No no no no. It didn't occur to me that my words might be interpreted this way:
people you don't respect -- you think their "minds" are weak enough to need "vaccination" against a "disease" -- remedial text for political idiots
I respect (former) East Germans. I don't think they're idiots or have weak minds, or need remedial texts or any kind of higher education or higher intelligence. I don't think they're any different from West Germans. Same with North Koreans and South Koreans. There's no such thing as a mind which is naturally insusceptible to bad ideology. We all need inoculation.
Basically, you care about 1984 from the perspective of its effect
Yes. Orwell fought with a gun in Spain as a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. He was fighting with a pen when he wrote 1984. He was more successful with the pen.
would you still think it worth reading?
Dunno. I never claimed it worth reading. But it's short, to the point, and concisely illustrates some important ideas. It might be worth reading just to add "memory hole" to your vocabulary. On other hand maybe Milan Kundera is a more entertaining choice. I love this Kundera quote: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Whether any given book is worth reading seems very personal to me. I don't have much of an opinion about it. I, personally, didn't love the book. But I did love the movie.
I think there's quite a distinction to be made between the people who did their best to survive under the East German system and the people who actively participated in establishing and maintaining that system.
Consider 1984 as being targeted at those who would otherwise be influenced by equally-simplistic totalitarian ideologies, and who might otherwise be led to collaborate with the equivalent the Stasi in the belief that they were doing good.
There was - and is - an unfortunately large population of such people, and I can't find much fault in Orwell's intention to shrink its ranks.
people you don't respect -- you think their "minds" are weak enough to need "vaccination" against a "disease" -- remedial text for political idiots
I respect (former) East Germans. I don't think they're idiots or have weak minds, or need remedial texts or any kind of higher education or higher intelligence. I don't think they're any different from West Germans. Same with North Koreans and South Koreans. There's no such thing as a mind which is naturally insusceptible to bad ideology. We all need inoculation.
Basically, you care about 1984 from the perspective of its effect
Yes. Orwell fought with a gun in Spain as a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. He was fighting with a pen when he wrote 1984. He was more successful with the pen.
would you still think it worth reading?
Dunno. I never claimed it worth reading. But it's short, to the point, and concisely illustrates some important ideas. It might be worth reading just to add "memory hole" to your vocabulary. On other hand maybe Milan Kundera is a more entertaining choice. I love this Kundera quote: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Whether any given book is worth reading seems very personal to me. I don't have much of an opinion about it. I, personally, didn't love the book. But I did love the movie.