Gus > Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three blocs are very much the same.
You could have kidded me. Maybe in Orwell's mind but certainly not in the present-day world where the US is the only superpower and is fighting to preserve its hegemony by hook or by crook, mainly crook, Europe is split between the right and the left and doesn't know if it's Arthur or Martha, Asia's star is very much in the ascendancy, Islam has become increasingly popular amongst the disaffected and poor people of the East and Africa, and sweet, little Israel who has garnered the support of the 19th Century colonialists, is busy conducting a colonial war of its own as if nothing has changed in the past hundred, certainly in the past fifty years, and doesn't give a shit if it brings the house down in pursuit of its own desires.
> The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense.
That's a very sweeping statement and, IMO, an untrue one. Indeed, the non-theistic and personal philosophies of the East are quite different from evangelism, for example, which is sweeping the US, and where anything one wants to do goes, especially as regards making war on non-believers. Furthermore, Zionism, which we spend a great deal of our time discussing and which is, in fact, a perversion of the talmudic Jewish religion, is also an excuse for making war or otherwise doing as one pleases.
nkusa.org
Islam, too, is split between those who prefer its peaceful aspects and those who seek jihad as a means of righting perceived wrongs or advancing the religion. One of the problems non-Muslims have in understanding Islam, and probably Muslims too, is that there is no "official" religion merely the interpretation of the Koran by the various mullahs and imams, each of whom it appears has views and power aspirations of his own. Indeed, between the new-found Judeo-Christian religions in the West and Islam in the East, I would say the world has descended into a new "Dark Age" where intolerance, misunderstanding, religious bigotry and conflict has become the order of the day. |
