| (Note: While searching the net
for info on the "The Treason Felony Act
of 1848" for footnotes for the "Along the
Road to a New Europe"essay, I came across links for the full texts
legally online of "1984"
by George Orwell and "Brave New World"
by Aldous Huxley, and decided to put them here as well. I have not had
time to reread either in their entirety, and have not read them since high
school. With "1984"
I remember the plot, and "Brave New World"
sounded interesting and similar to "1984"
by the synopsis of it. I have just reread Chapters1 and 2 of "1984"
though, and found it chilling to be reading it in a place where much of
what it talks about was very real, and its text's existence itself would
have been in other times as illegal and as dangerous to possess as Winston's
diary. It is also chilling to be reading it in a time when its existence
seems very likely to be illegal in many other places in the future, or
if not outright illegal, at least criminally suspect. In fact, leaving
it out there to see who reads it might be considered a good way to see
who might be considered hostile to propaganda or prone to independent thinking.
So much of what it talks about is becoming commonplace, and worse, people
just accept it. Increasing media control, people forgetting or not caring
what they were against or for only a year or two ago, revisions of history
and rehabilitations of leaders overthrown or tarishing recent heroes under
new leaderships, people attempting to write others out of history altogether
and although not as organized as in the book, no less real. Redefining
freedom and liberty to mean less or something else entirely, political
slogans that could easily double for doublespeak, political parties devovling
into cults of personality with less regard for specific or even definable
policies, and people supporting leaders they don't agree with on just about
anything simply because of the images they project, these are just a few
of what is disturbing not just about the book, but how real it has become
all around us, for those who bother to try to step back from or turn off
the propaganda machines set on overload, and try to remember and hold on
to a past where this was not the case, though that past is becoming increasingly
irrelevant as it is twisted around every retelling. With better archieving,
you would think that is no longer the case, but people only care about
what they are told today, and less about what was before. You need not
brainwash them any longer, only deluge them with useless and pointless
information, require them to constantly have to relearn to do the same
tasks differently just to keep them busy, and leave them little time to
get to think, not that people are ever predisposed to want to do that in
the first place anymore. Like nearly everyone in the book, we have been
conditioned not to, for it only gets in the way, and leads only to less
happiness because we too have begun to accept that change for the better
about this is impossible, or that it will ever be any other way, and soon
even forget or care it ever was any other way.)
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/ http://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/brave_new_world/
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