George Orwell

George Orwell, Edward Bernays & Perpetual War

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publicZero Hedge – Another horrific act of terror, another shrill chorus calls the faithful to war. It’s a recurring phenomenon in this early Twenty-first Century. The horrible news crashes from the heavens like a meteor, violently jolting us from the Saint Vitus Dance of our produce-consume existence. Our screens with all the answers flash between splattered blood on the pavement and the victims’ smiling faces as they were in life. From the Middle East we hear little and see less of the shattered lives on the receiving end of our vengeance. Like giving a fifth of bourbon to a drunk prostrate on the pavement, our leaders advocate more slaughter as the solution to the world’s problems. Mass civilian casualties is the global order of the day, the constant in our lives.

Orwell’s essay on Perpetual War in “1984” is currently enjoying a revival in certain circles. Through the novel’s mysterious bogey man, Emmanuel Goldstein, Orwell avers that technological innovations have brought industry to such a level of efficiency that material abundance and leisure should be attainable to all. Widespread material comfort and spare time would allow the populace to develop intellectually and spiritually, and thus to achieve a kind of universal enlightenment. Orwell argues that with such leisure-based understanding, humanity would question the necessity for hierarchy and begin to threaten the arrangement that so benefits those at society’s pinnacle. Continue reading →

A Tangible Math Lesson – Four Types of Institutional Lies

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” Elitists often censor, suppress and obscure the truth, while information is removed, falsely discredited, even replaced or entirely conjured. Meanwhile, euphemisms are inserted into the wider vocabulary to steer not only people’s perceptions and decision making, but the very subjects they will reasonably consider.” – E Smith

58Despite the constraints of our educational systems, there are some excellent teachers. And there are some not so excellent instructors. We learn a lot in school, but it is also important to learn outside of school as well. Some of the most valuable lessons are not found in the teacher’s answer book, and yet some teachers operate by the book, at right angles, making no adjustments for the humanity of their students.

Not surprising given that the school system itself is geared toward creating two things: employment and expectation.

Like most people who are interested in history I dreaded math and algebra, and may actually have found my interest in history out of my disdain and fear of division and multiplication.

I remember the first time I learned how to add. I thought I had tackled the math thing then and there. I also remember the first time I was frozen in front of the class, unable to do long division on the chalkboard. And yet the mathematical lesson I have used the most since its revelation to me, and the one I remember most distinctly, turned out to be more than just a mathematical lesson.

A Tangible Math Lesson

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John Pilger ~ The Return Of George Orwell And Big Brother’s War On Palestine, Ukraine And Truth

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“In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her ‘Triumph of the Will’ that reputedly cast Hitler’s spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the “messages” in her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on a “submissive void” in the German population. “Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked. “Everyone,” she replied, “and of course the intelligentsia.”” J Pilger

George Orwell
George Orwell

The other night, I saw George Orwells’s ‘1984’ performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell’s warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, “To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.”

Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. “What a mindfuck,” said the young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in ‘1984’. “Democracy” is now a rhetorical device. Peace is “perpetual war”. “Global” is imperial. The once hopeful concept of “reform” now means regression, even destruction. “Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few. Continue reading →

The Solution To Everything: Slavery To The State

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“. . . Now we have a different kind of State. It’s…government. Yes. The State isn’t government. Aha. The State exists in places other than America. In America, we have government. Yes, that’s right. Two different animals. One is repressive, and the other is earnest. (More rainbows for the sentimentalists.)” ~J Rappoport

rainbowPotOfGoldLet me clarify that. Slavery to the corporate State. Government and mega-corporations work hand in hand.

The incurably naïve believe the State is beneficent. The government is kind. The government knows what to do. The government will solve society’s ills if we let it.

Of course, the government, in the form of NSA, is spying on everybody all the time—but you see, that’s not really the government. It’s a rogue element.

Sure it is. And rainbows will appear at any moment and the people of Earth will experience a galactic frequency that eradicates all impulses toward conflict.

To put it another way, people see what they want to see.

“Ahem, when I say ‘government,’ I don’t mean the CIA or the Pentagon or the FDA or the President’s national security team, or fraudulent federal scientists, or the whole lot of venal people in Congress, or corrupt prosecutors and judges or invasive bureaucrats or paper-pushing money-sucking desk jockeys.”

Of course not. Government is an idea in the mind of God.

And when you think about it, the NSA watches over us to make sure we stay on the path of righteousness. It’s absurd to be suspicious of the State. The authors of the Constitution, who tried to limit central authority, were a bunch of paranoids.

We need more government, not less. Continue reading →

Institutional Thinking – The Matrix, 1984 and The Allegory of The Cave

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“The Allegory of the Cave, 1984 and The Matrix contain corresponding layers. Each explores a diabolical form of societal control; the control of thought through the presentation of selective information and images, in combination with physical constraints of strict surveillance and imprisonment” ~ E. I. Smith

1984NotInstructionManualSome philosophical work is so profound as to be influential for thousands of years. Plato’s ‘The Republic‘ is one such series of dialogues. It explains and explores the relationship between state institutions and individuals, and has provided humanity with lessons in politics, philosophy and individual enlightenment since it was penned some two thousand years ago.

One of the central dialogues in The Republic is called the Allegory of the Cave. The lessons the Allegory of the Cave provides to today’s world are numerous, and its depiction of our insidious societal structure is extremely accurate and insightful — despite often going unacknowledged as such. Through its exploration of our political outer states, it also explores our psychological inner state as well.

The Allegory of The Cave proposes that what people take to be ‘reality’ in total is only a partial reality, or an all out illusion. As is all similar philosophy, the allegory is layered, but it is partially about breaking from mainstream thinking and seeking individual knowledge; the ascension of perspective; being in a cave and coming out of a cave. It’s about how we can ascend from the bottom to stand face-to-face with the golden Sun.

Socrates begins: “Let me show you in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened Behold! Human beings living in an underground cave”.

The 4 Characters of the Cave

In the Allegory there are four character types. Most people are chained, forced to watch images on a cave wall. Some however, the second character type, are unchained. They need no force; they are so transfixed with the imagery on the wall that the shadows are all they care about, and remain in the cave by choice. The images are cast on the wall by the third character type, the captors, who use a fire behind them to produce various shadows, to keep the prisoners entertained. The prisoners interpret the shadows and whatever noises are made as reality in total, for it is all they know. The fourth character type is the freed prisoner. Continue reading →