Was George Orwell a Prophet ?

You mean Anthony Burgess.

 

You mean like how it is now our "Patriotic Duty" to give up individual liberty for temporary security - in the land that was founded on "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" ?

Or how about .. when Obama changes the name of the act that takes away liberty to the equally Orwellian doublespeak "Freedom Act"

Nothing Orwellian about that oh no.

Or how about how we figured it was somehow a good idea to arm Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria with sophisticated weapons .. like manpads and other crazy stuff to fight a proxy war against the Bad Assad ... the dude that we used to send people (some of which turned out to be innocent - Mahir Arar) for torture ! extra ordinary rendition.

Hearkening back to Bush "We will not only go after the terrorists but their supporters" ... does this mean we should arrest daddy Bush as he was Supporting Saddam when he was dropping chemical weapons on people.

Then we are bombing Assad - our buddy who used to torture people for us - for using chemical weapons "supposedly" although he did a pretty poor job of it.
Generally when a nation state used chemical weapons there are thousands killed - Like when our buddy Saddam did it with our assistance.

Assad only killed "dozens" ... talk about pathetic.... Seems that lad who was shown in the "white helmut -Al Qaeda Affiliates" propaganda video is alive and well and never did have any exposure to poison gas. He did however explain how he got cookies and dates after they poured water on him and filmed him for seemingly no reason.

Having trouble keeping up ? Me too.

 

Preaching to the choir my friend. In our brave new world, and ultimate nation of Oceania.

Maybe we should check the barn to see if the motto has changed.

 

That's what many people think. However, unfortunately they have already developed technologies (mainly computer artificial intelligence algorithms) to be able to recognize things and automatically database it, without any human involvement whatsoever. There are vast stores of all this data, so that if someone wants to they can go back and see what you did four years ago, on a specific day. In other cases the recognition algorithms can trawl an immense database and find what they're looking for.

Let me give you an example. You are assuming that all this information is like one giant library, and they couldn't possibly find a needle in a giant stack of hay. However, today we have internet searches. You can type a phrase and instantly find the exact book, out of millions of books, that the phrase originated from.

Software programs have already been designed that can take all the information that someone might be interested in and automatically organize it, in a very easily accessible fashion. This collaboration between human and computer drastically reduces the number of human labor hours required, making it possible for a very small number of people to do things that would have been completely impractical 20 years ago. It no longer takes lots of resources to track people.

It's already almost scary how for-profit corporations are mining customer data. You don't have to watch this, but the following video shows an investigative reporter walking into a store, a tiny pinhole camera captures an image of her face, connects the face to the picture on her facebook profile, and then all that data of which sites she visited are harvested. It even knows what her phone number is because she had to enter that for a backup recovery password on one of her accounts that was connected to her name. So now, just by taking a picture of a random stranger, it sends an advertisement text to her cellphone with a targeted product the program predicts she will likely be interested in. All this done instantly without a human ever doing anything.

 

Orwell's French teacher was closer to being a prophet, I think.

http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/

 

I think the West has become a combination of 1984 and Idiocracy.

 

Orwell wasn't necessarily a prophet as much as he was WARNING people what might happen in the future.

In the context of the period he wrote 1984 after World War II, we can see that Hitler rose to power using media propaganda with Joseph Goebbels' expertise. My generation was required to read 1984 in state run schools - locally. Even then the media was much more fair than today with only a few sources and outlets, but now with many sources and adults that have never read or understood Orwell, we have a totally propagandized media MOSTLY owned by a single political party. That would be democrats for those not paying attention.

We also now have corrupt bureaucrats picking and choosing which political candidate to forgive crimes and choosing to try and remove the opposing party's candidate from office. That's fascism and 3rd word crap, just like Orwell predicted would happen in a complacent and ignorant society. "2 + 2 = 5" or whatever you were told it equaled.

Steve

 

Depends on what you mean by prophet. Me, I demand a bit more than mere extrapolation from current data sets which is what in essence Orwell did though he got the direction wrong. Totalitarianism will always come from the left. This idea that you have to control everything everyone says thinks or does is an inherently leftist idea as is the notion of Utopia. For too many of the left's deep thinkers the idea of a perfect society is a chimera that must be pursued no matter how many people have to die in the process. The thing is nothing is ever going to be perfect because nothing on this planet has ever come even remotely close to acquiring the necessary prerequisites to perfection.

Since the left cannot and will not trust God they will move further from perfection instead of closer to it until the whole ramshackle mess collapses from it's own inherent contradictions.

 

Its learned idiocy though. The machine has become very adept at producing drone sheeple.

I mean come on ... 12 years of school and we manage not to teach a kid what a valid argument is - never mind how to construct one.

Think on that ? 12 years and nary a mention of what a logical fallacy is ... or the main principle on which this nation was founded.

Do you think this is accidental ?

 

The "Prophet" comment was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek. He did however get a whole lot right on prophetic proportions.

The use of terms like "Left" when discussing totalitarianism are far too vague and meaningless. . What I think you are meaning to say is strict socialism (where Gov't owns all resources and means of production). While the left veers in this direction on the spectrum - very few dems want the state to control all resources and means of production.

The use of the term Left in relation to totalitarianism then assumes a black vs white backdrop which does not take into account that there is a whole lot in between.

One term you can use is "Utilitarianism" - This is justification for law on the basis of "what will increase happiness for the collective". This doctrine completely ignores individual liberty. The other problem is "who gets to decide" ? One mans poison is another mans pleasure. This ideology is totalitarian - pretty much by definition.

This justification for law has reached plague proportions in this nation. Example "If it saves one live" or "Harm reduction" as justification for law. If saving one life is a valid justification for law then we should ban skiing tomorrow - would this not save one life ? How about boating - that is really dangerous - one could drown. Forget driving a car and one should not rise from bed in the morning as one might fall and break neck.

Both Red and Blue use such arguments on a regular basis.

While I agree that strict socialism can lead to totalitarianism. The claim that totalitarianism always comes from "the left/socialism" is simply not true.

Throughout history there were many forms of totalitarianism that came from other places. Divine Right/ God says so or Pontifex Maximus are examples of justification of totalitarianism. I would venture to say that this is a more common path to totalitarianism than socialist ideology.

Look at Saudi Arabia for example and other Muslim nations. The cast system in India was another form of totalitarianism.

Another example that comes from a different place than either of the aforementioned was the feudal system.

 

Nobody ever heard of Burgess but many people have told me that Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was the worst movie they ever saw.

 

Lol...Even a stopped clock is a prophet- twice a day.
And the problem with society today in the west is a surfeit of personal liberty.
Everyone whines about their rights and ignores their responsibilities.

 

Orwell got a whole lot more right than that. Your analogy is nonsense.

Then you claim that the problem with the west is an excess of personal liberty. Now sure what cave you just came out of but individual liberty has been under attack in the west for decades.

If you want a quazi totalitarian police state .. you are welcome to your opinion. I just do not share it.

 

I don't remember noticing any anti-right, or left, slant to the book. I think it is just generically anti-totalitarian. Totalitarianism can come from the left and the right. I'll revisit the book with the objective of discovering a political slant.

On the other hand, the seldom discussed gem "Animal Farm" is decidedly anti-left.

 

There are no right wing totalitarians, though their are right wing dictators. The difference is that in the main as long as you don't mess with them they won't mess with you and generally as long as you keep it to your self and don't threaten the stability of their reign such as it is they won't give a damn what you think

 

Orwell did warn what "might" happen in the future. Why this was prophetic is that this is what is happening.

The MSM - while more slanted against Trump than for the Dems - is owned and controlled by the Establishment. The establishment is neither red nor blue but both. Both worship the Establishment agenda. The Establishment consists of international financiers, the Political elite and bureaucratic elite.

Orwell described a propaganda state and a surveillance state. Check and Check - It actually became legal for our intelligence agencies to create and disseminate propaganda on US citizens in 2013 (not that they were not doing this before).

In addition the Establishment is working hard to censor any perspective that conflicts with the Establishment narrative.

There is no fair and free MSM in this nation.

https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/msnbc-where-journalism-goes-to-die/
.
This is not the exception - its the Rule. How is it that international financiers (via the Board of Directors) can meddle directly with our electoral process and no one says boo...

Yet - a few Russians place a few facebook adds (all that I have seen either posted the truth or made fun of something) .. and we spend massive amounts media time over months - going on years - claiming how much we care about election meddling ?

One piece of doublespeak that confounded me was hearing the pundits claim (and of course this claim went unchallenged) that the WIKI leaks which proved that Hillary/DNC were meddling with our election process in relation to Sanders - HARMED our electoral process.

Perhaps you can explain this to me - no one has yet - How exactly did a voter knowing the TRUTH about the Hillary/DNC election meddling harm our electoral process ?

Up is down and down is up/ right is wrong and wrong is right.

CNN "the most trusted source in News" - is not news. Rule 1 of Journalism school "thou shalt not editorialize" = give your opinion. That's all CNN is these days ..a bunch of partisan pundits sitting around a table giving their partisan and jaded opinions ...completely bereft of objective analysis.

Orwell describes a world where constant war is used to heighten fear. Fear of an external threat as justification to trade security for liberty being the oldest trick in the book.

"Iran is the #1 State Sponsor of Terror" - this is preposterous nonsense. Iran is no Cherub but, it does not even come close to Saudi Arabia (or the US for that matter).

"The Russians are coming" - No there not. We are the one's surrounding Russia with military bases and Anti ballistic missiles. We are the one's destabilizing nuclear detente and provoking Russia.

Assad is a bad guy - So what - there are many "bad guys" in the world. The fact of the matter is that the Opposition Rebels are far worse ( Al Qaeda, ISIS and other groups of the same ilk). What are we doing on the side of those ghouls ?

How is it that congressmen can stand up and say "We are fighting along side Al Qaeda/ISIS" and the MSM goes silent ? ... Should this not be front page news on every newspaper and leading story of every network "Rand Paul Accuses Obama of arming and supporting 911 terrorists"

We still fight on the same side as Al Qaeda in Yemen. Which is why we hear almost nothing about this war that we have been involved in for 3 years. When Yemen is mentioned ... its always "Iran is sponsoring terror". OK ... lets not challenge that one.

 

can you please explain to me what Snowden exposed from the Obama administration?

 

Well actually not some time back I proposed a line that ran from anarchism on the right, to totalitarianism on the left, the more rules, laws, and regulations you want the more closely you approach totalitarianism. What you describe are really rather far from anything I would call totalitarian societies. Saudi Arabia in some respects reminds me more of the sort agreements the so-called bretheren of coast signed back in the Great Age of Sail in other respects it is quite socialist.

 

Totalitarianism in Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with religion. The fact that there is some wealth redistribution is a function of the fact that the Saud is a giant monopoly.

Totalitarianism is typified by a lack of respect for individual liberty. Saudi Arabia is a Totalitarian police state with Sharia police on every corner monitoring behavior. It is far worse than Hitler's Germany (sans the killing of Jews - because there is none).

The Political elite on the right in this nation hate individual liberty and loves big Gov't, Big Gov't spending and wealth redistribution. They hate limitations to Gov't power.

 

We are on the same page.

"Corrupt bureaucrats" = Establishment. Some people just ignore words like establishment so I prefer the stronger version.

Propaganda = "2 + 2 = 5" or whatever they told you it equaled. No logic is required. "Its a beautiful thing, Winston," says Syme.

If people learned critical thinking skills, then we likely wouldn't be in this situation now.

Steve

 

you mean from the Bush admin, the warrentless wiretaps and patriot act

 

So are you claiming in 2009 when Obama came to office, he immediate scrapped the programs? Or did it take a leak 4 years later just to expose?

 

Oh and Obama ADDED to them. Expanded surveillance

 

I think we must be, for a multitude of reasons- mostly the diminishing ability of people to use reason and the mental faculties that allow us to control our lives.
Orson Welles (no connections to George wells), once played a show on radio about a martian invasion, and millions of people bought the story as real and were freaking out.
We have the freaking out going on today that is just as illogical, with people promoting fear, conspiracies that never existed, making up stories to destroy people, and in general disregarding the damage they do to the nation in the meantime. Could be what George Wells spoke of may be secondary to the looney parade on today's left.

 

Learned stupidity does seem to be the rule ... no thanks to your education system which through 12 years of school can not manage to teach the main principle on which this nation was founded - That individual liberty is above the legitimate authority of Gov't.

If asked "do you think Gov't power should be limited" ... everyone always answers Yes Yes !!

Ask them .. OK What should Gov't power then be limited to .. and you will get the classic dear in headlights response.

The loony left however is not the only problem. The Establishment elite consists of both Red and Blue.