1984 j_blue To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings ! 010129 ... stupidpunkgirl the year that i was born. it seems so long since then. and yet nothing has really happened. 010129 ... dean-bean I wasn't alive for the entire 1980's. Oh, I had a pulse and all, but nothing inside. No personality. The breath of light didn't spark inside until I was nearly eleven. Half my life soul-dead. How sad. 010402 ... nocturnal I've read it twice and I can't wait to read it again. definitely one of my favourites. 010402 ... nemorn the year i was born. was a great year for me i guess 020403 ... Scarlet Photos a doubleplusgood book 020404 ... silentbob me and josh talked about it. 020404 ... jinx I really should read this... 020609 ... kill rhythm that was the year i was born. of course, it was the last day of that year..... 020610 ... silentbob i tried and got bored does that mean i'm one of the apathetic people in the book? 020610 ... paintedmarbles i was assigned this book for school. i actually liked it. it reminded me a little bit of a_clockwork_orange but of course, very different. some of the weird things that happened had me going the same way that clockwork did. but that was the best book ever. i also read brave_new_world...well, i started it. and i have to work on questions for a panel discussion that is due in 2 days. because our english teacher is a stupid fake. ok, thats not the reason, but she is one. im done now. 030218 ... guitar_freak society reminds me of this book more and more each day... 030220 ... Cicero Adams died and We were born 030221 ... vega To mark the paper was a decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984 He sat back. A sense of complete helplessnes had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that it was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin own any date within a year or two. 030430 ... ghostly presence brave new world presents a more realistic distopia. 030501 ... Winston "birdmad" Smith Maybe once, but in the US the new powers that the government has granted itself and is trying to grant itself since 9/11 is looking more and more like 1984. Secret courts created through a set of backdoor languate under FISA (Immigration Security Act) which can authorize surveillance (both physical and electronic), detentions, trials and even, when deemed necessary - summary exececutions (ROOM 101, anybody?) Provisions under the USA PATRIOT Act (HR 3162) that excuse law enforcement from probable cause and warrant requirements in defiance of the Fourth Amendment guarantee of the right of citizens against unreasonable and unwarranted searches, seizures and detentions. Normal rules of the legislative process were suspended to ram the PATRIOT act through the House and Senate in record time, with pressure from the White House, Justice Department and Congressional leadership to approve the bill sight-unseen. The leadership suggested that anyone who voted against the Act would be, in some way to blame (click on the link at www.thismodernworld.com for an article by Jason Halperin at AlterNet about his own run-in with the new Homeland Security gestapo) Someone from the Justice Department leaked a 120 page copy of what is purported to be called the Domestic Security Enforcement Act (tentatively PATRIOT II) which makes among other things allows the FISA courts to suspend or revoke the citizenship of anyone under suspicion of being a (rather poorly defined) "enemy combatat" leaving them open to the other actions of the FISA courts (arrest, deportation or possible execution) Between the FISA surveillance allowances, Patriot Act provision demanding that libraries and bookstores report on what people are reading or buying and the data-mining proposal called Total Information Awareness, Big Brother is becoming a more overt reality here than ever before I'm halfway expecting FOX News to interrupt everything and tell me that there have been spontaneous demonstrations of Party workers expressing their joy and gratitude one of these days 030501 ... ghostly presence lol@fox news. I still think that given the force of capitalist marketing, we're closer to being mind controlled than bent against our will. 030503 ... lotuseater i just finished the book for like the third time... it scares the hell outta me. the idea of perpetual warfare to eliminate surplus and keep everyone emotionless ecxept for fear and orgiastic triumph... big brother gets closer to taking over every year. fuck that, im gonna go live in the woods. 031207 ... misstree at the ripe old age of 10, my father handed this to me, with the ominous words: "this is what's happening in the world *now*." he was very politically aware and raising me the same way. but this book... this book and a continued glimpse into the beasts in the machine filled me with fear, revulsion, anger, hopelessness. for a very long time i refused to even think of looking behind the curtain, but once you see it, you see it everywhere. when mister dubya took over, all i could do was laugh. when the 9/11 attacks happened, i watched in horror not for the tragedy unfolding, but knowing what foul uses it would be put to. and all i can do at each new measure is laugh. and hope to someday export myself, because i've lost hope for the neccesary reforms and revolutions--big_brother is far too good at its job. 031207 ... The Spork I have to concur with the Bird on this one... If you think about the concept and definition of 1984's "Newspeak" it too was a form of mind control, in that the terms of the Language were being redefined to make concepts the Party disliked nearly impossible to air out. The Constant presence of the Television screens in 1984 broadcasting the Party's Message is also evidence of Orwell's prefiguring the role of the Media as Propagandist. In this case, Big_Brother isn't a Socialist, Big Brother is a Corporatist (wihch means he/it could ultimately become Fascist) And yes, Misstree, I fear you are right, but haven't lost all hope that if enough people can be convinced to Wake Up before it's too late, we won't swirl any further down the toilet than we already have. 031207 ... guitar_freak The Patriot Act fascism_begins_at_home 041003 ... Anthony I borrowed this book from her. I think i made it to page 124. I don't honestly recall. I always read it when I was visiting and she was busy doing homework or the like. I wonder if she ever took out my bookmark... It's been just over 9 months since I last saw her. It's been just over 15 months since I told her I wasn't in love anymore. 060227 ... spontaneous demonstrations of birdmad "D'you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Beckhampstead way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols." "What did they do that for?" said Winston, taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly: "My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But there's the point, old boy. What do you think put her onto him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes---said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?" "What happened to the man?" said Winston/ "Ah, that I couldn't say, of course. But i woudln't be altogether suprised if---" Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion. "Good," said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper. "Of course we can't afford to take chances," agreed Winston dutifully. "What I mean to say, there is a war on" said Parsons. 060302 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I think I should try to get this book. I haven't read it since 10th grade, but I had a dream about it, somewhat mixed up with The Hunger Games (see nightmares_from_books) and while that was funny and all, it deserves to be read again unmixed - unmixed except for the mediation of random thoughts coursing through my head, without which, admittedly, I couldn't read at all... I remember thinking I'd be able to outsmart the Room 101 people, since my worst fear at the time was the idea of eternity (of all reasons to rebel against a sort-of Christian upbringing... well, I was weird) and how would you recreate that? I also noted that 5 is 101 in binary and wondered whether or not it related to "2 + 2 = 5." And, when I was in university and the city of Montreal installed screens in several of the metro stations (including McGill metro) I would always think of them as "telescreens" and joke that Big Brother was watching us... 130608 ... amy in red i actually need to read this again, but the med is making it too hard to read books (again.) ow ow ow. life is hard. i think an audiobook? with a movie, i might take it too literally. i desire allegory so i can grok it to reality as a normal thing and then as an abnormal, lawless thing. i think i can safely say War and Peace has no near future that i'm too distracted by life for Tolstoy. still reading Trungpa carefully, which is very rewarding. i read them twice, maybe three times, i do a 10 minute meditation, which is admittedly not impressive at all and would not qualify for doing a retreat but i hope to do a retreat someday, if i can hang on to enough money to go to one. there's one nearby but it is too strict, and i don't know of any others. 151025 what's it to you? who go blather from