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I'd read a fair amount of stuff, but today I started The Road to Wigan Pier and found some views of his that were, to say the least, surprising:quote:There is probably no one capable of thinking and feeling who has not occasionally looked at a gas-pipe chair and reflected that the machine is the enemy of life. quote:You have only to look about you at this moment to realize with what sinister speed the machine is getting us into its power. To begin with, there is the frightful debauchery of taste that has already been effected by a century of mechanization. This is almost too obvious and too generally admitted to need pointing out. But as a single instance, take taste in its narrowest sense--the taste for decent food. In the highly mechanized countries, thanks to tinned food, cold storage, synthetic flavouring matters, etc., the palate is almost a dead organ. quote:In a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned foods, aspirins, gramophones, gaspipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc., etc.; quote:People invent new machines and improve existing ones almost unconsciously, rather as a somnambulist will go on working in his sleep. In the past, when it was taken for granted that life on this planet is harsh or at any rate laborious, it Seemed the natural fate to go on using the clumsy implements of your forefathers, and only a few eccentric persons, centuries apart, proposed innovations; hence throughout enormous ages such things as the ox-cart, the plough, the sickle, etc., remained radically unchanged. I still admire him a great deal for the stuff he's written about socialism and tyranny, but I was not expecting a guy like him to go full on Old Man Yells At Cloud mode.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:22
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This one's particularly funny:quote:People invent new machines and improve existing ones almost unconsciously "They're barely even trying!!"
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Mar 24, 2016 03:24
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Thanks for your observation that a celebrated writer and intellectual of 20th century was not toeing the line with the goonsensus of technological optimism, OP.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:30
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Cicero posted:This one's particularly funny: fspades posted:Thanks for your observation that a celebrated writer and intellectual of 20th century was not toeing the line with the goonsensus of technological optimism, OP.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:43
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Polybius91 posted:My title was admittedly a bit provocative, but that doesn't mean I'm not hearing the other side's arguments. Well, I think of all the historical moments when it might be reasonable to give a little technophobia a pass, 1937 probably ranks pretty high. E: to clarify, advances in military technology (machine guns, artillery, etc.) was supposed to make a European war unthinkable - instead, it practically just cut down a generation of young men, and then the Western world was immediately plunged into the sort of desperate poverty that industrial production was supposed to eliminate through unprecedented surplus. Watching these things result in the rise of fascism in Germany must have painted a very bleak picture of the 'progress' that Europeans had convinced themselves was inevitable. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 03:51
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Cicero posted:This one's particularly funny: I think he's saying more along the lines of something whose idea has come. "If man realizes technology is within reach, he achieves it, like it's drat near instinctive."
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Mar 24, 2016 03:54
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Juffo-Wup posted:Well, I think of all the historical moments when it might be reasonable to give a little technophobia a pass, 1937 probably ranks pretty high.
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Mar 24, 2016 04:03
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To be fair, a lot of that is just slightly saltier bitching about the same things that people here bitch about all the time. People whine about fast food being unhealthy and gross, cars wrecking society, etc. Like, I'm looking at this quote in particular:quote:In a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned foods, aspirins, gramophones, gaspipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc., etc.; And the truth is that we probably should have been a little more pessimistic about certain technologies. Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much or giving too much credit to a cranky old dude's nearly century old writing, but a lot of those quotes read more like complaints about technological optimism than technology itself.
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Mar 24, 2016 04:03
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Perhaps it is significant that the most talked-of English murder of recent years should have been committed by an American and an English girl who had become partly Americanized. But it is difficult to believe that this case will be so long remembered as the old domestic poisoning dramas, product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them.
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Mar 24, 2016 05:34
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JFairfax posted:Perhaps it is significant that the most talked-of English murder of recent years should have been committed by an American and an English girl who had become partly Americanized. But it is difficult to believe that this case will be so long remembered as the old domestic poisoning dramas, product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them. What?
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Mar 24, 2016 10:32
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drilldo squirt posted:What? That's a quote from another Orwell essay. Orwell did have dumb opinions sometimes. He could be pretty sexist, for example. quote:One of the surest signs of his [Joseph Conrad's] genius is that women dislike his books. That said, his columns hold up better than those of most op-ed writers today. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 14:36
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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 |
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Mar 24, 2016 15:17
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nopantsjack posted: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. How quickly Hobbes is forgotten.
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Mar 24, 2016 15:19
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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. 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.
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Mar 24, 2016 15:38
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Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
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Mar 24, 2016 16:20
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In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
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Mar 24, 2016 16:23
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As long as we're posting the stuff from Orwell we like, I can't read this one without thinking of the right-wing media:quote:“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting…It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.”
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Mar 24, 2016 19:37
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Polybius91 posted:I still admire him a great deal for the stuff he's written about socialism and tyranny, but I was not expecting a guy like him to go full on Old Man Yells At Cloud mode. Oh you probably rub your hands together with glee at the decline of pub culture and it's displacement by off-licenses- yeah, "all those people in The Moon Under Water are just old men yelling at clouds" while you sip your bacardi breezer from tesco on your enclosed land, which your bloody ancestors got from some cooper forced to become a laborer in london because of a goddamned machine.
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Mar 24, 2016 20:38
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Technology is for nerds imo
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Mar 24, 2016 20:43
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I should probably clarify that nerds are bad
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Mar 24, 2016 20:43
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^^^ Bring back bullying. We would have less MRA's shooting people if we reminded them of their place. edit: Nerds gently caress up the world trying to reconcile their feelings of impotence with feelings of entitlement. We can't do anything about the former, but getting rid of the latter just requires a regimen of leftist-administered beat-downs #orwellwasright Dilkington fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 20:50
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R. Mute posted:Technology is for nerds imo R. Mute posted:I should probably clarify that nerds are bad Not sure what the intended level of irony is when you post this on the Internet.
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Mar 24, 2016 21:54
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Silver2195 posted:Not sure what the intended level of irony is when you post this on the Internet. 
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Mar 24, 2016 22:04
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Dilkington posted:^^^ You would poo poo your pants before considerig physical conflict. STFU.
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Mar 24, 2016 23:31
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Orwell was the Christopher Hitchens of his time, a right winger claiming to be a Trotskyist while trying to undermine the left movement in England and supporting imperialism but he if he made the point that the technology of the last century brought more grief than alleviated it he would be right.
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Mar 24, 2016 23:34
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hmmm looks like this "orwell" guy was a pretty smart cookie e: technology has improved and made possible literally billions of lives (eg the entire chemical industry), but its also ruined a load and is going to drown the planet otoh florida will be one of the first to go so maybe it's good after all XMNN fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 00:49
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Fast, cheap, and out of control
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Mar 25, 2016 01:33
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Orwell wasn't bashful about using a good modern typewriter though, the Remington Home Portable wasn't for playing around
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Mar 25, 2016 02:14
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If I lived in a time that was in the aftermath of a ruinous war made magnitudes worse by the possiblities of mass production, when futurists, fascists and nazis poured out of the woodwork celebrating the wonders of speed and machinery married to war and nationalism, when the working class lived in sprawling slums made possible by the factories that polluted the air they breathed and had, within living memory, employed children in the apalling conditions their parents still toiled in, I'd be rather pessimistic about technology as well. Truth be told, I don't know where this back-slapping, warmly humanistic optimism about technology comes from, even in a modern context. For all that advances in medicine have saved lives and transportation and telecommunications have closed vast distances, many of the technologies we take for granted were first used to kill people en masse or are being used for surveillance, or were developed through unethical means in the first place. Not to mention that the relentless march of progress we're all meant to be so proud of is destroying the planet by increments and allows a small and exclusive club of bellicose, imperialistic nations to end the world with nuclear fire at a moment's notice. You just need to look at the current crop of Silicon valley utopians and their insane, often perverse, prejudiced and outright reactionary ideas to see where such an attitude of unconstrained glee for the wonders of technology can get you.
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Mar 25, 2016 02:39
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TomViolence posted:
Because stagnation is even worse.
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Mar 25, 2016 02:45
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Technological progress is pretty cool. Being wary of what it'll end up being used for is pretty wise. gently caress tech-fetishists.
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Mar 25, 2016 02:59
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One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting…It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. ^See OP, Orwell wasn't entirely against technology
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Mar 25, 2016 03:31
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computer parts posted:Because stagnation is even worse. Orwell basically says that too in Wigan Pier, that while mindless progress leads to nasty places, going backward or standing are no solutions and what we really need is to remember that the whole goddamn point is to make life better and more livable, which he sees as most possible when socialism remembers its supposed to be about liberty and justice, not blind adherents to orthodox teachings and/or crackpots. The latter seems to include fruit juice drinkers, whom he brings up more than once. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 03:36
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Orwell was the Christopher Hitchens of his time, a right winger claiming to be a Trotskyist while trying to undermine the left movement in England and supporting imperialism but he if he made the point that the technology of the last century brought more grief than alleviated it he would be right. I don't think Orwell claimed to be a Trot. Notes on Nationalism posted:The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i. e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference. Having said that, his views did change over time, generally in a rightward direction. Prior to the Spanish Civil War, he sometimes expressed anti-anti-communist sentiments he would later have ridiculed. Immediately after the Spanish Civil War, he was essentially a Trot (though he didn't call himself that). By the end of his life, he seems like a moderate social democrat.
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Mar 25, 2016 03:55
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fspades posted:Thanks for your observation that a celebrated writer and intellectual of 20th century was not toeing the line with the goonsensus of technological optimism, OP. It's almost as if he lived in an age when many of the greatest scientists were spending their time helping to construct weapons that would wipe out humanity. I can't imagine why he was so skeptical of the Grand New Technological Future.
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Mar 25, 2016 03:57
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my dad posted:Technological progress is pretty cool.
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Mar 25, 2016 04:11
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Have you considered that his rantings and musings might have been hyperbolic or perhaps made in jest? I mean he also goes on about fruit juice drinkers ruining socialism and I'm not sure if I'd take that literally. EDIT: As much as Orwell laments the onward march of technology, it seems more like wistful reminiscence of commonplace things that were lost or set aside along the way. Particularly with regards to food, it would seem, and who can really blame him for that in an era when tinned and packaged foods were by all accounts pretty terrible. Industrialised society was and still is dehumanising in many respects, much more so in his day. More anecdotally, I live in a rural setting most of the time and it's quite discomfiting to visit an urban area and not see a scrap of green, sometimes for miles. Modernity is pretty jarring, even now. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 04:21
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TomViolence posted:I mean he also goes on about fruit juice drinkers ruining socialism and I'm not sure if I'd take that literally. I would, because juice controls the media.
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Mar 25, 2016 04:36
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I've never been clear if by "fruit juice drinkers" Orwell meant teetotalers, people who overzealously proselytize about the health benefits of fruit juice, or people on fad diets where you eat and drink nothing but fruit juice.
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Mar 25, 2016 04:40
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orwell hated ghandi which makes him ok in my book.
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Mar 25, 2016 04:43
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