“1984” was a parody describing an extream society – now its not far from reality
1984.surge.sh
1984.surge.sh
What do you mean by this?
But seriously, go read the linked essay: it's even more applicable now than when it was written, 70 years ago. 1984 is, in this regard, a lengthier version of this (okay, this claim is not entirely serious).
For that reason, I don't think HN should take down the link due to copyright alone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Copyright...
It would be ironic if discussion on Nineteen Eighty-Four was effectively censored (Room 101'ed) due to being flagged for copyright.
And a few more days ago police abuse was catch and shared live on Facebook leading to investigations on cops abuse.
I can only encourage everyone to read the Orwell's full novel. But I can't agree less with OP, we currently live in a society where any injustice can be share worldwide in a heartbeat. This is very very far frow Orwell's totalitarian society depicted in 1984.
Nope. There was never a coup at all, it was all made up to help Erdogan become a dictator. It's all working exactly to plan.
What kind of coup doesn't bother to capture the country's top leaders, and instead captures a bridge? What kind of coup has rebels flying fighter jets, and even when they have the President's plane in their sights, they ignore it? And instead, they use aircraft to shoot at people on the streets? Or at an empty Parliament building? Why would a country that has a long history of highly successful and competent coups now carry out the most utterly incompetent coup in all of human history?
The Turkish citizens aren't supporting democracy; they're exactly like the German citizens of the 1930s, supporting their new dictator. And this "coup" was very much like the Reichstag fire.
My point was mostly that technology enable us to share like never before and the sole fact that we can talk freely about Erdogan lies is another example of why, no, we don't live in 1984.
I won't be too surprised to see Turkey setting up death camps soon, for all the Kurds, intellectuals, and others opposed to his regime. And like Germany and Rwanda, the rest of the world will just stand by and watch.
I'd also like to point out that even with the internet and freedom of expression here in the US, we're not doing a great job of electing our next leader, and the ability to "expose lies" isn't helping either: no one believes it. People on the right don't believe it when others point out how their leaders or candidates are lying to them, and people on the left likewise don't believe it when others point out to them how their leaders and candidates are liars and crooks. It's probably much the same in Turkey right now; they do have internet access, Facebook, etc. But the pro-Erdogan people simply aren't going to believe anything they're told by anti-Erdogan people.
It seems that quite a few governments in various countries appear to think it was a manual.
Take Huxley's "soma" for instance. An astounding portion of our population go through life medicated: Prozak/etc, pain killers, marijuana.
Not that I blame them. Totalitarianism is a bitter pill. Better have something to take the edge off.
"its" instead of "it's" in the title? Please! :-)
Such as...?
-- Admiral Ackbar
And that's just one example!
Remember when the afghan freedom fighters were on our side (Cold War era fighting Russians), but became terrorists when they fought our armies.
Perhaps not the best examples, but two that came first to mind.
The USA and Western Europe lean more to Huxleys world where reliance on soma, libertine indulgences and disintegration of the family unit to take the edge off of reality and consolidate control of the state.
Meanwhile Russia, China, and the Middle East lean more towards the war-happy, heavy handed states of Orwell's vision.
This makes sense if you think about it. Huxley was much more forward looking. In fact, I viewed Orwell's 1984 as more of a intermediary state that would eventually give birth to Huxley's. Given that the US/Europe are more developed, we should have more Brave New World traits than Russia/China/ME.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Copyright...