I had to nip into the Public Library today in order to get some printing done. Whilst waiting for a computer to become available I picked up a copy of John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor which I have not read.
On the second page I came across these two paragraphs:
"Last term he had delivered a series of lectures on George Orwell under the title ' A Stifled Britain?' and his rhetoric had alarmed him. Would Orwell have believed it possible that the same overfed voices which had haunted him in the 1930s, the same crippling incompetence, addiction to foreign wars and assumptions of entitlement, were happily in place in 2009?
Receiving no response from the blank student faces staring up at him. he had supplied it for himself: no, Orwell would emphatically not have believed it. Or if he had, he would have taken to the streets. He would have smashed some serious glass."
That really rang a chord with me. I admit to being a bit of a bolshy bastard but over the past thirty years since I left school, all geared up for a world on the cusp of a technological revolution which would free humanity from poverty and lassitude, I have become severely disillusioned with the status quo.
Of late I have come to view the majority of my fellow human beings with a jaundiced eye. They strike me more and more like a herd animal, conditioned and incapable of critical thought or action.
Help me please, surely I am not alone! Let us group together and smash some serious glass!
You will be glad to hear that Julian Assange wishes to become a Senator in the Australian Parliament.
I totally agree, believe it or not, just in a different way.
Yes, humans are a herd animal. Correct. Yep. That is what they are. Uh-huh. You've got that right. They always were.
I don't think I've fully digested just how deep it goes yet, myself. It seems bottomless. I know Japie you harp on a lot about it, but for many of us you are simply in the teenage rebellion stage of realising, and you've simply left one herd for another.
Obviously I look like an arrogant prick now, but I'm probably in the same situation myself without being able to see it, for I have come to believe that you can't ever leave the/a herd. There are always people with a similar viewpoint, just in different numbers. Now you and I are just in a different herd. We're still a herd creature, looking for others like ourselves, trying to get others to join our herds, that's the point of this post, right?. Just look at the gay marriage thread.
As for incapable of critical thought I'm with you there. The vast majority of people, everywhere, never learnt critical thinking. And I don't think they will in our lifetimes.
Aaaand I'm going to go a little into the looking glass here, a touch mad perhaps: Critical thought seems to lead eventually to a kind of fractal world, split infinitives, endless criticism and self recognition, a hall of mirrors. You keep recognising your own biases in your opinion, you can't escape it, and on top you realise that you are collective thought, the sum of your life's experiences influenced by others who have been influenced before them since forever. No escape. I suspect that thought itself is the enemy (that sentence is so easy to misinterpret, and so very hard to explain in words). In the end it seems to have very little meaning.
</madness> 
I want to know what gives life meaning, and what meaning actually is. I'm now far less interested in the truth. I can tell you how many blades of grass are on my front lawn, it's a truth, and it's utterly meaningless. Whereas I can tell you a fictional story, or draw you a picture, or play a song, and it has a lot of meaning. In other words I want the blue pill (or was it the red?).
(Whoah, heavy/3 coffees) 
edit: I think the world has gone far, far more Huxley than Orwell. Reality TV especially seems to suggest this. Idiocracy seems far more likely than 1984.
I suggest watching/reading nothing. I suggest not watching any youtube, not reading any books, no newspapers. Eschew all knowledge, clear cache, unlearn, erase, get to truly know yourself first and foremost.
Japie, watch a movie called ' brotherhood of the bell'
You can see it full length on youtube, a mid seventies hollywood movie that was initially banned upon release then just covered and hidden and forgotten about...
Panda...for what comes across as a senseless caffeine-induced rant, you do make a lot of sense. My dilemma has always been, where do you find individualism? It's not where you look and think "wow, that person's an individual" because there's a fair chance that they are of a herd and there are thousands just like them.
I reckon that's the beauty of escapism - getting away from it all, purging the rubbish we have pushed on us every day and simply enjoying yourself without interruption...because in reality, the current is too strong to swim against, and if we change the current to the direction we want, sooner or later we'll want to go against the mainstream again.
I enjoy the fiction & untruths that come my way in my life...because that's what it is - mine. I realise that if I step out to find the 'real meaning', I'll lose what is important in my life - family, friends & social interraction that I enjoy. Some 'individuals' do stray from the 'norm', and good luck to them - but it's not for me at this point of time...baa.
TheDoctor is a true individual, his mind escaped many years ago...
He's like one of those old bearded wise sages that spends their life sitting under a tree, eating wild mushrooms and meditating.....
Except his not old...
...or wise
Doesn't have a beard...
Doesn't meditate...
..or sit under a tree
...and are the so-called individuals just doing it for affect...or is that effect...I always mix the two up. I think you get what I mean?
Just following the exclusive "Individual Herd" instead of another exclusive herd.
We are what we are...we're not what we're not. Biopsychosocially, we are herd animals...we cannot defy it...instinctively or intuitively and it will come out despite our best efforts to suppress it and look 'sophisticated'.
Personally, I lurve discussions like this!! It adds much to this Forum. Keep it up...and how are those kids evlPanda?? It is of paramount importance that we as parents cultivate a new generation of critical thinkers!!
Fab Tuesday Thinkers
Trace
I thought, it hurt. I stopped.
But why are we seeking individualism ? And What will being an individual achieve , surely the definition means it would be of little use to society so how does individuality help make the human race better?
to me it is just something that has been fed to the herd? Free thinkers are more important?
May as well seek an easier goal, happiness. It can be found in little moments every day.
Is it 4.20 yet
Julien Assange is clearly controlled oppposition. Yes he exposes truth,irrelevant truth in the scheme of things,getting your trust and then accepts the official fairytale!
How obvious is that ffs?
In many parts of the world you only need to look up to the sky to see the truth,and please not lingering water vapor.
The combination of lack of logic and denial see to it that the herd are being led up the garden path.
And now we are about to be asked to support the military industrial complex by bombing Iran.
Ask yourself this: When the Council for civil Liberties come on the news raising awareness about this or that do you:
a: Think, good someone raised this
b: Could'nt care less
c: Bastards, interfering with government process
It might give you some insight as to where you sit?
Glass is half empty (so let's smash it): All the technology and stuff and we're still watching reality (nothing of the sort) tv and can be herded around by a retarded cattle dog. Poverty and lassitude is rife while morality and decency is hard to find.
Glass is half full (so let's drink out of it): Science (eg. medicine) is at a point where we are living longer and in more comfort than ever before. Communication and access to information is easier and faster than ever before, and despite the glass half empty herd, there still seems to be progress in fields like quantum mechanics and clean energy now and then.
Come on it's not that bad.
It's not like our media is controlled by some sort of Hypocritical criminal organisation.
Oh hang on, what's this in the Financial review !!
I posted this same post on my alumni website. It is a very ragged group of men who survived a particularly crap catholic boarding school in Tanzania where the inmates were systematically beaten and often sexually abused. I have no doubt that this is the root cause of my bolshiness and my passionate loathing of bullies and misplaced authority.
One of my friends, a guy I met when pursuing some form of justice and spent five days in the uk with in 2010, a free thinker and now great mate, posted this link to an interview with John le Carre.
It is very worthwhile watching as it gives the viewer an insite into the reality behind three of his recent novels.
www.democracynow.org/2010/10/11/exclusive_british_novelist_john_le_carr
I listened to the video.Believe he is a complete shill,similiar to Julien Assange. He still gives credence to the man in a cave theory ffs.
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Select to expand quoteevlPanda said...
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Do you cut and paste from kindle?
For a few years now, ( it sometimes takes me a while to do things), I have been thinking about getting one of those mini scanner things that look a bit like a pen which you can run across text. I often find stuff which really rings a chord but am too lazy or disorganised to write it down.
I recently bought an Ipod touch from a bloke who was scratching to get some cash together. I was doing a bit of a search today and lo and behold, aside from music Itunes has a pretty good range of reading material. Am going to buy A Perfect Spy and will do some experimenting with cut and paste.
