Hey Readers,
So I’ve been occasionally flipping channels on the fabulous and free Pluto TV and this month 1984 has been on their movie stations pretty regularly. The film was produced in Spring of 1984, the same time period as the setting of Orwell’s novel. The film captures the “zeitgeist” of the novel pretty well I would say, and John Hurt and Richard Burton (in his last film role) give glorious performances as Winston and O’Brien respectively.
If you’ve been around Snakes & Otters for a couple of months or so you have probably picked up on our affection for 1984 and Orwell. Well at least my affection anyway. 1984 was for me the most important and personally impactful novel I’ve ever read. I had a fairly traditional, old school private high school and college education, so believe me, I’ve read a ton of novels. Heart of Darkness, The Metamorphosis, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, all great. But Orwell was like a smack in the head, even at 16.
Keep in mind that Orwell always considered himself a socialist, and even was part of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Yet his novel is the perhaps the most blistering indictment of collectivism and powerful governments ever written. Old Martinus Gentes’ long abiding distrust of ever expanding government starts with Orwell and cruises right into PJ O’Rourke. O’Rourke can make you laugh with statements like “the question isn’t how to make government work, it’s how to make it stop” but Orwell is the one who can really put the fear of a dehumanizing bureaucracy into your psyche. Government, if not restrained, is a “boot, stamping on a human face, forever”. Power is not sought for the betterment of anything or anyone, it is sought for it’s own sake, and never to be relinquished.
Our nation’s founding documents are really, even 200 odd years later, the only government charter that really sought to limit the power of all phases of a government. Sure, the Magna Carta sought to limit the Crown, but limiting one mechanism of government merely leaves a vacuum, and others will surely sweep into that vacuum as surely as the sun rises in the east. The whole of government must be restrained, even if that leaves gaps in the material welfare of the people. Their freedom, their liberty, must be the highest duty. Only with liberty can there be justice. Or as it has been aptly put, a government big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have… or are. That’s the real danger today. We are close enough in our technology and our knowledge of psychology (and pharmacology) that we risk losing who we are, at our core.
Hopefully this is a useful companion to our Orwell episode. Give it a listen. If you want me to expound more on this subject, give us a shout. You know how.
