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Dec. 17th, 2014
This excerpt comes from Orwell’s 1938 essay on why he joined the Socialist party. One reason, he writes, is that he expected only this party to uphold freedom of speech, and as a writer, he must hold this as a supreme value.
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To begin with, the era of free speech is closing down. The freedom of the Press in Britain was always something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion; still, so long as the legal right to say what you like exists, there are always loopholes for an unorthodox writer. For some years past I have managed to make the Capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against capitalism. But I do not delude myself that this state of affairs is going to last for ever. … The time is coming - not next year, perhaps not for ten or twenty years, but it is coming - when every writer will have the choice of being silenced altogether or of producing the dope that a privilege minority demands.
-- George Orwell, “Essays” (Everyman’s Library, p. 92)
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He was writing from that darker time, when Stalin and Hitler were rising. From our perspective, it is not particularly clear how greater governmental power, even if it is socialist, will be a better guarantor of free speech, and Orwell perhaps underestimated the tolerance of capitalists willing to make money off of books that please a certain class of consumers by railing against the evils of capitalism when it does not seem to inspire true revolutionary behavior but merely satisfies another consumer appetite, such as books on religion or romance novels. The Western capitalist system is stable and strong enough to withstand such contrarian amusements, so long as they remain merely intellectual and fanciful, and at worst, inspire people to vote Democrat rather than Republican.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
To begin with, the era of free speech is closing down. The freedom of the Press in Britain was always something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion; still, so long as the legal right to say what you like exists, there are always loopholes for an unorthodox writer. For some years past I have managed to make the Capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against capitalism. But I do not delude myself that this state of affairs is going to last for ever. … The time is coming - not next year, perhaps not for ten or twenty years, but it is coming - when every writer will have the choice of being silenced altogether or of producing the dope that a privilege minority demands.
-- George Orwell, “Essays” (Everyman’s Library, p. 92)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He was writing from that darker time, when Stalin and Hitler were rising. From our perspective, it is not particularly clear how greater governmental power, even if it is socialist, will be a better guarantor of free speech, and Orwell perhaps underestimated the tolerance of capitalists willing to make money off of books that please a certain class of consumers by railing against the evils of capitalism when it does not seem to inspire true revolutionary behavior but merely satisfies another consumer appetite, such as books on religion or romance novels. The Western capitalist system is stable and strong enough to withstand such contrarian amusements, so long as they remain merely intellectual and fanciful, and at worst, inspire people to vote Democrat rather than Republican.
Reading Life
Dec. 17th, 2014 03:56 pmI think I have my evening reading figured out. Remember, I was just going to read my little handwritten journals in the evening, after dinner, because my brain was pure mush by then. However, I came to appreciate that my evenings have more nuance than that. The pure mush phase generally does not kick in until around nine o'clock, when it suddenly feels as though somebody has clocked my head with a sledge hammer. This leaves me an hour or two to play around with after dinner.
Now, I still cannot handle reading a serious history book after dinner, such as Burlingame's "Lincoln", but I found that I can make some serious progress on books like Plath's journals and Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet", as well as on essays, such as Orwell's essays. I was happy to see that I can even speed-read through such books, in that it seems fairly easy to glide down the page and spot the things that I am likely to want to keep. I also hoped to hit some of the drier novels, the stuff that is supposed to be good for one's literary soul but which do not honestly and truly strike me as a pleasant walk in the park, but which feel more like a life-draining trek through the desert on a horse with no name, such as Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". So much for my ambition to tackle Joyce's "Ulysses"! I thought I could speed read through these too, but I find that this does not work when it comes to narrative books, which seem to demand closer following, and there also seems to be too few gold nuggets for all the pages that one has to skim through, so that in the end it just does not feel like it is worth the precious hours of my old age.
Then I remembered my rereadables!, "1984", "Lolita", "Magic Mountain" and so on, maybe even the Shakespeare stuff. I picked up "Lolita" last night and I knew I had found my way home. Before I hit upon this idea, I was hoping to fit poetry in there. However, as I was looking through the collections of Louise Gluck and E. E. Cummings, I felt that here, too, the pickings would be slim and the travels far and wide and dull, though I will be happy to fit in a book of poems into this slot whenever one strikes me as a rich vein of precious verses.
It occurs to me that I may also want to fit in a celebrity book into my evening reading every once in a while. All these books must make for messy nights, but that is okay. If I ever feel like I want to spend some more quality time on one of these books, I can always slide it into my daytime reading for a day or two and move over my non-fiction book or my hot-ticket novel. It's all good. I only need to have a little order in my madness, a sense of direction.
Now, I still cannot handle reading a serious history book after dinner, such as Burlingame's "Lincoln", but I found that I can make some serious progress on books like Plath's journals and Pessoa's "Book of Disquiet", as well as on essays, such as Orwell's essays. I was happy to see that I can even speed-read through such books, in that it seems fairly easy to glide down the page and spot the things that I am likely to want to keep. I also hoped to hit some of the drier novels, the stuff that is supposed to be good for one's literary soul but which do not honestly and truly strike me as a pleasant walk in the park, but which feel more like a life-draining trek through the desert on a horse with no name, such as Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". So much for my ambition to tackle Joyce's "Ulysses"! I thought I could speed read through these too, but I find that this does not work when it comes to narrative books, which seem to demand closer following, and there also seems to be too few gold nuggets for all the pages that one has to skim through, so that in the end it just does not feel like it is worth the precious hours of my old age.
Then I remembered my rereadables!, "1984", "Lolita", "Magic Mountain" and so on, maybe even the Shakespeare stuff. I picked up "Lolita" last night and I knew I had found my way home. Before I hit upon this idea, I was hoping to fit poetry in there. However, as I was looking through the collections of Louise Gluck and E. E. Cummings, I felt that here, too, the pickings would be slim and the travels far and wide and dull, though I will be happy to fit in a book of poems into this slot whenever one strikes me as a rich vein of precious verses.
It occurs to me that I may also want to fit in a celebrity book into my evening reading every once in a while. All these books must make for messy nights, but that is okay. If I ever feel like I want to spend some more quality time on one of these books, I can always slide it into my daytime reading for a day or two and move over my non-fiction book or my hot-ticket novel. It's all good. I only need to have a little order in my madness, a sense of direction.
Rebecca Goldstein
Dec. 17th, 2014 08:01 pm<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INTERVIEWER
Was Plato a “Platonist” in the modern sense of being committed to a claim about the existence of abstract entities, numbers for example?
GOLDSTEIN
Was Plato a Platonist? Well, there’s the Platonism of the forms which I think he gave up. In the Parmenides, he really criticises the theory of forms. It’s interesting that Socrates is a young man there and he can’t answer Parmenides’ questions. In the Timaeus, which is one of my favourite dialogues, it’s not the forms, it’s mathematics that is the key to intelligibility.
Every theoretical physicist I’ve ever known has believed that not only is reality given to us in the language of mathematics, but that when we have two empirically adequate theories, you go with the one that has the most beautiful mathematics—that’s in the Timaeus too. That’s a Platonism that’s still working. When my scientist friends say that the structure of reality is given in the most beautiful mathematics, I say to them, “That’s a metaphysical argument you’re using right there.” Steven Weinberg said of string theory, “Maybe it’s not true, but we’re going to find some application for it, because never in the history of science has it been the case that such beautiful mathematics didn’t somehow reveal reality.” Whoah! That’s Plato!
-- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein at Prospect Magazine
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A pity I never could get the hang of math. Maybe that's why reality ain't my thing, as I find myself lost in the delirium of a madman.
INTERVIEWER
Was Plato a “Platonist” in the modern sense of being committed to a claim about the existence of abstract entities, numbers for example?
GOLDSTEIN
Was Plato a Platonist? Well, there’s the Platonism of the forms which I think he gave up. In the Parmenides, he really criticises the theory of forms. It’s interesting that Socrates is a young man there and he can’t answer Parmenides’ questions. In the Timaeus, which is one of my favourite dialogues, it’s not the forms, it’s mathematics that is the key to intelligibility.
Every theoretical physicist I’ve ever known has believed that not only is reality given to us in the language of mathematics, but that when we have two empirically adequate theories, you go with the one that has the most beautiful mathematics—that’s in the Timaeus too. That’s a Platonism that’s still working. When my scientist friends say that the structure of reality is given in the most beautiful mathematics, I say to them, “That’s a metaphysical argument you’re using right there.” Steven Weinberg said of string theory, “Maybe it’s not true, but we’re going to find some application for it, because never in the history of science has it been the case that such beautiful mathematics didn’t somehow reveal reality.” Whoah! That’s Plato!
-- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein at Prospect Magazine
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A pity I never could get the hang of math. Maybe that's why reality ain't my thing, as I find myself lost in the delirium of a madman.