Your Big Brother comment ... you're right and it's frightening. People take the Western 'way of life' for granted ... as if it were the default setting for humanity. It is not. It is a MASSIVE exception to the rule and not just historically ... contemporarily.
Animal Farm had a huge impact on me when I read it in Middle/High School (I forget which one) ... but I was so traumatized by what happened to Boxer (the horse), that it overwhelmed the rest of the story. (I grew up on a horse farm and horses are a part of my soul.)
I suppose I ought to go back and re-read it but the negative emotional memory is still palpable so I'd have to force myself.
FunFacts:
Animal Farm, once a classic in all school systems, has been removed from many for fear that it might 'unfairly prejudice people against Socialism.'
The Communist Manifesto is now the third most widely assigned book by US university professors and Marx's, Das Kapital, is not far behind. Taken together, no other book, on any subject, even comes close. The death toll of Communist regimes make the Nazis look like rank amateurs. When I rail on about the dangers of ideologues ... this is what I'm talking about. Utopia ... people never learn.
- Unlike the rest of the West, in France Napoleon has always been, and still is, greatly admired (a sentiment with which I concur as I believe his 'negative rap' was hugely biased by anglophone historians). Anyway, when the book was published, France passed a law making it illegal to name pigs, in honor of Orwell's character, Napoleon. I have some doubts about their ability to enforce the law and wouldn't be surprised if thousands of pigs were so named because of it. :-)
Quill
I think many people are beginning to realise that the western way of life is not without the same very human issues. We are creatures in a dog eat dog world.
Western society is shocked that they have been lied to, that their leaders are self serving, that the news is up for interpretation and "alternatives." Western society is shifting now because people are realising that all that they are told to keep them contained in their bubble is not necessarily true.
But do we care enough about truth and the world outside our comfy bubble to make noise.
Many people for instance knew that they signed away their rights to themselves when using facebook, (I am one) but did it anyway. A mixture of naivety and apathy I think.
Western society harbours a large number of apathetic people. I can't change anything and I'm fairly comfortable so who cares. But people are starting to care and we are seeing a shift away from The centre that I have heard you refer to before.
You have called me a hippy conservative (I'm paraphrasing) in the past. But isn't that centrist? Isn't the ideal of democracy to have a capitalist framework that has a degree of social responsibility for all?
The 2 party systems have failed to reflect the careful balance of of social and economic management. Social responsibility is humanity. Every political framework ends up the same, because it is our nature to serve ourselves before our neighbours. That is the animal that we are. Maybe it is the nature of earthly creatures.
Sorry if I traumatised you unknowingly. I wrote a post (didn't post it) yesterday about trauma triggers. I wrote from an eating dx perspective and how people assume what it is about and therefore assume what may be sensitive and "triggering" to people. But we can't know what constitutes a trigger memory for someone else. For me it's a Sparrow 😂, and other bizarre unlikely things. Memory triggers... I should stop writing and have breakfast, and write an actual post sometime.
I will reread George too.
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