Every Day Is Orwell Day

George Orwell's '1984' was published on London on this day in 1949. It was published in New York five days later. The book was an immediate best seller. George Orwell died seven months later. The following quotes by the author were taken from a then-new foreword to the book written by Robert Harris on the sixtieth anniversary of that publication, as published in 2009.  

'All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or "the classless society", or "the Kingdom of Heaven on earth", are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way to power...  .'.

'The new "managerial" societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia and America.'.

'These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will be unable to conquer one another completely.'. 

Here is the whole of the foreword.

"Change Is Freedom, Change Is Life

 It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.

There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.”

Ursula Le Guin 'The Dispossessed; An Ambiguous Utopia'

The Education Of The Heart

has to happen in a world led by lies
that are as supple and varied
as said education has to be.

Whoever resists the herd
to hear themselves better
discovers their fragility
along with their instincts
and their individuality.

Where they find again
that they are differently alone.  

Quentin Crisp

Could have explained the popularity
of Donald Trump. and other demagogues
who have become popular since his death,
if more people had listened to Crisp
when he was highly quotable and he said... 

'Charisma is the ability to influence without logic'.

This sentence alone would explain
why when he is interviewed on television
Trump starts thinking as he speaks,
but he never completes a thought.

Part way through another  thought
comes to him and the interviewer,
who should tell Trump to finish the first thought,
seems to be overwhelmed by the Trump charisma.

Crisp, by comparison, was an excellent
television interviewee, he tidied up
all his thoughts, as he presented himself
as more composed than television suggested
that anyone, once so marginalised, had a right to be.  

Great Turn Offs Of Our Time (29)

Whenever I hear the phrase 'A lazer-like focus'
to describe how a particular government policy
has targets that the government wants the public
to know they know about, and are going to hit,
then I know that the real policy is distraction,
and the more the target is discussed, and missed,
the better it distracts from the real subject,
so far unmentioned, that the government seek to avoid.

Oh for the lazer-like avoidance of hope being achieved!   

Is There Anybody In There ?

A.I. is the human echo chamber,
sold with a sophisticated image
that lacks the intelligence
it is said to contain, inside.

It fools those fail to recognise
how it feeds off the voices it finds
and returns to those who ask of it
what they had not the curiosity
or wherewithal to discover
by more personal means.

The kind of people who believe
that A.I. is 'intelligent' probably
have had parents who were raised
by parents who used television
as a child minder; when the adults
in the house saw was how 'settled'
the children seemed to be,
what the adult missed how similar
in appearance passivity
and looking settled are. 

Picture Set Of The Month - June - The Rugs Of Faig Ahmed

'Oiling', the name of this rug, is one of many 
strange looking rugs are the inspiration
of Azerbaijan rug maker Faig Ahmed.

Faig was born in 1982

rug 2

Find his website here.