1984

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:29 -0500

Finished this book UNABRIDGED, double plus good. Hated how believable it was. This should be required reading. The main new idea I got this time through was that the party doctrine sounded a little bit like biocentrism. They had just swapped the party for consciousness. Biocentrism says reality exists only by conscious observation. Winston said reality only has true existence by the party’s doctrine. He who owns the present owns the past. Winston’s point about immortality through the party is also the same point that people have made about the “I” continuing to exist through the other “I"s that succeed it. In Winston’s case he believed he was immortal because the party would never die. I think this is a great insight by Orwell, because it would seem that it is impossible to set up a society without bringing along metaphysical baggage. The desire (need?) for metaphysics is like a sexuality that if repressed just comes through the cracks in very disturbing ways.

Biocentrism

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:29 -0500

Finally checked this one of the list, of course that raises the question of what I mean by “finally”. The word obviously indicates a sequence of events and sequence indicates time and time indicates a required conscious observer. So, in a sense I’ve read this book both before, after and not yet. Jokes aside this book raises a lot of interesting questions, making you think about things a little differently than you had before. And that is the most and best that you can ask from a book. The writing in the book is kind of poor and a little self-aggrandizing at points but the ideas are original enough to make that not too difficult to look past. This book also made me want to read Emerson. While some of his conclusions and observations have in recent years been “proven” wrong (most notably the experiment of being able to read someone’s intentions up to 10 seconds before they actually make a decision) there still seems to be plenty of latitude in the field of consciousness to allow for his ideas to have value. Good suggestion has given me a lot to think about.

Biocentrism on George's Blog

1984

Biocentrism