Tag Archives: Orwell 1984

By A Thread, Kindle Edition

26 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by in Heritage

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The Kindle Edition of my paperback book is now available for purchase to download to your digital device. I have set the price at $0.99 cents. I had hoped to make it available free of charge, but it was not possible. On December 24, 2020, I felt deeply inspired to begin writing a series of essays, which I knew I would have to convert into a published book. It was a very daunting task to organize all my thoughts onto paper, or rather, into my computer. After I had finished and began the process of formatting it, I was prompted to write an additional two chapters. After I finished publishing it, I awoke about 3 am and I heard “well done” spoken to me. I believe with all my heart that the Lord wants people, especially elders in the church to begin to rise up and prepare to redeem Zion. Now that this digital edition is also finished, I can move on to other things. Please click the link to order your copy:

By A Thread

This is an excerpt from Chapter Eight: What’s The Big Deal?

Is liberty really essential? Maybe the Constitution is outdated and obsolete! What’s wrong with a government that wants to keep us safe? We should just trust our leaders, right? From George Orwell’s book, 1984, we read the following excerpt where the main character Winston is being tortured and questioned by O’brien, a member in INGSOC’s inner party. Winston had been caught in the act of independent thought and behavior:

“I don’t know—I don’t care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.”

“We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside—irrelevant.”

“I don’t care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces.”

“Do you see any evidence that this is happening? Or any reason why it should?”

“No. I believe it. I know that you will fail. There is something in the universe—I don’t know, some spirit, some principle—that you will never overcome.”

“Do you believe in God, Winston?”

“No.”

“Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?”

“I don’t know. The spirit of Man.”

“And do you consider yourself a man?”

“Yes.”

“If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent.”1

O’brien then ordered Winston to remove all his clothing and look at himself in a three sided mirror across the room. To his horror, Winston sees someone that he does not recognize: a figure of a man reduced to skin and bones, whose hair can be removed by a simple grasp of a tuft, and who is so emaciated that O’brien’s thumb and forefinger can meet around his frail bicep. He was grimy, filthy, and smelled so awful that he had to wonder how long he had been held captive. One can summarize this story in a single phrase, one which O’brien had succinctly explained to Winston during his torture, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever…and remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon.”

While O’brien was well educated and knew about God, whatever he believed about God was irrelevant. INGSOC was God for all intents and purposes. That is all that mattered. The fact that Winston did not believe in God in the story is noteworthy. Oceania, where the story is set, may as well be a Godless society. But what was their atheistic moral compass? They had none. The spirit of man without God in the story proved to be self destructive.

Karl Marx considered religion to be nothing more than the opium of the masses. The communist hatred of faith is a feature, not a fault. Since the days of Marx, the communist goal has been the creation of a “new man.” The communist Chinese re-education camps in Xinjiang have employed political brainwashing of millions of Uyghur Muslims with the goal of making them suitable for the Chinese socialist system. Tibetan monks regularly face arrest, imprisonment, or death. Christians are being detained and forced to renounce their faith or be tortured. Falun Gong practitioners have their organs forcibly harvested for the benefit of party leaders. But what exactly is communism? Or better yet, what is the communism of Mao Tse-tung? What is the communism of Ho Chi Minh? Or Fidel Castro or Marshal Tito?

In keeping with the fact that almost everybody seems to have his own definition of Communism, we are going to give you ours, and then we will attempt to prove to you that it is the only valid one. Communism: AN INTERNATIONAL, CONSPIRATORIAL DRIVE FOR POWER ON THE PART OF MEN IN HIGH PLACES WILLING TO USE ANY MEANS TO BRING ABOUT THEIR DESIRED AIM—GLOBAL CONQUEST.2

Why does it matter whether the term is communism, socialism, fascism, or even capitalism when the desired result of the conspiring few is totalitarianism? Why does it matter whether it originates from the far left or the far right when the conspiring few use both sides to obtain their desired result of absolute control? In Orwell’s 1984, it can be argued that all the proletarians were atheists because all the practitioners of faith had already been slaughtered wholesale. The rest were easy pickings. But we are operating on the premise and understanding that there is a God and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to Earth on a rescue mission, and whose unimpeachable character and attributes offer us a clear view of what a heavenly being looks like. For any believer to be saved as a heavenly being requires that he or she becomes exactly like Him, nothing less, and nothing more. But to become like Him requires that we freely surrender ourselves. It means voluntarily giving up all our worldly ways—all our materialistic, covetous, lustful, greedy, oppressive, despotic, carnal, devilish attributes—and take upon ourselves His godly attributes and His character.

To be like Jesus Christ is to be someone who exercises no control over anyone else’s freedom to act and to make choices. Instead of forcing us to do good or to be good, He says, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). He is persuading us to love Him by becoming like Him. This is because all heavenly people are also like Him. Thus keeping His commandments teaches us to be like He is, which is a being who does not lie, steal, covet, lust, murder, etc. There is a vast difference between simply doing something and becoming someone whose character motivates him or her to do it. His two greatest commandments cover all others, for if we love someone as Jesus does, we would forever pose no threat of harm whatsoever to another person in any way, shape, or form because we are motivated purely by Christlike love. Furthermore, if we love as Jesus loves, we would be willing to sacrifice as He did, even to the laying down of our lives for another. What good parent would not lay down his or her life for a dying child? So if we, who are fallen creatures, are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the betterment of our children, even for the preservation of their lives, how much greater is the love of our God in heaven?

Hunger Wars

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Just Marc

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

So I watched the latest Hunger Games movie today. The first two movies pit children against each other in a dystopian tradition of ruling the masses. Consider the indoctrination of the children in Orwell’s book 1984:

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”

This quote explains the government’s power over the children in the dystopian society depicted in George Orwell’s 1984. Parents have no authority over their children, who are influenced from a very young age by the forces of “Big Brother.” The children join organizations such as the “Spies,” where they dress uniformly in “blue shorts, gray shirts, and red neckerchiefs” and are systematically indoctrinated in the philosophies of the government.

The children are taught to love Big Brother and hate “foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals,” the “enemies of the State;” they are encouraged to attend public hangings, and as such are desensitized to violence. The children will report to the authorities anyone who engages in questionable activities or who criticizes the government, including their parents, and indeed are praised as “child hero[es]” for doing so. Parents have no control over their children, who have been turned into “ungovernable little savages” by their training.

There is no love cultivated between children and their parents; through early and constant indoctrination, the children’s devotion is all directed towards Big Brother. Tragically, parents actually fear their own children, because they know that their children’s loyalties lie with Big Brother, and that should they even suspect their parents of deviation from the strict codes of behavior mandated by the government, they will not hesitate to turn them in (Part 1, Chapter 2).

hunger

I can’t decide if the Hunger Games movies glorify the subject matter or perhaps are used as a vehicle to bring about an awareness of the world around us to the youth today. But do they see a strong female hero and idolize her? Furthermore, are today’s youth even aware of the sword of justice that hangs over us all? I am reminded of this scripture:

Mosiah 4:13 And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due.

14 And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.

15 But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.

And while children wield deadly weapons in extremist countries today, our own may be all too easily desensitized by the gratuitous sex and violence on TV or in the video games they play, which occupy their attention and take up their free time. Do they sing songs in church, comparing themselves to the army of Helaman, having been taught in their youth? How little they may be aware of the setting and nature of the conversion of the stripling warriors. It was their conversion to Jesus Christ and their faith in Him alone that inspired them to risk their lives in mortal combat on the front lines of some of their bloodiest battles, suffering many wounds unto the loss of consciousness for the cause of liberty.

I wonder if our children are clueless. There was no hero worship or idolatry among those two thousand and sixty Lamanite boys, although they esteemed Helaman as their father, following him into battle, confidently obeying his orders precisely. And it was their faith in the Lord that preserved every last one of them. None were lost. Who will our children look to when the sword of justice falls on this gentile nation and all over the world?

Alma 57:25 And it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and sixty, who had fainted because of the loss of blood; nevertheless, according to the goodness of God, and to our great astonishment, and also the joy of our whole army, there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.

26 And now, their preservation was astonishing to our whole army, yea, that they should be spared while there was a thousand of our brethren who were slain. And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe—that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power.

27 Now this was the faith of these of whom I have spoken; they are young, and their minds are firm, and they do put their trust in God continually.

I left the theater with a lot to think about. And it has been a while since I have shared any thoughts on my blog, but I felt the need to do so today.