Pots and Pans of our culture

Each time I re-read Orwell's depiction of the Prole women arguing and fighting over pots and pans, I can't help but think what a significant warning this is in our culture.

We spend so much time distracted by Ms. Kardashian's love life (or lack thereof), or some performance on Dancing With the Stars.

Nearly four years ago, more people voted for the new American Idol, than cast a ballot for Barrack Obama or John McCain.

The hope lies with the Proles, but let's face it, Orwell wasn't very optimistic.:frown5::frown5:

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Originally Posted by Teacher

Each time I re-read Orwell's depiction of the Prole women arguing and fighting over pots and pans, I can't help but think what a significant warning this is in our culture.

We spend so much time distracted by Ms. Kardashian's love life (or lack thereof), or some performance on Dancing With the Stars.

Nearly four years ago, more people voted for the new American Idol, than cast a ballot for Barrack Obama or John McCain.

The hope lies with the Proles, but let's face it, Orwell wasn't very optimistic.:frown5::frown5:

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I think the proles, as a group that can be organized and taken to the fantasy of 1984 in our culture, have been fully overcome by a staggering number of options. We have unending multiplicity of possibilities and facilities to execute them. We have evolved far beyond that.

I think Orwell has to be pessimistic. If he was optimistic then the book wouldn't be warning us. He was trying to scare us and tell us of this other world, of which we don't want.

I agree that Orwell has a pessimistic attitude, however I believe that he has not been proven wrong. People today are worried too much about the unimportant aspects of government to concern themselves with the true issues. Orwell warns us here that if we don't pay attention to the issues we can only expect to be used and disrespected by the government.

Orwell is showing us how easy it is for people to pay more attention toward meaningless things, such as media. It seems as if he is showing that hope lies with the Proles, but they are too oblivious to the actual reality. He is simply warning us of that could potentally happen to our own society, or (unfortunatly) is happening already.

Also, the Prole women shouldn't be fighting over something so little such as the pots and pans. They should be trying to gain their freedom. Not just freedom of speech, but freedom of everything. Since they are fighting over silly things, they won't be able to work together to get their freedom. They are fighting against each other, instead of fighting together. Working together is their key to the freedom they deserve. If they can figure this out, then the hope does rely within the Proles.

Isn't that the point of them fighting over the pots and pans? Those things symbolize a distraction for the proles. If they fight over stupid things like pots and pans then they won't want to fight over the bigger issues like freedom. These small things are important for Big Brother to keep all the proles under control so that they don't rebel.

In advanced Western democracies the actual proletariat is now a minority class. The lumpen proles have however grown in number but the huge class is the property owning educated middle class able to move from job to job. They may not be very wealthy but they are significantly more numerous and better-off than when Orwell wrote 1984. Marxian class definitions are still very true but Marx was unable to see how successful democratic capitalism would become in comparison to other systems.