| ▲ | operatingthetan 3 hours ago | |
The four books you mentioned have very different methods of control. The primary thing they share is being dystopic. --- 1984: control through fear and pain. Brave New World: control through pleasure and distraction. Animal Farm: control through corruption and deception. Atlas Shrugged: control though guilt and regulation. --- Brave New World is the most prophetic. Atlas Shrugged has horrific writing, separate from what I feel about the politics. | ||
| ▲ | Terr_ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
> Atlas Shrugged has horrific writing, separate from what I feel about the politics. Following the tangent: I read the book "blind", when I was mind-numbling bored for a couple pre-dialup weeks at a relative's house. Eventually I decided to finish it purely out of spite so that I could confidently denounce it as trash in the future. (And today it pays off?) In short, it's a book of incredible hypocrisy which also disrespects the reader's intelligence and time. Hypocrisy, because Rand asserts that certain appeals to emotion or outcome are evil tools of fictional villains, while simultaneously doing the exact same thing in the real world to the audience. The difference is that instead of "think of the starving children", it's "think of the Marty Stu [0] corporate executive üermenschen", the characters the author has been playing up for a couple hundred pages already. This is compounded by the manifesto chapter where Marty Stu does nothing but monologue. The jarring transition reveals how the story was really just an afterthought, a kind of necessary deceit to get people ready to swallow a pompous diatribe without looking at it too closely. | ||
| ▲ | nemomarx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
1984 has fear and pain for the white collar set like the protagonist, but it's implied mass media, telescreens, and propaganda do for the working class there, which is similar to BNW's style and of course has overlap with Animal Farm. A pretty good study of different flavors when taken together, though? | ||
| ▲ | Rury 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Honestly though, they're not all that prophetic. I mean, you can find widespread instances of each means used throughout human history. Although I would happen to agree that the methods that feed complacency and ignorance are the most effective. | ||
| ▲ | slipknotfan 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
You have to defend your freedom from all angles of attack. | ||
| ▲ | irishcoffee 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
That was kind of the theme of the suggestions, control. I’m kind of stoked you identified it. | ||