George Orwell was an anti-technology crank

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Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

I dunno OP, he's pretty critical of anti-technology folk.

On Ghandi:

quote:

The things that one associated with him--home-spun cloth, "soul forces" and vegetarianism--were unappealing, and his medievalist program was obviously not viable in a backward, starving, over-populated country.

I don't agree with him on many things, being that hes a possibly closeted homophobe living in a different time period to me but he's still basically the best political writer our lovely little paedo-islands produced.

e: The end of Road to Wigan pier is loving amazing too, it was published by a left wing radical organisation and he decided to make the last half of it a massive iceburn on British socialists and radicals. At one point he specifically mocks "Welwyn-garden socialists" which is precisely what I am.

What I liked about him so much was he could clearly see some sort of socialism was objectively better than what we have and pretty much took the position that everyone would be more on board with it if the people preaching it weren't all weirdos to a man.

Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Mar 24, 2016

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 15:17

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:30

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Gonna use this as an impromptu Orwell thread, since I was reading loads of his stuff online again the other day and wanted to post about what a G he was, so I'll quote some good bits from some good essays. I have to sort out the formatting every time so gently caress long quotes, read the essays!

http://www.george-orwell.org/You_and_the_Atomic_Bomb/0.html

quote:

There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only three--ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years, and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon--or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting--notdependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.

Oh whoops, Orwell just predicted the rise of international terrorism.

http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Hanging/0.html

quote:

And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working--bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues
forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned--reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone--one mind less, one world less.

All his Burmese occupation stuff is well worth reading and if you read one essay on socialism, espeically if you're a British leftist it should be this one:

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Lion_and_the_Unicorn:_Socialism_And_The_English_Genius/0.html

Like I said I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but he sort of has this core of socialist/humanist pragmatism I find very interesting and think is a much more effective way to "sell" leftism to the public.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 15:38

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