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[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I always wonder about art like this... is it expressing the human condition, or is it creating the new human condition by conditioning us to normalize certain ideas?

Like the book 1984... was it really a warning, or was it actually just programming to normalize these ideas? It's not like the protagonist wins in the end... same with Brave New World and Animal Farm. Are these allegories to warn us, or programming to make sure we're properly afraid and exhausted so they can best control us?

[–]H3v8 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I remember a link posted a couple of weeks ago about Huxley's connection with the secret services, so I guess you are referring to that?

1984 and Animal Farm were based on hard facts about life in the Soviet Union and made communists very upset at the time (and still do). Even publishing them wasn't that easy as nobody in GB wanted to agitate the communists and USSR.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

With 1984 Orwell was only describing things he had seen happen and he just put them in a different place and time. Animal Farm similarly was just an allegory of the Russian revolution, again stuff that had already happened but at all imaginary. It's the imagining things like that can't happen or that human nature works against that type of society which leaves us vulnerable.