Uh, there's all sorts of shit like PRIVACY that relate to this book, no?
I haven't read it, but when people talk about this book, it's all about "Big Brother", so I haven't heard anything related to "meaning of life" that you're referring to.
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So, turn the question into a philosophical one. To what extent should the need to protect the populace override the need for privacy? Where should the line be drawn?
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i think its more of a big government "trade freedoms for security" thing. privacy was more a symptom. but wasn't there also summary executions without a trial of citizens on your own soil, remove "inborn" freedoms they were supposed to protect by turning them into privileges rather than rights, ect
read it awhile ago(with the "this is a bullshit english assignment, I've got more important classes....like hell; gym even." kind of mindset which doesn't help(and kinda wish I'd taken it more seriously)) though so maybe not. might be mashing it with animalfarm a little
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1984 brings up a lot of issues about freedom, and just quite why something which calls itself free can cost so much, with people truly believing it should have a cost. Works especially well if you mirror the oppressive surveillance culture in the book with the modern world, and how accepting people are of infringements on their apparent freedoms under the guise of security or safety, and in fact, believe that such measures are what make them free.
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This is interesting. I'm a big believer that we have government because not everyone is willing to follow social laws. Hence, government needs to regulate to a degree in order to ensure we don't fall into chaos. I think writing about the entitlement of people who think everything should be free without thinking of the repercussions of true, unadulterated freedom would be a fascinating and polarizing topic, which is always good for generating debate.
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we have government because "my right to swing my arm ends at my neighbor's face" and there are those who swing anyway and worse so we need something set up to prevent them yeah.
but there eventually hits a tradeoff where too much is too much and it stops being "government for the people" and becomes "government for government's sake/people exist to serve government"
thats what happened in 1984
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither. People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." sort of thing.
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Loss of trust in others and fear of delation as a social collateral damage of authoritarian regimes.
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What makes you think this book was assigned? I chose this book to do my assignment on. Also, I know of some essays I can easily write on 1984; for example, an essay centred around privacy. However, as I mentioned they have to be philosophical in nature. I had an idea for a topic that dealt with the philosophy but I could not gather even good arguments to defend it as stated above in my post. Also-hopefully I do not sound too smug-you telling me that writing an essay on 1984 is extremely easy, does not in-turn make it extremely easy for me.
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You should have chosen Animal Farm. It's short, easy too read and so very very easy to write an essay on.
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I think we assumed because you were asking how you were supposed to write a philosophical essay on it. Kindof assumed if you chose it you'd already have something in mind I guess.
Unfortunately I can't be more help since I never got past the purpose of memorizing some ether huffing frenchman's ramblings about "I can't prove my chair exists, I can't prove anything exists, I can barely prove I do and that proves nothing other than that I do. Maybe some evil demon(actually my book altered that to "evil genius" for absolutely no reason) is fucking with me. So I may as well assume this is all real anyway (because if it is I'm wasting all my time in this chair with my ether and if not theres nothing I can do about it)" :P (required class when I just wanted to learn my major and get out, and the "soft" required core stuff always sucks up the bulk of your time somehow. like art so I resented it a bit cause "its not like philosophy majors have to take math with math majors they get their own baby class that grades on attendance so why do I have to do the other way round")
.....so not 100% on what constitutes a philosophical paper. seems almost anything can be its more about the tone than anything else? So if you want to write about privacy just write about privacy and "what does it mean" to have it taken away for false security against imaginary outside forces?(the enemy turned out to be fake as an excuse to grab the power they have and to keep people under government's control right? that seems like something philosophical)
edit- descartes wasn't the ether guy. Too early. That was somebody else.
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Are you kidding? How about ethics? Petty easy to take a philosophical approach on that.
Or the party's philosophy.
Those are two easy subjects. If you want you can challenge yourself and write about the evil that party exercises any which way it can. Is it even possible for humans to do that when you consider our human nature of seeking pleasure? Think about it. It is so evil that they manage to make other people perform evil for the best interests of the party, despite their own beliefs. From there you can draw parallels to many fascist governments and their philosophy and what they made people believe. That's what I write about for an easy a
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Is this for an actual philosophy course?
If so, maybe you could pick a ubiquitous framework to analyse the ethics of Orwell's vision, or whether freedom is achievable in modern society, or something like that.
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It's been 4 years, but that book has changed my viewpoint of a "utopia".
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I've read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World and some others, just because i really enjoy reading about dystopias an the fight against a system that tells you who you are, and how far you'll get in your life.
PS: I understood Spammathon coment, but I know too many people that doesn't know the word "Dystopia", it was just that.
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Yeah, 1984 is about power instead of life, so life would be difficult to pull quotes for. Not knowing what philosophy course you're taking, I'll just jot down a few notes that you maybe can extrapolate into a paper.
Should we change that which is different in order to maintain a peaceful society?
What is more important to humanity: the maintenance of the society, or the maintenance of the individual?
If you give something up to torture, was it ever really yours?
If you give the powers that be the ability to put all enemies of the state into a cage, can you ever really trust that they won't put everyone into that cage?
When individuality is crushed for the state, is humanity crushed along with it? The humanity of the person. The humanity of the state.
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Eh, those morons are all working while OP is playing games and getting other people to do his work for him. Who's smarter now? :P
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why not helping a person. I once strugeled with a javaproject and asked a javacommunity..they said: do your own homework...so stupid. I had to phone a friend of a friend, to get the answer where my mistake was. Shure there are lazy people, but we dont now, maybe he really needs help, like i once did :D
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Yeah. "Peacekeeping Forces" is one of my favorites, for better or worse.
I agree that language philosophy/science is one to look at for this book.
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The ethics of brainwashing and using torture to shape human beings how you want them to be. Is this for their own good? If so, does the end justify the means?
How much control should a government ever have over a populace? How much is too much? How much is too little?
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In this book is a massive amount of philosophical topics:
What is freedom?
Can we have a healthy society with maximal freedom? Do we need to give away "some freedom" to be safe and protected?
Can everyone be broken?
Is there true love?
This book has a critic against those totalitaristic systems. You could even ask if it is possible to achieve a healthy country with a dictator(<--here dictator as the word itself without negativity)
This is just what comes to me in my mind in the first 5 seconds and i barely remember the book and movie...
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Bite your tongue. I'm inclined to think a lot of things that have near-cultish followings are overrated, but I read 1984 and Brave New Wold semi-concurrently earlier this year and thought each of them was very worthy of the praise they received.
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Never said it was bad. I just said it was overrated. Highly. Also there are many claims of it being a copy of a previous novel.
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For the Love of Big Brother - Is brainwashing still brainwashing if we enjoy it?
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Actually, this may not work too well without reference to Brave New World, dunno if that still works for you.
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Another interesting take on 1984 might be to look at it from the perspective of a Strict Determinist, and argue that outcomes were inevitable and unavoidable.
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three words to anyone that needs help on an essay: Copy and Paste :]
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Hey everyone! I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas for possible philosophy based topics on the novel '1984' by George Orwell for an essay that I have do to for my philosophy course. I read most of the book (still need to finish last chapter), but I can't figure out a good philosophy topic to talk about. I thought I had a good topic at first (What is the meaning (or value) of human life?), but I got stuck and could not find any arguments in the book. If anyone would like to help me I would be very appreciative. I also don't expect for anyone to write my essay as some will think; I am merely stuck and need a boost. Thank you!
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