Orwell's Nightmare

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/16/2003 4:44:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ottosell at yahoo.de writes:


> Orwell's Nightmare
> by Stan Persky
> 
> "(...) my own view is that Orwell still matters because his nightmare about
> the erasure of the past continues to be relevant. It is true that the terms
> of the present political engagement may have changed. A popular expression
> of those changing terms is found in the title of Benjamin Barber's Jihad 
> vs.
> McWorld.(25) While Soviet totalitarianism is gone, we now find ourselves
> describing a world of insatiable consumers in the capitalist mall and a
> realm of bloodthirsty tribalists and religious fundamentalists possessed of
> a feudal metaphysics, both of which, Barber argues, are threats to 
> democracy
> no less than the version of totalitarianism that Orwell depicted. Even in
> Orwell's time, there were alternative versions of the nightmare."
> http://www.dooneyscafe.com/stories.php?story=03/04/27/1807557
> (25) Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are
> Reshaping the World (Times Books, 1995).
> 

In one sense- the assumption that the environment can continue
to sustain the perpetual economic growth necessary for democracy 
as it has evolved in the west- "the insatiable consumers" are a bigger
threat to world security than the "bloodthirsty tribalists and religious 
fundamentalists" with their "feudal metaphysics," because of the
environmental collapse which such unrestrained consumerism will 
inevitably bring about.  

respectfully
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030516/9e97e41e/attachment.html>