“War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.”
— George Orwell, 1984.
Open Your Eyes…
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Thank you for that, MMM. I’d quite forgotten that bit.
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell. Wasn’t he brilliant? Born of an Anglo-Indian couple in India, wryly described himself as of “lower upper-middle class origins.” Served five years in Bruma as an officer in the Indian Imperial Police, where he came to hate imperialism. (Wrote three novels based his experiences in Burma–must see if I can find any of them used on Amazon.com)
Fought for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and always kept his sense of humor. (Of being wounded in Spain, “he wrote…that people frequently told him he was lucky to survive, but that he personally thought ‘it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.'”
A sobering thought that when he was my age, he’d been dead for thirteen years. 🙂 From his photo, he looks like someone one could be friends with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_orwel
Off to school. Yesterday we had a Code Red: lockdown the school, turn out the lights, cower in terror on the floor against the walls beneath the windows. A bus driver on one of the in-bound morning buses discovered that an eight year-old (not a typo) had a switchblade knife. Rather then stopping the bus and calling the cops, as is procedure, he elected to drive onto the campus (He is just soooo fired!) and inform a staff member while unloading the bus. This then made it a school crises: the lockdown, police, SWAT team, flocks of central administrators–everything but the Black Helicopters.
And today we’ll all no doubt take turns imitating the voice synthesizer program which comfortingly called us all at home last night to describe the incident in run-on robotic tones. As a parent, I’d have found it very reassuring to hear: …theknifewasconfiscatedbyschoolsecuritypersonnel andtherewrerenoinjuries.classesrsumedtheir regularschedulethankyouforyourattentionhaveanniceevening..
Cheers
@Jimbo: You’re welcome 🙂
I could quote bits and pieces from this book forever, it’s a very rich book.
I totally agree with you that he’s a brilliant writer.
Regarding the school lockdown, wow, it seems like there’s a new adventure everyday. You really should write about all these experiences.