1984 (1-1) Big Brother

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week.

-- “1984” by George Orwell

I’ll go out on a limb, taxing my exegetical powers to the limit, and say that the man in the picture with the middle-age face and the black mustache, Big Brother, is based on Joseph Stalin. As my friends in college liked to point out, Orwell was focusing on the communist totalitarian nightmare that was the Soviet Union.

This was a sore point with me, because like a lot of lefty liberals, I saw “1984” as my book, singing of the hell of living under an oppressive social order. Like Winston I was one of the few sane men trapped in an insane world.

The usual response is to point out that Orwell was, himself, a left-leaning thinker. One, moreover, can see his stark and brutal drawing of Oceania as a portrait that deftly highlights the ugliness of power, and one can see its rudiments in the corporatist state we live in, even if the economy is richer and more plentiful than what the Soviet communists were able to realize.

Sure, our Western states are arguably and demonstrably superior, morally as well as economically, but Orwell offers a poignant novel that resonates well, not only with the creed of affluent white libertarians who abhor communism, but also for liberals who strain under the dominance of our corporate culture, especially for those outside of the middle and upper classes, those of us who can sympathize more fully with Winston’s sense of deprivation, even the desperation.

1984 (1-1) Big Brother

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week.

-- “1984” by George Orwell

I’ll go out on a limb, taxing my exegetical powers to the limit, and say that the man in the picture with the middle-age face and the black mustache, Big Brother, is based on Joseph Stalin. As my friends in college liked to point out, Orwell was focusing on the communist totalitarian nightmare that was the Soviet Union.

This was a sore point with me, because like a lot of lefty liberals, I saw “1984” as my book, singing of the hell of living under an oppressive social order. Like Winston I was one of the few sane men trapped in an insane world.

The usual response is to point out that Orwell was, himself, a left-leaning thinker. One, moreover, can see his stark and brutal drawing of Oceania as a portrait that deftly highlights the ugliness of power, and one can see its rudiments in the corporatist state we live in, even if the economy is richer and more plentiful than what the Soviet communists were able to realize.

Sure, our Western states are arguably and demonstrably superior, morally as well as economically, but Orwell offers a poignant novel that resonates well, not only with the creed of affluent white libertarians who abhor communism, but also for liberals who strain under the dominance of our corporate culture, especially for those outside of the middle and upper classes, those of us who can sympathize more fully with Winston’s sense of deprivation, even the desperation.

The Geo-Politics of Food

Who says Malthusian logic is dead?

Brown says the world's rapidly expanding population has created elevated demand for grain, milk, cheese and eggs, but changes in climate and irrigation have made it increasingly difficult to increase production accordingly. Increased demand has also stripped the world of much of its excess crop surpluses. For example, Brown says, in 1965, when the Indian monsoon failed, the United States sent a fifth of its total wheat crop to India to avoid famine.

"We couldn't do that today because we don't have that sort of slack in the system," he says. "The problem is not that we're producing less grain — we're producing more grain — but we're not increasing production fast enough to keep up with the growth in demand."

Life is so cozy for so many in the advanced nations, I type on my computer and do so as a relatively poor person in an advanced nation, that I don't suppose there is much political will to take such a developing problem seriously. After all, we all appreciate the serious problems of climate change, save perhaps for Republicans and the corporate elite, but we are also overwhelmed by the sense that we cannot really do anything about it. We enjoy the good life today, even as we see the quasi-apocalyptic crisis looming over the horizon, and we just long to enjoy this good life as long as we can.

(Source: LJ/NPR)

The Geo-Politics of Food

Who says Malthusian logic is dead?

Brown says the world's rapidly expanding population has created elevated demand for grain, milk, cheese and eggs, but changes in climate and irrigation have made it increasingly difficult to increase production accordingly. Increased demand has also stripped the world of much of its excess crop surpluses. For example, Brown says, in 1965, when the Indian monsoon failed, the United States sent a fifth of its total wheat crop to India to avoid famine.

"We couldn't do that today because we don't have that sort of slack in the system," he says. "The problem is not that we're producing less grain — we're producing more grain — but we're not increasing production fast enough to keep up with the growth in demand."

Life is so cozy for so many in the advanced nations, I type on my computer and do so as a relatively poor person in an advanced nation, that I don't suppose there is much political will to take such a developing problem seriously. After all, we all appreciate the serious problems of climate change, save perhaps for Republicans and the corporate elite, but we are also overwhelmed by the sense that we cannot really do anything about it. We enjoy the good life today, even as we see the quasi-apocalyptic crisis looming over the horizon, and we just long to enjoy this good life as long as we can.

(Source: LJ/NPR)