1984 by George Orwell | Lex Fridman

there was truth and there was untruth and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world you were not mad 1984 by George Orwell is one of the most impactful books ever written it has been widely used and misused in political discourse by all kinds of ideologues into that discourse it entered terms like big brother thought crime double think Newspeak thought police and orwellian strangely enough as a synonym for the very thing that the author Orwell was against it's been translated in over 65 languages has sold over 30 million copies has been banned in many countries especially authoritarian regimes it's been banned under Stalin and as recently as 2022 in Belarus in this video I'll give a quick summary with spoilers and a few takeaways I'd like to try to make it somewhat interesting to people who both have and have not read the book uh let's see how it goes the world in the book 1984 is a dystopian future Society Nation maybe you can say super State named Oceania it's fully controlled by a totalitarian political party called inksock it's led by Big Brother who as we might discuss may or may not be a real person he might just be as simple used by the party the party wants only to increase its power also something we might talk about it uses technology telescreens for Mass surveillance it's creating a new language called Newspeak which removes words from English that could lead to Rebellion it uses doublethink to control thought by perhaps you could say forcing you to hold contradictory beliefs and accept them as true if not the thought police arrest you for committing a thought crime examples of doublethink are Wars peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength and finally the party constantly rewrites history as the quote goes who controls the past controls the future who controls the present controls the past there are several Ministries four of them Ministry of truth it's responsible for propaganda and like I said rewriting history Ministry of Love is responsible for brainwashing people through torture mystery of Plenty is responsible for rationing of food supplies and goods and Ministry of Peace of course is responsible for maintaining constant state of War Society is divided into three levels the inner party the auto party and the pros the stands for I guess proletariats it's the working class the inner party's tiny the auto party's a little bit bigger and the majority of the people I forget what the percentage is maybe 80 percent is the uh the pros the working class there are several key characters Winston the main character is a low ranking member of inksock he works at the ministry of Truth where he rewrites history like I mentioned Julia is a dark-haired girl who Winston falls in love with and she with him they have sex and this is maybe a good place to mention that passionate sex love and passionate sex are forbidden in this Society good sex I think is a term under new speak hashtag good sex is the kind of sex that leads to procreation which is the only kind of sex that's allowed and the only kind of sex that's good O'Brien is uh another Central character he's the member of the inner party that uh convinces Winston he's part of the Brotherhood which is a lie and he eventually is the man who tortures Winston and breaks his mind breaks his heart big brother and Emmanuel Goldstein are these symbolic characters that will never actually get to meet they may not exist big brother is the head of the party inksock and Emmanuel Goldstein is the leader of the so-called Brotherhood which is the supposed mysterious group that lurks in the shadows and works to overthrow the party again may or may not exist will maybe talk about the importance of that in a totalitarian state so a few key takeaways and I'll try to do my best I have disparate notes that I took for myself I'll try to do my best to try to integrate them together to make some cohesive thoughts and part of the reason I wanted to do this while I have read 1984 many times in my life and many of the books of uh put on a reading list that I want to read I read many times I haven't often really concretized my thoughts about the books I just take the journey and just let the thoughts kind of wander around in the background as I live my life I wanted to kind of put on paper and maybe share with others to see what they think what my concrete takeaways are from the book what my thoughts are if I could uh try to convert them into words so the first one for me especially later in life is I've been reading this book is that when everything else are most things that make you human have taken away by those around you by the totalitarian state the last thing that's left that is the most difficult to take away is love love for other human beings love for life itself that's the little flame from which Hope Springs that's the key revolutionary Act is the act of love so when the ability to speak is taken away when the ability to think rational thoughts is taken away the last thing that's left and the thing that ultimately gives hope is love that's a big takeaway for me and the note that Julia gets to Winston the note reading I love you is the kind of revolutionary Act that leads to a society beyond the one they exist in I think a lot of the book has an interesting hypocrisy to it where the main character Winston is almost in an animalistic way obsessed with destroying the state in in rebellion and revolution but I think love is the thing that allows you to believe in a place beyond the state in believing that you can build something better versus destroying the thing you're in I think you have to be careful as a revolutionary not to obsess 100 with destruction because Beyond destruction there there could be chaos that leads to something much worse I think love is the thing that the basic human thing that connects all of us uh the messy thing that connects all of us that allows you to build a better Society after the totalitarian one is overthrown um what else do I want to say there's an interesting tension there between love and sex or lust I think there's a quote that pure love or pure lust was impossible or forbidden pure love and pure lust pure here meaning sort of unadulterated uncensored intensity of feeling maybe intimacy and that was an interesting question raised by the book both by Winston and Julia's what is ultimately the thing the most powerful Act of rebellion is it between us humans when everything is forbidden is it animalistic like sex just lust lust for another human or is it love I kind of love you have a romantic partner but even love for family love for friends I don't know I think the book almost claims that it is sex but I think of what the book also shows is if sex is your manifestation of rebellion that that ultimately leads to something that doesn't last that ultimately leads to um foreign versus building Beyond The Horizon when the state Falls so some quotes from Winston on this the more men you've had sex with so Julia admitted to have sex with quite a lot of people he says the more men you've had sex with the more I love you I hate Purity I hate virtue I want everyone to be corrupt to the Bone this kind of rubbed me the wrong way because again this seems to be obsessed with the hatred towards the state versus a longing and a hope which I think hope is really important here uh a hope for a better future beyond the state again another quote from the book their Embrace had been a battle the climax of Victory it was a blow struck against the party it was a political act so there again I think sex is a political act an act of political Rebellion I think that's not the deeply human thing here the deeply human thing is again the act of love it's a source of hope it's the Catalyst for building a better future beyond the revolution an interesting side note here and there could be a million interesting side notes and I'm desperately trying not to go on million tangent and to hold myself together here to stay focused is on family so there's all kinds of uh love and I think family love is a really powerful bond that connects us and that's one of the things that the totalitarian States really go after and I should actually mention sort of loosely using term authoritarian and totalitarian here but I think to me at least I don't know what others think but to me authoritarian means where there's a government a centralized complete centralized control of political affairs and a totalitarian state is a complete is beyond that is a complete control of not just politics and the functions of government the basics of the function of the government but also social economic everything it's uh Nazi Germany's example of that I think to me where there's just complete control of every single thing from the war effort to the um to the social interactions the rules that govern social interaction to the press all that kind of stuff so I think this book is more about at least in my definition of the term uh about totalitarianism anyway as I was saying on family I think the way they destroy family one of course uh with your romantic partner forbidding passion uh passionate sex but really just passion longing for another for another human being in that in that romantic way and they also uh really reward and encourage children at a young age they indoctrinate them to turn their parents in For Thought crime whether real or not which of course is a silly notion because it doesn't there's no nature of truth there's no uh you can just use anyone of anything and they're guilty by just existing so that's a way to attack the family and I should also mentioned on the topic of love is that I think the goal of the party the Final Destination as used by O'Brien through the process of torture is for to break your mind to break your heart and soul completely so that the only love you can have and it could be felt as a pure love is for Big Brother this is the kind of thing you see in North Korea is that the only love you're allowed to have the the the remaining inklings of feeling that might still exist in you you can Channel only not towards family not towards romantic Partners not towards friends but towards this leader this god-like Messianic figure in this case who may may not exist in all cases that figure while there is a human associated with it it's really much bigger than the human and that's the only love you're allowed to have so the other takeaway I have is on the topic of hate I think all humans have the capacity almost an animalistic craving for hate of the other the enemy whether it's individuals like Emmanuel Goldstein or nations like Eurasia and East Asia which I should say are the two other super States describe in this book that are constantly at war with each other again the fascinating thing about the way this book is written is you don't know if you raise your or East Asia exists you really don't know what exists or what is true beyond the local little interaction local little world of the main character and that I think is the point when you don't really know there's no steady footing on which to uh construct a world view from which you can have hope about a better future that longing for a better future and so this animalistic uh craving for hate or the capacity to have hate especially when we're in crowds I think is most uh powerfully Illustrated in the two minutes of hate which is practiced by the society and the quote is the horrible thing about the two minutes of hate was not that one was obliged to act apart but that it was impossible to avoid joining in within 30 seconds any pretense was always unnecessary a hideous Ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness a desire to kill to torture to smash faces in with a sledgehammer seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current turning one even against one's will into a grimacing screaming lunatic and yet the rage that one felt was an abstract undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blow lamp that's the point is you get the crowd together you get them to hate Goldstein or Eurasia or East Asia you get them to hate anything and because that that feeling that drug that hypnotic uh isn't that mass hypnosis that you feel can be directed by the state into any direction and because you have complete control history you can direct it on a day-by-day basis towards any Target and as long as the hate is catalyzed to these kinds of rituals as long as the hate is there it can overpower the individualistic feeling of love we have for each other so that that hate is a more animalistic desire I don't know what to make of it of course it's also important to say that this book I think I've read many places that it was an intended originally by Orwell as a satire although satire that has quite a lot of torture at the end and uh doesn't seem to have much humor but I think if you read it as a satire that's the way it's better to understand its relevance in our society today because a lot of things like two minutes of hate is almost like a caricature of what hate looks like in a mass Gathering but if you take it as a caricature it can now reveal you some of the elements that already exist in human nature that are there and that we should be very cautious about so it reveals the very thing that if not monitored by ourselves uh can result in a slippery slope that leads to um yeah destruction of uh the tribalism destruction of other groups and then control of the collective intelligence of our species through the totalitarian state I think there's elements of this that are just under illustration in social media today I don't want to overstate it I think just like comparing things to Hitler comparing things to 1984 I think is a reach in most cases but social media does reveal this kind of mass hysteria this capacity of humans to be outraged of uh outrage based on tribalism um so we have to understand it we have to resist giving into it on the individual level and I do believe we have the responsibility to create technology that helps us resist it that incentivizes us not to be cruel to each other just because all the people in whatever tribe we Define ourselves in are being cruel to a particular person or a particular group another takeaway I have is about power inksock the totalitarian States wants only one thing and that is power Powers both the means and the end absolute power that's what Brian describes and there's a lot of uh quotes about this in the torture part of the book O'Brien says the real power the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but power over men power is inflicting pain and humiliation power isn't tearing human Minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing 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 a dictatorship the object of persecution is persecution the object of torture is torture the object of power is power this of course is another aspect of human nature the will to power and the tendency of that power to corrupt O'Brien says also the weirdness of the cell is the Vigor of the organism through the torture of the individual the breaking of the individual through the death of the individual that doesn't exist according to the history all of that doesn't matter what matters is the organism and um there's been a lot of brilliant comments throughout social media and on Reddit I just want to highlight something about this because I had the exact same feeling as I was this time uh rereading it there's a comment from a Reddit user whose name is a brave sky 6764. uh he said the conversation between Lex and Michael Levin who is a uh a brilliant uh biologist engineer uh came to mind when O'Brien made an analogy to an organism which survives even as the individual cells pass away and the great purges are analogous to The Cutting of a fingernail if you see society as an organism and uh which I think is the way a totalitarian state sees it then the destruction of a large percentage of that Society the murder the torture all kinds of atrocities and genocide become justifiable as long as the organism flourishes and um that's how you get to the ideas that Stalin had it's okay to break a few eggs to make an omelet this devaluation of a human being as of fundamental importance in a society foreign that's a slippery slope into atrocities it's not just deeply unethical from our understanding of morals and ethics it is also very unproductive it destroys the human Spirit and the human spirit is essential for a building of a Great Society of constant progress I think that's also one of the other messages of the book is about Utopia that totalitarianism results when you chase perfection we Chase when you present this idea of utopia there is no Utopia there is no perfect Society I think at least for me that's takeaway I think the optimal state of being for an individual and for a state is a constant constant turnover constant change in in the case of a state it's a constant turnover of leaders of ideas and always hopefully in the long term making progress uh towards a better uh a better world but it's always going to be messy um Perfection only exists in a oppressive state Perfection only exists when you remove the basic Humanity of the individuals that make up that state when you destroy the the human Spirit or do you when you suppress and you destroy all the freedoms because freedom is going to be messy it's going to be very chaotic but that freedom ultimately is at least in the long Arc of history is going to create progress so yes as the the redditor breaks guy 67-64 says that does actually give you a perspective of a biological system where it's a bunch of living organisms each one of us are made up of a bunch of living organisms and we take that for granted of all the atrocities that are happening there and we don't seem to give a damn I think that's a really good metaphor for us to help if if you want to put yourself in the mind of the inner party a big brother of the people that are in power in those uh situations I think a lot of them if most of them if not all of them see themselves as doing good for the world is doing good for the society and they're able to justify that the way we justify the murder of the different cells in her body you don't even think of them as worthy of consideration you don't think of them as as living beings of having the same value as you and that's one of the really powerful ideas that the founding of the United States that all men are created equal but there's an equal Worth to a human being no matter who that human being is that idea at the very least as flawed as its implementations have been is a really really powerful idea and it's a non-trivial idea and that idea resists the drug of totalitarianism the drug of power I do believe that on the topic of power and politics that 1984 as I've mentioned has been I would say misused by political ideologues I've seen it for example on conservatives in the United States have used 1984 to call left-wing policies orwellian I think that's an overstatement of course used for a dramatic effect but it should be at least said that Orwell was a Democratic Socialist 1984 is not a criticism of socialism it's a criticism of totalitarianism and I think the point is a warning against totalitarianism in all forms that all political ideologists can succumb to the Allure of power and be corrupted by it and I think people on the left in the United States and people on the right can both be corrupted by power so this kind of one-way uh criticism of left-wing policies as orwellian is a is a very kind of convenient shorthand but the reality is all men and politicians are capable of um creating an orwellian world and I think one of the things that is highlighted in the book very well I would say if I interpret it correctly is the hypocrisy of Winston when O'Brien asks Winston what he's willing to do to overthrow the party what he's willing to do for the Brotherhood Winston admits that he is willing to do atrocities he's willing to do evil onto children uh unto anybody murder anything and I think this is a really powerful illustration that both the totalitarian and the blind immoral resistance Rebellion against the totalitarian state can both be evil and I think that's where I return to love is the thing that carries hope for a world Beyond this battle this very important battle for freedom but you have to have that otherwise it's the orwellian state and the resistance door willing State can both destroy basic human rights and freedoms I think sort of in the character of Winston that's Illustrated well I should also mention that there's interesting writing no I'm not obviously a scholar of Orwell and there's a lot of books been written and I should probably recommend them somewhere there's just great books written on the on 1984 on on Orwell on the historical context in which he was operating and all that kind of stuff but as far as I see Orwell also with 1984 and himself politically he was not espousing the complete opposite of totalitarianism there is a again with Democratic socialism that there is value to the connection between human beings that you have to lean on each other help each other that Society is fundamentally a cohesive Collective than a completely sort of disparate set of Sovereign individuals is both and I think he was torn about that idea because in order to resist the totalitarian state you have to fight for those basic individual freedoms but at the same time a society a well-functioning society allows for that freedom to manifest as uh as collaboration and so that's the difficult challenge there again that's why he was a Democratic Socialist and the the criticism of the book was against totalitarianism of a centralized state that controls speech thought you know the press and all the basic human basic basic human freedoms controls truth and I think a lot of people would ask the question and I hear this tossed around you know do we live in the world of 1984 today and I think that's used as a shorthand to sort of criticize different policies and different governments I generally don't like the use of that kind of language because it's basically crying wolf if everything is 1984 if everybody is Hitler then you're not going there's there's no way to kind of uh properly normalize the discussion of what's uh of the lesser of two evils kind of thing which is ultimately democracy is about you have you have a collection of things you're picking they all kind of suck but you want to pick the one that sucks the least that's that's that's human society you know that's human nature it's messy and so I don't think we live in uh 1984 state but there's a lot of elements that this book reveals about human nature and about the operation of a totalitarian state that we should be on the watch for so surveillance uh state of double think of controlling language um of being in a constant state of War as a way to control the population and the flow of resources all those things have elements of uh almost like a useful tools for the establishment of complete control of a populace and the moment you notice those elements it's our job to resist those elements so I think the point is we have to be vigilant to the slippery slope of the will to power in centralized institutions another thing I I want to mention is that I think a lot of people rightfully complement Orwell to have predict some of the elements of future Society especially with technology technological capabilities that are with for example telescreens used by the state to control the population maybe I can make a few comments on technology in general people who criticize technology will often use 1984 as an example that you know technology is a tool for totalitarian state it's a way they can achieve full control it should be extremely cautious of it and I think that's there's a kernel of Truth to that but it's not obviously to me that on the whole technology is a a tool for totalitarian control that I think it is also a tool for freedom the internet is an incredible tool for freedom and so of course we have to fight for that freedom but I believe in general the greater let's just take the internet broadly as an example and there's a lot of sub elements of that and like a more sort of platonic sense of what the internet is which is digital inter connectivity we have to fight for the freedom but in general the greater reach and access that the internet has the more powerful the resistance of totalitarianism technology is a double-edged sword it provides the tools for oppression and the tools for the ongoing fight for freedom and as long as the will to fight arises in the human heart technology I think helps Humanity win and of course there's been a lot of discussion about free speech and the freedom of thought and there's a lot to be said there that's much more nuanced than the book 1984. provides I think 1984 just shows the end horrible conclusion of complete totality and control over speech over thought over feeling over everything uh but in general my view of it is this kind of inspiration to in order to prevent ourselves from slipping into an authoritarian until uh totalitarian state you know orwellian type of dystopias to avoid them we have to Value critical and independent thought I think thought first before speech just thought I think you have to learn to think deeply from first principles independent of whatever tribe you find yourselves in independent of government independent of groups and depending of the people around you the people you love that love you you have to learn at least sometimes to think independently now this is the niche if you gaze longer to the abyss the abyss gazes into you if you think too independently you can break your mind I mean we are social creatures we need that connection but I think it's like uh with the Tom Waits I like my Tom a little Drop of Poison I think of Truly Deeply independent thought as a little Drop of Poison that's necessary for your mind most of your life you live you kind of assume most things around you are true and that's very useful we stand on the shoulders of giants but you on a regular occasion have to question question your assumption question your biases question everything question the things you've taken for granted question what everybody's telling you but not too much it's a it's a it's a tricky balance but the act of rebellion against the Italian State against the slippery slope into that state is is that independent thought and of course speech is a manifestation of that thought So to avoid Echo Chambers in both thought and speech like I said you have to question your assumptions challenge your biases I think that's the way out or maybe that's a resistance mechanism to uh slipping into authoritarianism and maybe I have a few more things to say about the latter part of the book the part where there's torture where there's room 101 that has the thing you fear the most which is different for all of us and for Winston that's rats makes you wonder what that thing is for each of us I left a mental note for myself to do more research into uh into the historical context the psychology of the Neuroscience the the effectiveness of torture I think there's probably a lot of really good work I had a brief conversation with Andrew huberman on the phone about this topic Andrew huberman the brilliant Andrew huberman host of The huberman Lab podcast that you should listen to and then he mentioned to me there's a bunch of papers in these topics this has been studied sort of the the carrot and the Stick of the ability of incentives and disincentives to control the perception and the mental state of people and animals um and he mentioned to me a few folks that I could talk to on a podcast about this topic and a few books so I'll definitely look into this more I think 1984 is probably it uses torture as a philosophical description as a caricature of the operation of um a totalitarian state but at the same time a lot of those elements were all done under Stalin in the Soviet Union so it's not it's not like it's very different or very far from reality it's very very real the question is about the actual effect it has on the human mind which I really have to think because um torture in this case breaks Winston in fact I'd like to believe that many people in the most fundamental ways can't be broken in this way I've seen science again without extensively reading so please correct me if I'm wrong but I've seen science that shows that torture for the purpose of intelligence gathering is not effective it's not effective to get accurate information because people will tell you anything really to stop the torture stop the physical and the mental uh the emotional suffering so that but I think this book is about the use of torture to completely break your ability to think and to perceive the world one of the things I uh talked to Andrew about is whether it's possible to control perception through to these kinds of things and it seems that there is literature that shows it's possible to literally change your perception of the world like uh in this case in 1984 it's when you're holding up four fingers can you actually make the person believe that you're holding up five fingers not because of some weird illusion or uh just because your vision is blurry or any of that but you literally when you look I'm holding four fingers and what you see is five fingers not because your vision is poor no your visual cortex the way you're processing that information something about the processing changes completely your perception if I tell you there's a straight line came through incentive or disincentive can you start seeing like a a crooked line or something like that anyway I think that there's literature that supports that which is by the way terrifying but the thing I'd like to research into more is if that can be long lasting is that I just don't believe it can be if you're not pushed to your death yes maybe perception maybe your willingness to think but your ability to think your actual ability to think independent thoughts maybe you're terrified I understand if you're terrified of any any more um any more kind of thinking that leads to rebellious thoughts like the book mentions the idea of face crime where you can reveal your thoughts the inner work is your mind by the subtleties of your expressions in your face and I think also like Winston O'Brien says if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself so I can understand that I can understand that maybe that is the basic mechanism that torture leads to that you just learn your body your mind learns to hide uh the truth from yourself like you're not you don't even allow yourself to think it because you know if you think it is going to lead to face crime and thought crime and that's that's going to lead to more torture that's possible that's possible but I just can't imagine the the capacity for love in the human heart to be extinguished Through Torture finally extinguished temporarily yes but finally irrecoverably which I think is the basic claim of the book that they break so because through the worst of the torture Winston gives up Julia the object of his love he says that some things like that the fact that you said torture her not me anything to make this stop the fact that you said that the fact that you thought that is a is is a is a statement is a thought you can't walk back to yourself so it's irrecoverable you just destroyed your Faith In Love I don't think so I think it's possible we have to remember that this is one particular character this is one particular story I think there's a lot of people in which the um the capacity to love cannot be broken no matter the torture but that's an interesting scientific question but it's also a human question it's just I I think man search for meaning there's a lot of books that explore this kind of question in the worst of conditions that humans had to suffer through what still persists what is the source of meaning um and I just think that the the the flame of Love persists through through atrocities Through Torture through suffering through all of it but the claim of the book that yes the totalitarians they can use torture to break even that even that uh which leads to the only love you're allowed to have which is the love for Big Brother so I think the practically speaking from the party perspective I think the point of uh O'Brien's torture Winston was to suffocate The Hope in his mind and heart so there is no hope by completely destroying the knowledge of what is and isn't true so being betrayed and this kind of uh goldstein's book about the society and I don't know if that's true not knowing anything about Julius basically having no emotional or intellectual ground to stand on it's very difficult to have a like a a sense of where you are like to have hope you have to have a sense of where you are and where things could be and that and then you also portray yourself like to force you to be a hypocrite on your own deepest feelings of love I think that basically puts you in a place where there's no hope there's no point it's um it's apathy it's nihilism and their hard-working member of society that is nihilistic is probably what the party wants because that human will not Rebel but on the point of Hope I should mention that there's kind of a long-running theory that since the appendix the appendix is about the details of Newspeak the language that the party is creating and forcing because that appendix was written in the past tense and it's talking about new speak in the past tense and it's written in English sort of non-newspeak that means the party and you speak and all of its elements that we see in the story is in the past that the world from which the book is created has escaped that and that's a message of hope that whatever whatever the Rebellion against the party whether it's passionate lust and sex whether it's love whether it's um the seeking truth in a world full of lies whatever it is there's a way out again to me the way out is love but that's a hopeful message in this dystopian novel that even these perfectly executed totalitarian States will fall I took a few random notes here that maybe I'll comment on I wrote a quote the masses cannot Rebel until they become conscious uh there might be either a Winston observation or an O'Brien statement I'm not sure but yes so you have to think eighty percent plus our pros of the working class they have the power if they want it but they don't want it they don't want to take it that's the whole point of the totalitarian state is to break your will for Freedom you desire for Freedom uh break your ability to know that you're not free and that's where all of it the changing of History the double thing the thought crime all of that uh comes into play that the torture in the ministry of love all of that is um is about preventing the populace from becoming conscious and again as as per the cells discussion earlier I wrote down the O'Brien quote the death of the individual is not death the party is immortal and this is just a interesting observation about the operation of a totalitarian state that it's the idea and a kind of amorphous symbol of the Messianic figure in big brother is all you need for the party to persist that person doesn't actually have to exist and you one individual doesn't have to exist it's just the uh division of society into high middle and low and the oppression of the low uh by the high by the centralized inner party that's all you need and the individual does not matter in that and again the way to fight that is to fight for the individual freedoms interesting side note is just the quote I wrote down from Julia I think if you keep the small rules you can break the big ones and so she in the book is somebody that follows did the T all the all the rules of the party she attends all the committee meetings and all that kind of stuff and just as like the model citizen from the perspective of the party and so that allows it to break the big rules like have passionate sex with people like the the really or fall in love all the all the Forbidden things and I think that's actually a good way to exist in the world I think for a lot of us there's probably a bunch of things that bother us in the in the local world around us in the bigger world I think you have to pick your battles you have to not get lost in the muck of small battles if you want to um have at least one or a few big victories in your life that make for a better world I think at least in my sense it's easy to get distracted by the little things that bother you in life and I think staying focused on the big things again picking your battles and staying with that for as long as possible working your ass off to solve one problem for as long as possible not giving up in against impossible odds against all the criticism all of that that's the way to solve those big problems and of course that's not what Julia is talking about but in a sense she is also because in that particular case a totalitarian state is the problem and the way to Rebel is to plant that seed of uh rebellion in each of the people she has sex with that uh that we are human that we have lust for each other that we have the ability to love each other and that is the necessary Act of rebellion there that that is the big leap for her at least uh in that kind of society I should also mention that there's a lot of interpretations of the different the small and the big things in this book so it's very possible in the case of Julia that Winston was played he was set up with Julia he was set up to feel all those things he was set up to have that little Secret Cove where he can write on his desk in the diary and dream of rebelling against the the uh the state dream of the Brotherhood it's unclear to me why an oppressive state would want people to have that little journey of Desiring freedom in all its manifestations I'm not sure but maybe O'Brien's statement that the the purpose of torture is torture hold some wisdom that to attain absolute power you also have to have a willingness and a mechanism to attain absolute suffering in the populace and maybe this is a way to maximize suffering is to give them hope before you crush it again the way out to me and the takeaway from this book the way out is love perhaps this is a good place to also mention a little bit of a fun Little controversy that evolved over Twitter so I posted a reading list quickly before heading off to a New Year's party of books that I hope to read in 2023 and these are based on books that I asked people to vote on and these are the ones uh many of the ones they selected and they happen to be many of the books I've read many times throughout my life and really enjoyed and they were they were like old friends that I love visiting and revisiting and every time I read them I get something new and they they're just read different uh throughout life you know the way in my teens when I read The Stranger by Camus was very different than it was in my uh 20s and different in my 30s I'll say my favorite book Now by kamu is probably the plague and all of that has evolved I read the idiot several times I read Brothers karmazov both in English and Russian uh not from underground I mean I loved Dostoyevsky and a lot of these books are just uh yes they are Classics but they're also deeply profound and they move me on a intellectual level but also just as a human being they're like travel companions they're like old friends uh old to dead friends so yeah so I was wanted to celebrate my love for books and it was very strange to me that um and if I'm just being honest for a second is kind of painful that um some prominent figures uh that I respect were kind of cruel about the list and they they responded they mocked it and all that kind of stuff and basically taking the worst possible interpretation and I have to be honest and say it was um it wasn't fun because uh it was just it was just a silly kid me kind of in a joyful New Year's mood sharing with the world books I love and I think what was happening and this seems to be happening a bit more is there's a bunch of people that are just almost waiting or hoping that I fail or maybe that I'm some kind of bad human being and they they're looking they're trying to discover things about me that reveal that I'm a bad human being and maybe somehow um this reading list reveals that I don't know uh I don't know so one criticism was that everybody read these books in school and they're basic I think my response to that criticism is no first of all most people have not read them in school maybe they're very Cliff Notes and they're not basic they're deeply profound some of the greatest words ever written but also I don't think I've ever gotten a lot from books I was forced to read in school when I had to read them for like an assignment some of these books I think I read in school but most of them not but it's only when I read them outside of school on my own volition that I really gained a lot from it and especially throughout my life regular times as a teenager as a 20 in my 20s and in my 30s so no these books are profound and deserve returning to and like I said there are old friends that give me a lot of meaning every time I return to revisit the ideas and give me a new perspective on life uh another criticism was very kind of nitpicky and the list was put together really quickly and the goal I like setting tough goals the goal is to read a book a week and you know on one week I had uh a little prince followed by brothers karamazov and people criticized uh that how can you possibly read Brothers karamazov in one week maybe I won't maybe I'll fail miserably uh but I love trying and but that's not actually was that wasn't actually the goal I should have said I intend to finish reading it by the end of that week so you start earlier because Little Prince uh it takes you know an hour or two to read and then Brothers karamazov uh I could have the two weeks it should take about 30 40 50 hours to read it that said friends I've read it already in English and in Russian I'm interviewing uh the the world famous I would say amazing translators of Brothers karamazov of of uh Dostoevsky of uh Tolstoy Richard pavir and Larissa volkowski uh probably across multiple days so this book means a lot to me I'm not uh somebody's just kind of rolling in what are the cool kids reading these days these books have been lifelong companions to me and the fact that people just want to stomp on that and a large number of people did people have respect yeah I'll be lying if I said it wasn't it didn't suck a bit anyway the the love for reading um persists I have to say after that I was very hesitant to even make this particular video uh on Orwell on 1984. and I'm not sure I want to be public with my reading after this and I know a lot of people will say no there's uh like we're here with you where they're very supportive and I love you I mean I meet so many incredible people but the reality just does suck to be vulnerable share something with the world and uh receive that kind of uh that kind of mockery at scale so uh I will definitely I can I will not be affected or broken by any of that kind of stuff for something that's actually meaningful like the conversations are some of the very difficult conversations I'm going to do but a silly side hobby thing of reading that I do throughout my life uh for that to be a source of mockery I'm just going to do that privately so I'm a little torn on that and I'll I'll try to figure out a way um also I should say that that list like a lot of things is kind of aspirational because if I take a job at a time at a tech company or if I start a tech company or if I have to travel across um I have to travel for extremely difficult conversations and really have to prepare for them all that kind of stuff I think that's going to affect my ability to both read and enjoy reading which I think is a prerequisite for this kind of reading but in general what I do is I read about one hour a day of Kindle so on on the sort of in my eyes physical device and uh depending on the workout I do and the chores I have it's going to be about two hours of audiobook so most of the things I do during Shores is audiobooks and uh when I run and I usually run about 10 to 15 miles so you're talking about because I often run over two hours it's like a slow pace like when the days are not insane it gives me a chance to think it gives me a chance to listen to audiobooks so I love that process it's the Escape for the world a chance for me to collect my thoughts and uh yeah it's again a source of happiness and joy and I wanted to share that and um yeah I think you can get quite a lot of reading done through that process um especially for the book you've read before it is very challenging to do this kind of takeaway video or to concretize your thoughts down on paper especially when you have to present them in this kind of way I'm not sure I'm going to do that much because it's an extra bit of effort but it's also a chance to share that Joy with the world so to find cool people that also enjoy it so it's a trade-off anyway I you know it's just a temporary thing but it um it did suck for for a short amount of time for a few hours for for a couple days but in general you know I'll persist with my love of reading but I might not talk about it publicly as much but again let me sort of emphasize that this kind of response and mockery will not affect anything of importance that I do like I I always I try to read comments I try to see criticism I really value especially High effort criticism I try to grow and constantly try to improve but that's for things that that I take very seriously like the the the podcast conversations that I do but for silly things like book lists Spotify music playlists the food I like to eat um I don't know what else anything any fun like uh side thing it's not that it's not that important if um if if it's something that others don't enjoy then whatever uh I'll enjoy them probably with my friends locally here or the people I meet so anyway I love reading I love reading Classics I love returning to old friends and uh in in book form and making new ones there's a bunch of Science Fiction that I embarrassingly have not read and would love to because those worlds are so meaningful to so many of the people I'm friends with that I can't wait to visit those worlds and sort of make new friends in the form of books so definitely the love for books the love for reading persists and if you share in that love that's beautiful so uh thank you for joining me on this journey thank you for watching this uh silly little video and I hope to see you next time love you all

2023-01-10 17:58

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