Animal Farm - George Orwell - pack of lies! Why used at school?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by munter, May 21, 2014.

  1. munter

    munter New Member

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    Why is this book considered a 'classic' ?

    Basically it's just a pack of lies, written by a guy who never even visited the SU, and merely got all his 'info' out of the liberal, Western press.

    Why even have it on the school curriculum?
     
  2. Rainbow Crow

    Rainbow Crow New Member Past Donor

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    You liked the villains in 1984, didn't you?
     
  3. Regular Joe

    Regular Joe Well-Known Member

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    Orwell was one of the early "thinking" authors for me. His work led directly to the works of Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception) and Kurt Vonnegut. The Genre' opened up to include Ayn Rand. To a young and inquisitive mind, that led on to European Philosophy, from the period of the Four Horsemen. Talking to people in my reading circles led on to "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker, and "The Third Wave" by Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
    Orwell compels young minds to QUESTION how things could get that way. If a kid has a volatile brain, Orwell can light the fire.
     
  4. munter

    munter New Member

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    Who were they again?

    anyway, Animal Farm is actually about Capitalism - the way it sells everything out.

    Remember the hens smashing the eggs? (supposedly the Kulaks smashing their own property in order not to give it to Stalin) - this is actually a great PRO communist piece of propaganda.

    Here, it shows us how childish and spiteful the rightists are, ie: in the way that if they cannot exploit the poor, then no-one can have their produce - If I can't have it then neither can you! - kind of like a spoilt brat, similar to the anti Maduro clones in Venezuela
     
  5. munter

    munter New Member

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    Orwell turned me into a Communist, by highlighting the evil of neo-liberal capitalism, and the bourgeoisie mindset.

    Guess that was his plan all along, right?
     
  6. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    if Orwell could see us now, video cam's in our phones, tablets, laptops, homes, mics that are "always on' in our phones, facebook, ect... and it's not even the gov forcing this on us, we do it to ourselves

    .
     
  7. Regular Joe

    Regular Joe Well-Known Member

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    Why do you have it on for Orwell? You have your own mind, and your own choices over what to do with it. If you were to read Dostoevsky, you might be inclined to shoot yourself in the garden tomorrow after lunch, because in one of his books ("The Brothers Karamazov", or maybe "White Nights"; I forget) one of the brothers says it doesn't matter. That was just a treatise on Nihilism, and not a guide of how to think and live.
    Same with Orwell.
    Someone on this forum has a sig line that has a quote from Plato. I paraphrase: "A wise mind can consider another way of thinking without buying into it".
    Try reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Stranger in a Strange Land".
     
  8. munter

    munter New Member

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    good point, and all this Big Brother stuff is far bigger now in the West than in the SU days - Id cards, cctv everywhere, Politically correct 'thought police' , indoctrination ie: 'it doesn't matter unless you've done something wrong' - it's the insidious control of neoliberalism, the road to serfdom
     
  9. munter

    munter New Member

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    Unfortunately, many people don't have thinking minds, so they buy this Orwell tosh, hook, line and sinker - esp kids.

    But basically the guy has it all wrong - and he's really talking about modern day capitalism, that is the great irony here.
     
  10. KSigMason

    KSigMason Banned at Members Request Past Donor

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    Having studied Russia (history and politics) and traveled around the world, I can say that Orwell had it right on and if you turned communist over this then you sided with the antagonists.
     
  11. Kurmugeon

    Kurmugeon Well-Known Member

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    First a thread stating that Stalin was a misunderstood good guy, and now this...

    I'm starting to smell a Putin KGB operative poster.

    -
     
  12. Fangbeer

    Fangbeer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah, why should children be exposed to alternative points of view? There is only ONE point of view!
     
  13. smevins

    smevins New Member

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    Ironic you mention those two because I was thinking "Well, Orwell is no worse than the overhyped Vonnegut. Are we going to replace Shakespeare with Hunter S. Thompson soon as well?
     
  14. longknife

    longknife New Member

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    There are many things I disagreed with Orwell on. But, he was a visionary - just like so many other writers who created a genre we call science fiction.

    I often wonder how they would react if they saw today's society. :salute:
     
  15. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    It's a story about animals. What's wrong with it?
     
  16. Johnny-C

    Johnny-C Well-Known Member

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    It's kind of hard for people living today to keep up, because changes in tech come very fast.

    But it seems that change/advancement comes with a price, which has always been true. There are pros and cons in all of this "living".

    I love my privacy, but I also love being able to punch in an address on GPS and being guided there; they know where I am all the time.

    I like the security system on my home... but the company that monitors things, knows when I come/go as well.

    The best we can do is apply checks and balances as needed over time; 'human' nature is pretty consistent.

    And anyone who thinks/imagines that change won't come, will probably end up being off-balance more often than not.
     
  17. Alien Traveler

    Alien Traveler New Member

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    Dear Mr. Munter (Khrushchev?), I totally agree with your post.

    Despicable George Orwell wrote the “book” on animal farming without any knowledge of subject. His suggestions on animal feed are ridiculous, number of animals per farm is bizzare, and he never even mentioned artificial insemination!

    Progressive farmers of the Earth should unite and force their governments to prohibit reading of this “book” in schools, farms, public places and especially toilets.
     
  18. smallblue

    smallblue Well-Known Member

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    The theme is more "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" than it is anti-communism.
     
  19. My Fing ID

    My Fing ID Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We should, Hunter is more interesting.
     
  20. Wizard From Oz

    Wizard From Oz Banned at Members Request

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    Yep completely agree with you there - It is fun after reading a bit of Soviet stuff to revisit 1984 and see who you now recognize
     
  21. mutmekep

    mutmekep New Member

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    I agree, they should instead use "Grapes of Wrath"
     
  22. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    Because of the major cultural effect it had on the world. In a time of Totalitarian governments, it can be hard to say a system doesn't work when you see real live examples of it working. By writing this book, it had that effect. It made people realize the merits of their own democratic systems. And afterwards, it still kept being used to influence people against totalitarian governments, more specifically the USSR. The effects of his writing carried on for generations. This can be seen in Apple's 1984 ad. But it's not just the cultural part of it. It's also the idea that you can link ideas together. A social studies topic being used as an allegory in English? Doesn't really happen all that often.
     
  23. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    You're misinterpreting. That might be true if the system was a capitalistic one, but because Napoleon rules the farm and installed a communist form of government, it's actually about the right of the workers, not just kulaks under a communist system. The state knows best, and since it's the will of the workers, a striking worker makes no sense. So therefore you're unproductive. Therefore you're expendable.
     
  24. Curmudgeon

    Curmudgeon New Member

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    Burroughs'? Stranger in a Strange Land? just a nitpick, it was Robert Anson Heinlein who wrote Stanger in a Strange Land.
     
  25. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    the public has cams everywhere, that is not the gov

    the gov is not the "thought police", but the public has a small town feel on a much much bigger scale due to the internet...
     

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