1984 is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between June 10, 2021 and October 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "in the case of 1984 , inventing the most grotesque forms of governmental overreach"; "overshadowed by 1984 and Animal Farm"; "appendices of 1984 strongly suggest that in the canonical timeline". It most often appears alongside United States, Apollo Mojave, Charity.
- Article page
- 1984
- Mention count
- 6
- Issue count
- 6
- First seen
- June 10, 2021
- Last seen
- October 30, 2024
- Book title
- 1984
Outbound links
- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.502.4185&rep=rep1&type=pdf
- http://www.philipcorr.net/uploads/downloads/48.pdf
- https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/argentinas-poverty-rate-spikes-53-6-months-president-114221438
- https://apnews.com/article/52296e1ac72b4c699f5d2d1cad71461a
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-lifespan
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-cult-of-smart#comment-1292462
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/classifieds-thread-12022/comment/4731852
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-bay-area-house-party
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/how-trustworthy-are-supplements/comment/9666035
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-august-2023/comment/22127865
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-august-2023/comment/22133756
- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/movie-review-dont-look-up
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
And this, I think, is why Orwell is about as popular with the right as with the left: he takes an almost libertarian pleasure in describing(and in the case of 1984, inventing)the most grotesque forms of governmental overreach and mission failure imaginable. And basically no matter where you stand politically, it’s hard not to enjoy that kind of stuff.. No horrific detail escapes him. You can see his future as a great writer of dystopian fiction in his depiction of the Spike’s dining-room:
I wish the chapter on life in the Spike, in particular, could be read by every politician creating legislation that attempts to combat homelessness. At the very least, it might serve as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to create a shelter system. Beyond that, I wish this and all the rest of Orwell’s excellent non-fiction wasn’t quite so overshadowed by 1984 and Animal Farm. There’s so much here that even a thirteen thousand word review can’t hope to cover.
34: Did you know: the appendices of 1984 strongly suggest that in the canonical timeline, the Oceanian dictatorship fell a few years after the events of the book and was replaced by a more liberal state.
Inline links: strongly suggest
Here’s a crazy theory: the moral transition from other virtues to Justice mirrors the literary transition from utopian fiction to dystopian. In Utopia, people practice virtues like Charity, Industry, and Humanity, excelling at them and making their good world even better. In Dystopia, Justice is all you can hope for. If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster. But if I were in 1984, my fondest wish would be to bring O’Brien and the others to justice; to watch them suffer, to undo the wound in the world caused by their scheming.
Inline links: Terra Ignota
“If I were in Terra Ignota, my fondest wish would be to excel in some way the same way Sniper, Apollo Mojave, and the other utopian characters excel, bringing glory to my Hive and giving its already-brilliant shine extra luster. But if I were in 1984, my fondest wish would be to bring O’Brien and the others to justice; to watch them suffer, to undo the wound in the world caused by their scheming.”
Similarly, if you're in a 1984 dystopia, where everyone is constantly being brought low and made to suffer... it might feel nice to have your particular tormentors brought low and made to suffer, but it's unlikely to change much of anything or do much good. Even getting rid of the criminals and villains at the top of the foodchain will accomplish little, because there's no one good in your society to replace them. In this world, trying to excel an be personally virtuous may actually have a bigger impact than adding to the pile of persecutions; there may be a lot of people you can easily save and situations you can easily improve, just by caring and working hard, because no one else is doing that.
19% know who wrote 1984 (George Orwell)
What is the name of Dorothy’s dog in The Wizard of Oz? (Toto, 80% correct) I don’t think any of these are taught in school. They’re absorbed by cultural osmosis. It seems equally likely that Romeo and Juliet could be absorbed the same way. Wasn’t there an Academy-Award-winning movie about Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet just a decade or so before this study came out? Sure, 19% of people know that Orwell wrote 1984 - but how many people know the 1984 Calendar Meme, or the “1984 was not an instruction manual!” joke, or have heard of the reality show Big Brother? Nobody learned those in school, so maybe they learned Orwell’s name the same place they learned about the other 1984-related stuff. Okay, so school probably doesn’t do a great job teaching facts. But maybe it could still teach skills, right? According to tests, fewer than 10% of Americans are “proficient” at PIIAC-defined numeracy skills, even though in theory you need to know algebra to graduate from most public schools. I took a year of Spanish in middle school, and I cannot speak Spanish today to save my life; that year was completely wasted. Sure, I know things like “Hola!” and “Adios!”, but I also know things like “gringo” and “Yo quiero Taco Bell” - this is just cultural osmosis again. So it seems most people forget almost all of what they learn in school, whether we’re talking about facts or skills. The remaining pro-school argument would be that even if they forget every specific thing, they retain some kind of scaffolding that makes it easier for them to learn and understand new things in the future; ie they keep some sort of overall concept of learning. This is a pretty god-of-the-gaps-ish hypothesis, and counterbalanced by all the kids who said school made them hate learning, or made them unable to learn in a non-fake/rote way, or that they can’t read books now because they’re too traumatized from years of being forced to read books that they hate. II. Step back a bit. Why should any of this be true? That is: Why would most students forget things that schools teach many times?
In this model, the reason smarter people remember more stuff than duller people is partly a differently-shaped forgetting curve. But mostly it’s that intellectuals put themselves in situations where they hear about things more often. If you remember that George Orwell wrote 1984, it’s probably because you read the newspaper or blogs or whatever and hear some government program described as “Orwellian”. But if you’re watching TikToks on your cell phone all day, maybe you don’t hear that, and then you join the 81% of college students who have forgotten that name.
When you're in that state of mind, you end up like those Muslims in Michigan. Your world narrows to a two-character psychodrama between yourself and the Democrats. In this psychodrama, the Republican Party is an offscreen character, mentioned but never seen. It fills the same role as Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984: a formless target representing either everything you hate or everything you hope for, depending on how the psychodrama goes. Nobody knew Emmanuel Goldstein's position on tax rates, and it would be insane to ask.