Wednesday, January 2, 2008

1984

1984 by George Orwell is changing my life. It reaffirms what I knew to be true... that I'm at most, I'm a moderate liberal haha. This book makes socialism seem like the devil's work. I'm all for equality, but the society Orwell describes takes it way too far... The scariest part is that some societies are becoming more and more like the society he described. Socialism and communism sound great on paper, I'm not going to lie. Everybody's equal, nobody has more wealth than another, blah blah blah, everybody's happy. But in reality, I don't think that would ever work. Nature is not built around equality. All social animals have social hierarchies, pecking orders, etc. That's how nature works. Humans will never be able to achieve true communism because everybody wants to be better, to have an advantage over others, at the core. Sure, we're taught that we shouldn't want that, and that it's better to be equal. I believe in that. But that doesn't change the fact that our basic instinct tells us to look out for number one. Sad, but true.

But that's enough of the Hobbes stuff. I like Locke better. Although there's inherent "evil", if you want to call it that, in basic instincts, there's also inherent good. Always. Nobody can possibly be born evil... I really think Locke was on the right track when he talked about the tabula rasa. If you look at your own life and back on your childhood, you can probably make some pretty good connections about why you turned out the way you have, so far. Sometimes I'll just be thinking about random memories from my childhood and remember something significant that I had long forgotten, and suddenly it will make perfect sense to me how it impacted my life and how it made me who I am today. Wow, that was cheesy. Well whatever, it's true. I do have revalations like that.

My favorite quote from 1984 (so far) is this one: "If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love," (Orwell, 164). Wow, what is this, a junior paper? Whatever. Anyways, that quote really touched me. That's what I love about this book, it makes you think. You don't have to necessarily agree with what's happening in the book or with the points that Orwell makes, because I certainly don't agree with everything he writes. But it makes me think about the issues he points out, at least. He was talking there about a mother holding her dying daughter. The daughter had just been robbed of a little bit of chocolate by her brother, and the mother was pretty much powerless to stop it. She had nothing left to give to her daughter because of the conditions imposed upon their family by the events in the world, so the only thing she could do was hold her. Orwell started talking about how the gesture was seemingly useless, as it didn't solve any of their problems, but it was the only thing left the mother could give to her daughter. What a tear jerker.

Sooooo. New Year's. What a lame holiday. It's just a mathematical novelty. But whatever, a break is a break. I'm ready for this break to be over though. Let's see... back to school in 5 days. Whoever's reading this probably thinks I'm a total nerd for saying this, but I really want to get back to school. I just realized over this break that I'll find out which college I'm going to within 3 months, and within 6 months I will have completed high school. Your high school years are supposed to be the best years of your life, and so far they have been for me. By far. I only have a couple months left. I don't want to spend them at home by myself, just lazing around. I want to spend them surrounded by the people that, in reality, I will lose touch with once school ends. It's a sad that, and we can all talk about how nothing will change and we'll still remain as close as ever, blah blah blah. It won't happen though. I'm not being pessimistic, I'm being real. But as sad as that sounds, it only makes the remaining time I have left in San Diego all the more precious. You really don't understand it until you're a senior, looking at a calendar. In fact, you really don't understand how anything feels until you've experienced it yourself. Empathy, though it's nice, is completely powerless when compared to sympathy. Here's to my last semester (in 2 weeks) of high school. Ever. Let's make it something to remember, yeah?

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