/lit/ - Literature

>>22836021
>>22836384
Even supposing an author consciously intended a text to support a single, well-defined reading (which is only sometimes the case), the text itself can contradict the author's intention.

Let's take Orwell's 1984 as an example. The appendix is functionally an essay explaining the major themes of the book:
>language can be a tool of political control
>the Big Brother regime used that tool effectively
>the tool took the form of newspeak
>newspeak was never used in day-to-day conversation
>but because it became the official language of journalism and scholarship, it brought the entire world of institutionally-established facts under control of the regime
>implicitly, the regime eventually failed, because the author of the appendix is writing a scholarly work in non-newspeak, and refers to newspeak as a dead language

Given Orwell's background as a Marxist-Trotskyist and antifascist, we can infer that he intended 1984 as a critique of authoritarian governments. Orwell wrote in a letter that he was inspired to write 1984 after working at the BBC. He feared that what happened in the USSR and in Germany would come to England.

The "intended" reading therefore comes in two parts: a warning, and a cautious, optimistic hint at the possibility of revolution. After all, if newspeak and the regime that invented it were killed, it must be possible to kill the USSR.

However, if we look more deeply into the text, we see that newspeak isn't any good at political control. The only people who speak it are already invested in the regime, and therefore don't need to be controlled further. The "proles," who form the revolutionary base, barely engage with newspeak at all. The facts of the narrative show not that newspeak is effective, but that it's a delusion of the upper classes, irrelevant to the larger political picture.

What actually keeps characters in line is force, or the threat of force. That force is naked, brutal, and often enacted by the young - foils of the old, scheming figures who invent and propagate newspeak. Furthermore, women are shown to be more fanatical in this respect than men.

The facts of 1984 are almost fascistic: might makes right, a stark gender divide, the impotence of intellectuals, and so on. The book itself has gained greater favor on the right than the left, and was used by the CIA as a propaganda tool to oppose Marxism worldwide.

Orwell's stated goal with his work was to show how the USSR and other states were failing to live up to the promise of Marxism, and to promote a left-libertarian worldview. But the facts within the narrative itself, and his books' legacy in politics, promote an almost-opposite view.

We can square this circle three ways:
>everyone is misunderstanding Orwell's books
>Orwell was right-wing and secretly playing 4d chess
>people are picking up on something in Orwell's books that he didn't intend

The third thesis is the most likely, and can only be explained in terms of death of the author.

>>12447791
Kek, these always crack me up.

>>12169084
Not that anon but sex properly performed (within the bonds of marriage, with a loving partner, and without contraception) is absolutely positively 100% virtuous. God said be fruitful and multiply.

Sex OUTSIDE of marriage? Surely you must be joking.

>>11269112
/pol/ pls

>>11103137
>puhuhu you expect me to believe these peasants can read???

to be fair I'd say stoicism is similar to buddhism in some ways. they both require the individual take command of himself and deny what would often be a first impulse, emotional reaction. but stoicism is strictly about managing your self to live a more prosperous, happy, and useful life.

buddhism, however, is some kind of roleplaying game where you earn merit points to go to the next level and when you reach the level cap you win the game and stop playing. bunch of unnecessary, philosophically unsound assumptions about how souls interact with the world and what they do after death. hogwash.

>>10334800
/thread
Also, [insert obligatory "lol spooks" joke here].

>>10334879
That's not the only flaw in the argument, though. One could also argue that a birth is a benefit to the parents (or, at least, the father), or that the existence of a new person is a good thing because (in society as it stands) their suffering will be directed towards providing services to others.

The "asymmetry between pleasure and pain" is also a bit of a silly distinction, because it assumes you can't apply something like three-valued logic to ethics. Suppose a state can be either
>good
>bad
or
>neither good nor bad.
The negation of "good" is "neither good nor bad," not "bad." Likewise, the negation of "bad" is "neither good nor bad," not "good." And, for the sake of completeness, we can say that the negation of "neither good nor bad" is indeterminate, but it must be either "good" or "bad." We can go bonkers with truth tables and the like, but the main thing to realize here is that a state of non-suffering and a state of non-pleasure are both "neither good nor bad."

>>10334916
>not realizing that once your wife has kids you'll have sex way less often
If anything, childbirth is top cuck. You & your wife could take the same & money time you spend on a kid and have a fuck-around-the-world trip instead.

>tl;dr Having kids is fine, but why the fuck would you want kids?

>>10259991
It happens so often it has become a meme.

>>10202980
>People's wickedness caused misery.
Wickedness propagated by the OT. Sacrifices, idols, numerology, rituals, superstition, so on and so forth rather than good Greek reason presented by a heroic messiah. And do you know what happened to the disciples of Epicurus and their settlements after Christianity was legalized? They became monasteries.

>The pharisees thought Christ was Lord and sinless and the Logos like I do?
No, they believed in the day of the rope. They believed in only their dogma and holding onto power. They did not love, they condemned. They killed Jesus, just as you are killing his message.

Anyway. Nice chatting with you anon, but I think we've run out of road. I hope some of our readers learned something.

>>9776041

>>9192879
This isn't /pol/ so I won't take that bait. I was just referring to OP's wanton disregard for capitalism or law. A comparison of this entitled middle class person* to a dysfunctional economic system** is warranted.


*access to amazon, interest in ultra rare hobbyist books (but not enough to pay)

**"COMMIES," (ibid.)