Film night turned up, as if by accident on YouTube, a platform offering almost infinite content, 1984; a cheerful romp through a distinctly dystopian view from George Orwell, whose other offerings included a Homage to Catalonia, where he witnessed reds of various hues tear themselves apart, epitomized by the heroically doomed International Brigades, fighting a proxy war beside the democratically elected Goverment of Spain, as the rather conservative General Franco mustered his troops in Morocco, a colony shared with France, and invaded the mainland in defiance of the people's mandate, supported by the Roman Catholic establishment, though by no means not all parish priests ... carnage ensued as Hitler and Mussolini sent arms and air force support (who can ever forget the bombing of Guernica and the painting immortalising the horror by Pablo Picasso? ... certainly this old blogger still felt the dark energy there quite recently, the local council holding events to lift the spell) ... the Soviet Union dabbled, the UK obstructed the local reds for fear of home grown socialism ... Franco won, Spain suffered under the yoke, declared neutrality in WW2 along with Portugal, where spies from every side found Lisbon a congenial venue ...
All of which context helps to fill out Eric Blair, or Orwell as he named himself, as a person with a personal frame, thereby influencing his views of the world ... the worlds he created to explain the world as known to other humans in this time in history as his books preached socialism in Down and Out in London and Paris; aversion to Stalin's robust approach to socialism in one country in Animal Farm; culminating in his final book, just before he died in 1950, predicting Big Brother winding up the masses with threats of rival empires attacking Oceania, with HQ in London and no hope at all of a home grown Resistance, employing the inherent common sense and compassion, overthrowing tyranny ... Blair was born in India during the glorious days of Empire, educated at Eton and Oxford, a bleeding heart liberal you might say, and died a pessimist, depressed by his experience ... his immortality ensured by the grim future for his world, 1984, as viewed 30 odd years before ... (scholars of the life of Orwell please fill out the picture)
Now, as is known, the Future, inasmuch as Time appears to exist, is uncertain and contingent on decisions made in the eternal present moment ... probabilities may be inferred by mystics based on what appeared to come before as described in history of different kinds and scales, including climate warming, huge and growing financial inequality ... and burgeoning interest in the combination of serious science and non-duality, with fraud always factored in on both sides, since the human love of money and sex sometimes transcends the simpler, deeper Truths of Universal Love ...
All this conjecture is in the context of the books of Philipp Blom, wonderful historian; Carlos Rovelli, brilliant quantum gravity theoretician, pointed to by brother-out-law, a scientist- mystic himself, Steve T ...and other books and films offering a landing place for insight ...
Meanwhile, high on the Fell this morning, with Sun shining, hills dressed in white, with an eclectic cast of humans and canines chancing to meet as if by accident, magic happened ... though if you prefer to frame synchronicity as coincidence, feel free to limit your view !
Next up, Brave New World as seen by another old Etonian, Aldous Huxley ... this dystopic novel, by the way, was not his last by any means ... Island, a Utopia described lovingly by Aldous towards his end, was never as popular as the bad news ... which tells us quite a lot about the News and some aspects of human nature ...
No comments:
Post a Comment