Eric Arthur Blair aka 'George Orwell'

26th May, 2011 [date of the original draft]

Sydney, Kingsgrove

I have just finished reading a selection of George Orwell’s letters and was deeply moved by his acute anxiety to protect his adopted young son, Richard, from any potential infection of the tuberculosis which was killing the famous author and essayist.[1] Orwell’s love and concern for the boy was particularly evident and tender-hearted when he was lying on his death bed at UCH in London (University College Hospital) and painfully desperate to embrace the little boy but having to push him away. He was “absolutely devoted” to his son.[2] Writers, too, like all other artists, are more than the iconic works with which they are normally identified.

For most people George Orwell will forever be connected to those classic socio-political critiques of the ‘engineered’ trajectory towards ideological monoliths and totalitarianism, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949).[3] This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. To begin with Orwell was a prolific writer and an amazingly generous correspondent, and this despite his persistent and ultimately fatal joust with TB at the age of forty-six (though given the viciousness of his disease he invariably appears much older in photographs). Towards the end of his life writing became an increasingly difficult task and the use of heavy and unreliable typewriters for a bed-ridden man made the task even more onerous. Both of the novels for which he is chiefly famous for were written towards the end of his life, 1984 was his last major literary undertaking.[4] There is then, and despite his early death, a voluminous amount of material which serves as a backdrop to these two books. To study these novels (given the special subject matter) outside Orwell’s political and social inheritance is to fall into the trap of caricaturing or misinterpreting his philosophical thought. This no less given the confusion of his position on socialism and communism and the evident distinctions he wants to make between the two, but then also with his interpretation of the unique brand of British socialism itself.[5] In the excellent introduction to his correspondence, Peter Davison pinpoints the reason why we find a none too small collection of inconsistencies to do with Orwell. Notwithstanding his own political ambivalences there are those who without reasonable knowledge of his life quote him in catchphrases which only adds to these ‘misinterpretations’:

“…many of those who refer to Orwell seem not to have read much more than Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty-Four, if those. The millions who have heard of Big Brother and Room 101 know nothing of their progenitor. Ignorance of Orwell is also to be found in academic circles…”[6]

This would account for some of the political contradictions and his ‘contrariness’ which Orwellian students will invariably point to.[7] It does play an important part of how we are to receive and understand these books together with the socio-political conditions, ideologies, laws and practises he wants to anatomize and to critique. It is tempting for some to put aside the actual life of the author, particularly given the cinematic translation of the works, and to miss the message altogether: that George Orwell’s stories have more to do with the ‘human condition’ as a universal experience over any political or geographical borders. And so, we can with confidence in our own times, consider how he would have ‘reviewed’ liberal democracies bent on panoptic surveillance and the resultant erosion of our private space. This is a vital point which also permits for the broader context of his work to remain both inventive and relevant as a diachronic critique as to how civil societies “form” and “change”. Particularly in the sphere of social theory, and especially with readings connected to conflict perspective. The same we could write for example of Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, and Margaret Atwood. Even the same let’s say for the religious ‘eschatologist’ Seraphim Rose. The famous story which underpins 1984 itself, is only ever incidental to the greater truths of what man [ideally] is rather than what man can [potentially] become, which Orwell subtly yet effectively communicates:

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” (1984)

“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.” (1984)

There is also the graphic and unforgettable warning of what we are ‘politically’ capable of [in Aristotelian terms of “zoon politikon”] rather than a pure and simple critique of a prevailing ideology or the sinister shadow of the “political Leviathan” Big Brother.[8] There is a great deal of political philosophy to be found in these dystopian stories of a dis-functioning hierarchical social system primarily brought about not by ‘authority’, but ultimately by the consent of a vulnerable and crushed human spirit. Almost everywhere, Orwell is saying, it is unacceptable for the power elite, whatever name or label they might go under, to rule over and to tyrannize the vulnerable. ‘Hell’ begins at the point when we are no longer free and able to act as we would wish. Here is the fundamental place from where both “Big Brother” and “Uberveillance” emerge, to depth-charge into the other places of our social activity and everyday being. The irony is that nowadays we are becoming much more than just willing participants in this mushrooming surveillance ecosystem, but are in fact inviting “Room 101” and our very jailers, not only into our homes, BUT into our blood streams.[9]

[1] Orwell, A Life in Letters, Peter Davison, (Harvill, Secker: London, 1998).

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jdftY4j-Nc

[3] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/biography/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

[5] https://www.biographyonline.net/socialism-george-orwell/

[6] Orwell, op. cit., p. ix

[7] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/01/27/honest-decent-wrong

[8] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780203941638/chapters/10.4324/9780203941638-7

[9] Uberveillance and the Social Implications of Microchip Implants, M. G. Michael and Katina Michael (eds), (IGI Global: PA, 2014).

Random Thoughts (2)

It hurts too much to truly love, more deeply than the greatest betrayal, so we define love in the most absurd and mundane terms, forever failing to understand its ‘terrifying’ and unyielding power.

Do not put off the giving of your charity or the forgiving of your enemy for the day after tomorrow. With the blink of an eye your universe could go dark. And an opportunity forever lost to carry some small piece of light over to the other side.

You will be robbed of many things, childhood dreams and secret labors. The goal however was not the result of these things, but the response to these losses. This was the real purpose which deep down you always knew.

It is all too normal to oftentimes confuse romantic love with fleshly desire. There is common ground between the two, the longing and the lust. More truthfully it is the fear of dying alone in those depressing places which we dread too much to ponder on.

Hunger and thirst are the primary movers [and then afterwards the Creator if we should find some spare moments to reflect upon the divine], all else are choices with which we seek to define ourselves to the world for its crowns of dust.

We are by our nature both political and religious beings, it is how we are ‘wired’ and as much we might try to wash these innate inclinations away, it is not possible so we scrub and scour and still the ‘stains’ will remain.

Every time we silence our true voice we die a little more, like a beautiful song drawing quickly to its end.

If you have two friends rejoice daily. If you have three weep and fall to your knees. Blessed, blessed that you are.

Next to war there is no greater destructive consequence than our idolizing of other human beings, the ‘personality cult’. The elevating of another person to ‘star’ or ‘celebrity’ status is not only the beginning of the destruction of that person, but also reduces the giver of that status themselves. And is not the cause of all war the personality cult in the first place?

I will see light to the extent that I walk in the Light; I will walk in the darkness to the degree that what I do contradicts the truth which has been revealed to me. And it is the accumulation of these contradictions which can ultimately become our greatest ‘stumbling block’.

We are to be judged with how we have responded to the Light with our conscience “bearing witness” to the integrity of our thoughts and actions (Rom. 2:15). So be delighted enough to allow for each heart to discover its own path and its own way home. But you must remain faithful to that which was set aside only for you from the beginning.

The most beautiful things will remain hidden, the flower with the heavenly aroma hidden in the rocky cleft of the highest alp, the greatest poem forever lost in the draw of a demolished bedroom, the profoundest music not put down on paper, the most incomprehensible sacrifices seen only by guardian angels.

Your brother and sister, your next door neighbor, despite the violence and the suffering which we witness each evening on our television sets, they are by their very nature good people. There are far more ‘righteous’ people in the world than there are ‘unrighteous’. Have you asked a stranger for a cup of water and have been given a cup of stones?

Enlightenment is not a mysterious process available only to an elect group of people. We have without need complicated it with the passing of time. The first and perhaps most challenging step towards enlightenment, is to desire it in the first place. That is, to find ‘meaningfulness’ in that very moment.

I know how deeply you are suffering, but hold on a little more. This, too, it will pass. You have travelled far to reach this place and measured many distances upon this earth. For the present, for now, this is where you must be.

Nothing is insignificant, all acts and all things, touch upon the eternal.

I am neither more decent nor any more devout than you. And so I must all the time remind myself of this apocalypse by committing it to words.

MGM

What they did not understand

Gerringong, NSW

The philosophy of the ‘enlightened elite’

What they did not understand was how I would find their respective ideologies abhorrent, and that I would reject this philosophy even during the desolate hours. This would anger them more than their growing antipathy towards me. I had heard this philosophy of the ‘enlightened elite’ with its roots deep in Gnosticism a number of times, but never more persuasively argued than by these two charismatic figures in their attempts to draw me into their respective worlds: we are the enlightened ones and to us has been given the great responsibility to fix the course of the world. One of these was my Confessor. He entered my life when I was twenty-three, brimming with hope and preparing for the priesthood. The other was a mysterious entrepreneur. He would cross my path twenty-seven years later in a hotel on the outskirts of Bucharest after I had missed my flight to Sydney on account of a dream.

There is such a thing as dead water, and dead light. There is also dead spirit. And it was this which terrified me. For they were very fast to swoop down on their prey these two… my Confessor and the entrepreneur. Sometimes they would remind me of the peregrine falcon with its high-speed morphing of wings.

It was not until I had read John Banville’s exquisite novel Doctor Copernicus that I was able to find the exact paraphrase for the words which I had heard on those two occasions when these powerful individuals sought to convert me. The first of these conversations took place when I had informed the Confessor of my intention to leave the priesthood, and the second when I was presented with an employment opportunity which sounded too improbable to be true.

Later I will speak more on these temptations and of the big empty frames. And of beautiful porcelain, brittle like frozen petals, falling through my fingers.

"And yes, I know, Katina. There will be some price to pay for this. But you said, did you not, that I could write whatever I wanted?"

The makers of supreme fictions

“Ah. The common people. But they have suffered always, and always will. It is in a way what they are for. You flinch. Herr Doctor, I am disappointed in you. The common people?-pah. What are they to us? You and I, mein Freund, we are lords of the earth, the great ones, the major men, the makers of supreme fictions. Look here at these poor dull brutes… [t]hey do not even understand what we are talking about. But you understand, yes, yes. The people will suffer as they have always suffered, meanly, mewling for pity and mercy, but only you and I know what true suffering is, the lofty suffering of the hero. Do not speak to me of the people! ... [t]he people -peasants, soldiers, generals- they are my tool, as mathematics is yours, by which I come directly at the true, the eternal, the real. Ah yes, Doctor Copernicus, you and I –you and I! The generations may execrate us for what we do to their world, but we and those rare ones like us shall have made them what they are…!”[1]

[1] John Banville, Doctor Copernicus, (Picador, London, 1999), 136.