Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, has been accredited with coining truisms that have stood the test of time. They are just as relevant today as they were in the days he lived and wrote the books "1984" and "Animal Farm".
Some say Blair wrote Nineteen Eighty Four as a propaganda assignment from his employers (British Government?). Animal Farm, written during that war is supposedly an allegory of Stalinism and dangers of communism being nothing but a dictatorship by Napoleon types who view themselves as the supreme leader.
Whatever the case, we can ponder his pithy truisms and see that there is more being revealed than may have been initially thought about the world of human affairs and geopolitics. The dirty dozen quotes below speak for themselves.
1. Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
2. Liberal: a power worshiper without power.
3. All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
4. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
5. Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
6. War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
7. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
8. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
9. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
10. Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me.
11. Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.
12. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
13. We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
The following is an excerpt from The Only Words Written By The Finger Of God.
There is a tragic truth found in a story told about a politician who died and, when confronted by an angel, thought he had arrived in Heaven. The politician thought he was saved, but the angel informed him that he had a decision to make first: whether he wanted to go to Heaven or Hell. The politician naturally said that he wanted to go to Heaven. However, the angel said that it would only be right that he got to make a decision once having had the opportunity to compare a day in each place. The politician liked the idea of having options available to him, and then getting to have the final say—so he agreed.
The politician was taken down to Hell first. Together the two of them descended down the stairs. At the bottom, the politician was surprised to see a lush golf course and his friends at the clubhouse. There they joked about their craftiness and the schemes they had engineered. Together they partied and had a riotous time. Time went quickly. Just before he was about to leave, the Devil appeared and put his arm over the politician's shoulder, saying that it was a pleasure to have him join them all. Naturally, he looked forward to seeing him again.
Although the politician was reluctant to leave, the angel took him up the stairs to where they had first met, then up a second flight of stairs to Heaven. The politician was shown a mansion that had been reserved for him and he was given a cloud shaped like his favorite golf cart to travel around Heaven. The politician was engulfed by Heavenly bliss. Riding around Heaven on the cloud was indescribably more blissful than a bubble bath and a relaxing massage, or anything that he had known on Earth.
When the politician’s second day was up, the angel
came and took him down the stairs to the end of the corridor where they first
met, at the stairs intersecting between Heaven and Hell. The politician was
asked where he wanted to go for eternity. The politician thought deeply about
his two options. He finally decided on Hell. He had enjoyed the party with his
friends, and while Heaven was blissful, and felt like the place to be, he just did
not know anybody there.
He was escorted to the entrance of Hell. The Devil was there to meet him. He stepped through what appeared to be a curtain covering the entrance. Instead of the lush golf course, the politician was confronted with a barren, parched wilderness, simmering with heat. In the dark distance, he saw shadows of people thrashing about. He could hear the sound of teeth being gnashed and people wailing, interspersed with spine-chilling screams. Terrified, the politician screamed at the Devil, “The golf course! The country club! My friends! Where are they? What have you done?”
The Father of Lies, looking absolutely delighted with himself, flicked his forked tongue from one side of his mouth to the other, smiled, as only the evil ones know how, and replied, “Oh, that.… You know how it goes…. just part of my campaign to get your vote.”
No comments:
Post a Comment