatim, and point out all the places the movies diverge from the books.
I read the entirety of 1984 in middle school, as well as Animal Farm, no sparknotes. I wrote an essay on both. My issue with Orwell's writing isn't necessarily the length, but rather the complete absence of flow in his writing. Paragraphs would extend well beyond what was necessary as he spews minute details at you. Several paragraphs would be longer than a page. This style of writing makes 1984 read like a brick wall.
Orwell could have made his book 10x as long and more gripping to the reader if he just paced it better.
I honestly don’t understand how the CDC and other public health officials didn’t lose all credibility with the majority of the country when they actually said that protesting is ok while also saying that Covid was a zombie apocalypse
"We are not going to stand in the way of people protesting, as is their right" would have actually been a reasonable stance. It's the favoritism part where anyone protesting against them is "spreading the virus" and should be stopped.
Leftists are wired to value social acceptance above all else. For such people, the ultimate hell is social ostracization; nothing scares a leftist into compliance like the threat of ejection from their leftist in-group. Such a fate is both their greatest pain and their greatest fear.
If you cannot demonstrate a pain or a fear that exceeds the pain and fear they feel when confronted with social ostracization, then nothing you show them matters.
Your sound argument doesn't matter. Your data doesn't matter. Your video evidence doesn't matter. Even when their own ideas create suffering that directly impacts their own lives, leftists will simply take it on the chin and follow their herd - because even death does not scare them as much as exile.
A significant number of people are incapable of intuitive thought. They simply cannot look at a series of events and predict even the most obvious outcome.
As a result they do not believe that anyone else can either. To even suggest that you "know the future" is seen as insanity. Only the present can be known, and memory of the past is too fallible to have any influence on the now.
If only the CDC was actually transparent about their information. Something like "listen, this virus is new, we have no idea how it was made and we're still trying to figure out how it works. The information we give you is based on our best educated guess of how the virus behaves, and it would be appreciated if you're patient with us as we're trying to figure this out.. "
When the delta variant popped up, then going something like "Listen, the Delta variant is extremely contagious, and it's not as dangerous to most people, but because of how contagious it is we' have x y z recommendations."
Stuff like that. But instead the CDC has to make these rules to make it sound like they're 100% sure about their narrative, and they go out of their way to use the federal government to stamp out any other narrative.
If they allowed open discourse we wouldn't be in this shitshow in the first place, but instead they keep trying to stick to their guns instead of telling us they're still trying to figure things out.
That dishonesty is why so many people lost trust in the CDC. Because it's clear they're working by the seat of their pants.
No you dolt, me disagreeing with your methods doesn't make me an evil person, I just think other methods are better.
The same thing is true about environmental policies. While I think pollution and climate change are real issues, it won't be the end of humanity in 20 years like the media makes you think. And viable alternatives to fossil fuels (i.e. nuclear energy) are dismissed
How did you know your neighbor did this? Did he tell you? Did he post it on social media?
The hysteria is entirely performative. People have been conditioned to behave this way because society keeps rewarding them for it. In a vacuum, they aren't scared. They're just lying.
humans have dealt with coronaviruses since the dawn of time
This is the part that scares me: if humanity has survived for hundreds of thousands of years despite countless coronaviral threats, wouldn't the current ongoing series of rushed and unproven interventions threaten to break that winning streak? There are a bunch of theoretically sound scenarios in which leaky vaccines, dirty masks, and international travel create historically unprecedented conditions that allow for a virus to wipe us out.
-1984
Thanks for taking the time to find that specific passage. I need to read the whole thing again soon.
if there's one flaw in George Orwell's writing, it's that he takes so long to get his point across. I get that the elaborate description he presents here helps sell how ludicrous the situation is, but it's really hard for normies and today's ADHD individuals to read through. there needs to be a condensed version of this book that keeps the spirit of the original.
We truly live in the ashes of civilization. The second part here is an editorial written by an uneducated 19th century English prostitute. Victorian gutter trash makes Ivy League graduates look like drooling primitives.
Continuing to lower our expectations instead of forcing peoples to be uplifted can only hasten western Man's degradation. By this I mean to say, fuck that.
For further examples, look at 19th century exit exams from primary education... an 8th grader in 1905 was expected to know more than a graduate student today.
Verily I sayeth unto them that push such contemptible dribble, fuck unto both them and unto that which they presume to decry.
I’ve often said that my grand parents high school education in the 1910’s and 20’s included Latin. They could read a lot of texts in their original language.
The ability to speak does not make one intelligent. Drawing out your point and padding your book with page-long paragraphs does not make it better, it just makes it dull. There's better flow in the fucking Bible, which I would argue has the opposite problem than Orwell's books.
Instead of attacking your argument, downvoting you, or telling you "You're wrong!" I'll instead take a different approach...
The wordiness isn't just about padding out the descriptions for events and character motivations, feelings, etc., it's about setting a mood and luring the reader into the atmosphere. We call it world-building.
The prose is structured in a way to flow like the melody of classical music. You wouldn't cut off all of the slow parts of a popular piece just to get to the loud or fast parts, because the loud and fast parts need the slow build in order to be appreciated. It's the whole journey that makes the experience worthwhile. It has its strides, its pauses, and the crescendo effect.
The idea is to hook you, so that you follow the melody of the prose so you understand what the outcome of the scenario is in those two paragraphs; you're drawn into how contemptible and disgusting the whole thing is, but you also want to know how it ends. It's about patiently soaking in all of the details.
Orwell was attempting to setup just how believably exaggerated the situation was, but at the same time give people the harrowing image of how easy it is to be roped into authoritarian propaganda that has the throng willing to kill thousands in one second, and then willing switch enemies in the next.
A few simple sentences like, "Eurasia was no longer the enemy. The thousands persecuted now free of guilt's yoke. Eastasia had been announced as our new foes, and no one batted an eye at the proclamation."
Same thing, written differently, and with far less emotional impact.
Now you may think that brevity is the virtue of grabbing one's attention, but the melodic structure of Orwell's prose is what draws you into the world. You can envision the stage, the lighting, the banners, the jeering, the anger, and even the little man with an imposing will making the announcement to people. Simplifying all of that strips away the mood, the atmosphere, the emotion, and in turn, the impact that it has on the reader.
It's not just about length, it's about setting up the scene, making you engaged in what's happening, and then giving you the payoff by eliciting the details.
The entire book is written that way, and it serves a HUGE purpose leading up to Winston's torture and reconditioning at the Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, where we get excruciating details of WHY he changed the way he felt about Big Brother, Julia, and the society in which he lived. Those details were absolutely essential for understanding his psyche and his pain.
All of this is foreshadowed with all of the other minutiae that Orwell paints with exquisite precision throughout the previous chapters of the book. It all helps the reader to accept the payoff in the end: that Big Brother wins.
And when you understand how it all works, it makes it easier to accept Winston's decisions and his place in that totalitarian society.
I doubt this will change your mind about the book, but hopefully it helps lay out the process of why some things are written the way they are.
The book is like 200 pages. If that's too long, there's something wrong with you.
The original version was 328 pages long, page counts differ depending on the print version, but that's beside the point. Fucking harry potter books were longer, yet normies and zoomers can quote them verbatim, and point out all the places the movies diverge from the books.
I read the entirety of 1984 in middle school, as well as Animal Farm, no sparknotes. I wrote an essay on both. My issue with Orwell's writing isn't necessarily the length, but rather the complete absence of flow in his writing. Paragraphs would extend well beyond what was necessary as he spews minute details at you. Several paragraphs would be longer than a page. This style of writing makes 1984 read like a brick wall.
Orwell could have made his book 10x as long and more gripping to the reader if he just paced it better.
A generation of learn the test/game not learn the material.
I honestly don’t understand how the CDC and other public health officials didn’t lose all credibility with the majority of the country when they actually said that protesting is ok while also saying that Covid was a zombie apocalypse
"We are not going to stand in the way of people protesting, as is their right" would have actually been a reasonable stance. It's the favoritism part where anyone protesting against them is "spreading the virus" and should be stopped.
Yes. That’s what I meant. It became very clear that they were picking sides
Irrational people only respond to fear or pain.
Leftists are wired to value social acceptance above all else. For such people, the ultimate hell is social ostracization; nothing scares a leftist into compliance like the threat of ejection from their leftist in-group. Such a fate is both their greatest pain and their greatest fear.
If you cannot demonstrate a pain or a fear that exceeds the pain and fear they feel when confronted with social ostracization, then nothing you show them matters.
Your sound argument doesn't matter. Your data doesn't matter. Your video evidence doesn't matter. Even when their own ideas create suffering that directly impacts their own lives, leftists will simply take it on the chin and follow their herd - because even death does not scare them as much as exile.
I don't know how to solve this problem.
A significant number of people are incapable of intuitive thought. They simply cannot look at a series of events and predict even the most obvious outcome.
As a result they do not believe that anyone else can either. To even suggest that you "know the future" is seen as insanity. Only the present can be known, and memory of the past is too fallible to have any influence on the now.
Most people dont pay attention, and regardless want to fit in.
If only the CDC was actually transparent about their information. Something like "listen, this virus is new, we have no idea how it was made and we're still trying to figure out how it works. The information we give you is based on our best educated guess of how the virus behaves, and it would be appreciated if you're patient with us as we're trying to figure this out.. "
When the delta variant popped up, then going something like "Listen, the Delta variant is extremely contagious, and it's not as dangerous to most people, but because of how contagious it is we' have x y z recommendations."
Stuff like that. But instead the CDC has to make these rules to make it sound like they're 100% sure about their narrative, and they go out of their way to use the federal government to stamp out any other narrative.
If they allowed open discourse we wouldn't be in this shitshow in the first place, but instead they keep trying to stick to their guns instead of telling us they're still trying to figure things out.
That dishonesty is why so many people lost trust in the CDC. Because it's clear they're working by the seat of their pants.
Well that would start by admitting that they helped fund and create this variant of the coronavirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihjNDf32_Ac
It also means admitting that the virus is man-made: https://archive.is/Bb7UH
It also means admitting that the "vaccines" were never meant to help anyone and they actually do the opposite: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/israel-shows-what-life-looks-like-at-80-per-cent-vaccinated/100394760
Aww, poor innocent CDC. I feel so bad for them.
Oh wait no they're totalitarian assholes who know exactly what they're doing.
"Are some people too stupid to read in between the lines?" Yes
I'd say two things:
Sensory overload
Ignoring evil is easier then recognising it, because that implies a moral burden to act, it's just easier to look away.
Because humanity is so dense it's a gravitational lens.
"If you don't 100% agree with my authoritarian politics, you want everyone to die!" This is the kind of mentality we're fighting here.
No you dolt, me disagreeing with your methods doesn't make me an evil person, I just think other methods are better.
People will die!
The same thing is true about environmental policies. While I think pollution and climate change are real issues, it won't be the end of humanity in 20 years like the media makes you think. And viable alternatives to fossil fuels (i.e. nuclear energy) are dismissed
How did you know your neighbor did this? Did he tell you? Did he post it on social media?
The hysteria is entirely performative. People have been conditioned to behave this way because society keeps rewarding them for it. In a vacuum, they aren't scared. They're just lying.
This is the part that scares me: if humanity has survived for hundreds of thousands of years despite countless coronaviral threats, wouldn't the current ongoing series of rushed and unproven interventions threaten to break that winning streak? There are a bunch of theoretically sound scenarios in which leaky vaccines, dirty masks, and international travel create historically unprecedented conditions that allow for a virus to wipe us out.
Damnit. Take a drink, everyone. He said the word!