Re:1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
by ArkyBeagle on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @08:50PM
(#7100148)
Orwell had tuberculosis, not uncommon for people from urban environment in his day. That's why the "bad lung". Whether he smoked or not is probably quite irrelevant.
Orwell fought against Fascism ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and mercantilism/empire. Not capitalism. Something can be one of those, but not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific meanings.
The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences
better as they simply stopped thinking at all.
Orwell fought against Fascism ( both of the Lft and of the Right) , and mercantilism/empire. Not capitalism. Something can be one of those, but not both. These things are quite precise terms that have very specific meanings.
The point of 1984 is not that some sinister cadre has seized power ( that's more like Alan Moore in "V for Vendetta" ) but rather that people stopped wanting to think at all, and the resulting regime met their preferences better as they simply stopped thinking at all.