The Unbearable Usefulness of George Orwell

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink." - from George Orwell's 1984


From The BlogProf. Thanks. Maybe we shouldn't have sent those Russian spies packing so quickly—which reminds me—how come it is almost impossible to send home other undesirables or at least takes a very long time? The Russian spies might have been useful in instructing us commoners in the way of reading Pravda in order to get at the truth.

From Eric Arthur Blair's "1984"

Perhaps better known as George Orwell: this quote is from his popular novel 1984.

"The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this."

The Wiki article on Orwell is good reading. I knew that he had died fairly young in 1950 but I didn't know that the cause of death was tuberculosis.

I couldn't resist adding these quotes, mainly for my own edification:

Rules for writers

"In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell provides six rules for writers:^[44]

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
• 
  
• —from Wikipedia on George Orwell
  

From Irony to Reality in Less than A Lifetime

When our kids were all supposed to be reading Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, who could have guessed that in addition to those classics they really needed to be reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in order to perhaps understand a little of what seems to be happening in the USA right now. I was reminded of this by an article by Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Jounal online.

I would be elated if my children and especially my grandchildren would recognize what the question "Who and Where is John Galt?" means.

My teachers all grew up in the 20s or before, so they apparently didn't know about them though Orwell was published in the late 40s. Those were the good old days. I didn't read Orwell until sometime in the 70s and Rand only very recently.

We seem to be living in interesting times. Isn't that supposed to be a Chinese curse? Even though Wikipedia can't find the Chinese source, the translation into English has found wide usage among those who consult quotation sources. According to Mr Google, bloggers, essayists and journalists all like to use it, and that is only on the first page of references.