Which we now know in hindsight is nonsense - the old oppressors are still there and never lost power It's 36 years after 1984 irl and we very much do still have capitalists, they aren't some ghostly memory of guys in top hats and tuxes
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
And that's why all the stuff in 1984 that aged poorly grates so much The paeans to common sense, to the past, to the memory of traditional ways of life People in the past had access to real truth and only the Party has destroyed it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
It's execrable stuff honestly Stuff that Orwell, in his earlier writing about people like Lewis (or like Wodehouse and Dickens) didn't believe There was an Orwell who saw how tacky and hollow and exploitable nostalgia is and it's a different guy than the one who wrote 1984
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
But I mean yeah If all you had was 1984, out of context, you could easily put it on the shelf next to Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man A Christian reading 1984 has no trouble seeing it as a defense of Christian faith against doubt
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
That's the whole problem You spend all this time warning me about people trying to kill my natural conscience and my basic common sense and my born capacity for reason Then it turns out some people think all of that shit leads to the Bible as the revealed Word of God
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
Turns out someone like Orwell, who thinks of that as superstitious nonsense holding people back, can't argue against it without asking you to question everything that seems obvious to you that underlies your worldview Which 1984 sloppily implied is something only bad guys do
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
It's a quandary It's why 1984 is a very powerful and evocative novel but as an argument of any kind it's not that great Tailor-made for the "I AM RATIONAL AND YOU ARE BRAINWASHED, WAKE UP SHEEPLE" chuds we now live with every day
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
Good stuff, Arthur. Undoubtedly wasted on the chuds, but good nevertheless. What early Orwell would you suggest people read, to illuminate all this?
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Replying to @mileshuman @CorwinRowlette and
Why I Write and Homage to Catalonia, along with the reviews of Wodehouse and Dickens I mentioned (the takedown of Lewis isn't really as in depth as I'd like it to be) His article about Boys' Weeklies, the one about Hitler ("I have never been able to dislike Hitler")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
This review of Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”? Or something else? http://lewisiana.nl/orwell/
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Nah his response to Mere Christianity (The fact that this review of That Hideous Strength doesn't say that much except that it's a fun story and a well written novel that kind of falls apart at the end indicates his dislike of Lewis cooled off afterwards)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mileshuman and
I guess it wouldn't be Mere Christianity but The Case for Christianity (the first of a series of radio talks that were turned into pamphlets that then became a collection called Mere Christianity in 1952, after Orwell died)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @CorwinRowlette and
In “Orwell: The Lost Writings”? That’s all my googling has come up with so far …
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