While reading this, I can't help but to hear Charlie Chaplin's Great Dictator final speech in the background of my mind:
"... We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…"
The whole point of that Great Dictator's Speech is the beginning, the "I'm sorry, I don't want to be a dictator" part. We need fewer wannabe-great-dictators in the world, and more successful tribal leaders striving to unite people via voluntary consensus, tolerance and moderation. That's just as true today as it was in the bad old 1930s.
> tribal leaders striving to unite people via voluntary consensus, tolerance and moderation
'Citizen 99234832, we have received reports that suggest you are insufficiently consensual, tolerant and moderate. Please report to camp X101 for voluntary reeducation, or face the consequences.'
Yes, you have noticed that authoritarians sometimes use the veneer of freedom and cooperation to force obedience. Sometimes they just use strongman tactics. It doesn't change the fact that voluntary consensus and tolerance are, in fact good.
Exactly! How are we supposed to know whether killing people, flaying their skin, and consuming their flesh is good or bad!? Should we just rely on our completely "unbiased" and "objective" media (CANNIBALISM BAD, HERP DERP!). There's literally no such thing as truth! We are heroes for eating the flesh of small children!
"And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ….." .. so mixed on hearing that. On one hand, this gives so much hope under the direst of circumstances. On the other, it says a lot about human nature too .. which can steadfastly hold on to destructive beliefs and act on them till the last breath.
It could also simply mean that every reign has a natural end. Power inheritance tends not to go well in non-free societies, even if it does sometime manage to last a few lifetimes.
that doesn't jive with my initial take, although admittedly, i've only read the first few chapters so far and have yet to get back to it. i got the initial sense that the greed is harmful, and the beliefs around greed make it worse, so a little greed leads to a lot of bad feelings. it's not minimizing/forgiving of the actual greed in existence though.
i'm in general agreement of the book's overarching thesis that people are mostly good. we wouldn't have a functioning society if that weren't true. it's just that our spidey senses are horribly tuned to the modern world of very few actual dangers, which are mostly hidden away in institutions (centers of power) rather than our neighbors to whom we tend to cast the suspicious eye.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C. S. Lewis
I agree with Orwell more on the motivation behind tyranny:
"No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Almost certainly because the attempts at creating "utopia" aren't anything of the sort - they are simple power grabs by whoever happens to be the most ruthless bunch of thugs.
there are many types of utopia i can think of, one could say fukuyama's "the end of history" was a declaration of capitalist utopia (and we all know how that turned out)...
nothing is ever perfect, but it doesnt mean we shouldnt imagine and strive for a better society, i think thats the big point
I don't think so. I think the argument is that it's all the wrong type of communism, and the wrong type of socialism, and of anarchy, and the wrong type of every other "this will bring us to paradise" idea. And it's wrong, not because the ideas are necessarily wrong, but because they're run by people. Specifically, they're run by people (call them type 1) who think that having other people (type 2) believe in a utopian ideal is a great way for type 1 people to get put in positions of power. The type 2 people put them in such positions so that they can create the utopia, but the type 1 people don't do that once they get in power. Instead, they just do whatever lets them hold on to the power.
It's not just the wrong type of communism. It's the wrong type of human beings.
Personally, I think that this take is somewhat too cynical... but only somewhat. There are people who are genuinely trying to make things better. Not nearly as many as are saying that they're trying to do so, but more than zero.
Well, I was describing tyrannical power. Certainly I would agree that there are many people who genuinely want to help rather than to achieve power for its own sake.
"... We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…"
https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-spee...