George Orwell: Dated and irrelevant to a post-1984 world?
Jonathan Hayward
literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been
the same climate change... At this moment, for instance, in 1984 (if
it was 1984), scientific concensus was concerned about man-made global
warming and pooh-poohed the thought of global cooling. In no public or
private utterance was it ever admitted that the lines could ever have
been drawn differently. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only
four decades since scientific concensus had been concerned about
global cooling and didn't consider global warming.... Officially the
change of partners had never happened. Scientific concensus war
alarmed about man-made global warming; therefore scientific concensus
had always warned about global warming....
...It was rather more of a shock to him when he discovered from some
chance remark that she did not remember that scientific concensus,
four decades ago, had been alarmed about global cooling and not really
concerned about global warming...
...The speaker's voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth
an endless catalogue of extinctions, degradations, natural disasters,
destroyed coastlines, massive human starvation, all made worse by self-
interested obstructionists. It was almost impossible to listen to hum
without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments
the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was
drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from
thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the
school-children. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty
minutes when a messenger hurried onto the platform and a scrap of
paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled it and read it
without pausing in his speech. Nothing was altered in his voice or
manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the
names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding
rippled through the crowd. Scientific concensus was alarmed about man-
made global cooling! The next moment there was tremendous commotion.
The broadcasts and e-mails they had been bombarded with were all
wrong!... The Alarmed Concensus continued exactly as before, except
that the alleged man-made change had quite reversed.
--George Orwell, trying not to think about "climate change"
Jonathan Hayward, christos.jon...@gmail.com
An Orthodox Christian author: theology, literature, et cetera.
My award-winning collection is available for free reading online:
I invite you to visit my website at http://JonathansCorner.com/
bhan...@netscape.net
A very bad situation.
It was always the fault of "them", never of
the listeners. The listeners had a right to
never think for themselves, never to research
opposing opinions, and always
take whatever was spoon-fed to them
by the media as absolute truth. For instance,
when the media told them "denialists" were
wrong and in the pay of big business, why,
of course, the "denialists" were wrong
and in the pay of big business.
Why would the media ever say something
that was not the absolute truth?