Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyleIn the 1 days ending Mar 2, 2015:
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Monday Mar 2, 2015 #
5 PM
Running 1:04:23 [3] 8.35 mi (7:43 / mi) +150m 7:18 / mi
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/opinion/research...
Despite my slightly self-destructive predilection toward the dark, depressing end of the historical/political/sci-fi genre of fiction, I'd somehow never managed to read Nineteen Eighty-Four until now. It is indeed frightening as advertised, but in a detached, abstract sense, especially when compared with a work like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which assumes an unconditional Axis victory in World War II and depicts the attendant consequences. While reading that, one cannot help but think "My God, this could have happened," which I find to be an almost incomprehensibly horrific thought, yet also a paradoxical one, because why should one fear for something that didn't and can never happen? The answer, I think, is what it tells us about the worst human nature is capable of.
Which brings us back to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which takes the theme of humanity's subjugation of its own nature, dignity, and spirit close to the (absurd?) extreme, almost into the realm of pure sci-fi (a la Clarke's Childhood's End), but also celebrates the power of love, kindness, and beauty. The whole "WARNING" message of the book has certainly lost the immediacy it probably had in the 1940s, as the progress of technology has for the most part neither turned us into mindless automatons nor sacrificed individuality to a fascist/Stalinist collective. Just as Judgement Day didn't happen on August 29, 1997 (which, tangentially, was my 11th birthday), 1984 didn't suck as bad as Orwell portrayed it. So that's pretty cool.
Despite my slightly self-destructive predilection toward the dark, depressing end of the historical/political/sci-fi genre of fiction, I'd somehow never managed to read Nineteen Eighty-Four until now. It is indeed frightening as advertised, but in a detached, abstract sense, especially when compared with a work like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which assumes an unconditional Axis victory in World War II and depicts the attendant consequences. While reading that, one cannot help but think "My God, this could have happened," which I find to be an almost incomprehensibly horrific thought, yet also a paradoxical one, because why should one fear for something that didn't and can never happen? The answer, I think, is what it tells us about the worst human nature is capable of.
Which brings us back to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which takes the theme of humanity's subjugation of its own nature, dignity, and spirit close to the (absurd?) extreme, almost into the realm of pure sci-fi (a la Clarke's Childhood's End), but also celebrates the power of love, kindness, and beauty. The whole "WARNING" message of the book has certainly lost the immediacy it probably had in the 1940s, as the progress of technology has for the most part neither turned us into mindless automatons nor sacrificed individuality to a fascist/Stalinist collective. Just as Judgement Day didn't happen on August 29, 1997 (which, tangentially, was my 11th birthday), 1984 didn't suck as bad as Orwell portrayed it. So that's pretty cool.