I believe that it was 1984, when we had our 1984 Party. Each guest had to do the same ritual that Winston does in the book. To get the place ready, we boiled cabbage all day to make it smell like the book describes and we rolled a pack or two of cigarettes between our palms to loosen the tobacco. We made specialty packaging for the cigarettes and bottles of gin. "V" for victory was the largest letter on the packs. We set up a television at an angle so as to be viewable from nearly the whole apartment and the guests would have to find the place where the telescreen could not be seen to perform the rest of the rite.
We would explain, or read from the book as they took a cigarette carefully from the pack, keeping the open side up to avoid losing the tobacco and they were to drink some gin in the same spot before they could join the reverie. It was a winning series of events, helping us to visualize ourselves in Winston's shoes.
Little did I know that just a generation later, my daughter would be having her own 1984 party, but for real at her technical school. Not just as a diversion for creatives away from home and living on their own for the first time in their lives. No, her teacher has deemed her "too risque'" for her adult classmates. She is studying media, production arts and visual communication, but if she wants to show any more of her creations to the class, she will be required to submit them for approval beforehand to the teacher. Mind you, the material was PG rated, and used images available on broadcast tee vee, but she interspersed them and added commentary that called into question the morality of large corporate empires to degrade women, foist aggression on males and basically present a misogynistic ethos over our culture in the hopes of using the angst created for both sexes to sell product, influence culture and set back womyn's rights three or more decades.
The Universities and Technical Colleges, at least in America are suffering under the assumption that difficult questions, especially ones that might make someone uncomfortable, are to be avoided rather than discussed. The oligarchs routinely threaten to stop donating to large and small institutions alike if their sensibilities are threatened by educational research, discussion or critique taking place in the classroom and now, even on social media. I have seen it myself. The firm hand of censorship slowly strangling creativity, taking the "rough edges" off hard questions and turning critical eyes into vacant stares. I will include the original messages between my daughter and I here so that I will not color your perception more than I have to in order to get the message across clearly.
My daughter who is in Technical College just mentioned that she was told
to "tone it down" in class today; apparently Sage is too racy for
adults. She showed a short video pointing out how certain advertisers
were sexist in their ads. Now, she has been told that if she wants to
show anything in class, she has to have prior approval of the teacher.
My response was first disgust and my written response follows.
This is where one has to remain a stand for truth in the teeth of power. EEEEEK! What sort of "insty-ruction" are they sanctioning? Are not my tax dollars spent on their very institution? You are expressing my ideas, not just your own. We are simpatico. He (the teacher) probably is not even aware of the fact that the tip of his penis was cut off just after being born and that is why he does not want to be bothered with concepts about the self image of more than half the population. I am appalled and horrified that in an educational setting, for adults, as you point out, one cannot bring up such deep and meaningful ideas without first getting "approval". It is difficult to speak truth to power, but going forward, know that you are completely right and a valuable asset to the development of your fellow classmates.
The discussions that have followed this event have been stark and brutal. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, if you look closely, examples of scholarship being cut off because funders got squeamish about the results. Tenure offered and revoked, programs discontinued, arts being eviscerated from Universities because their stories were too real. Heck, scientists have been let go or pushed out because their findings were too clear. My own research, which led me to coin the term heat islands back in 1987 was deemed unworthy of even discussion, until my professor stole my work as his own a few years later. Of course he couched it is much softer terms and actually never drew my final conclusions that these heat islands also affect climate, destabilizing the atmosphere from ground level on up to the stratosphere. Not only was my work deemed trivial, but the message has been shut out of academic discussion.
The powers that be are adept at guiding the direction of civil discourse and the public can no longer stand for being told what to think. The time has come for each one of us to teach another and to lay out the foundations of a civil society that supports all of us in our special systems of inquiry, our unique interpretations of what we feel we are seeing, hearing and finding out about, and we need to feel that there is enough tolerance and support for us to take tentative steps toward understanding, no matter who it makes look bad. Often, it is through expression of new ideas that other humans feel that they are not alone in thinking this way and that there are new truths that lay beyond our ability to discuss. When we need to develop new terms and new understandings, the best places to do it are among others who are at the forefront of learning and the cross pollination of ideas is as important to our evolution as any genetic tampering.
We would explain, or read from the book as they took a cigarette carefully from the pack, keeping the open side up to avoid losing the tobacco and they were to drink some gin in the same spot before they could join the reverie. It was a winning series of events, helping us to visualize ourselves in Winston's shoes.
Little did I know that just a generation later, my daughter would be having her own 1984 party, but for real at her technical school. Not just as a diversion for creatives away from home and living on their own for the first time in their lives. No, her teacher has deemed her "too risque'" for her adult classmates. She is studying media, production arts and visual communication, but if she wants to show any more of her creations to the class, she will be required to submit them for approval beforehand to the teacher. Mind you, the material was PG rated, and used images available on broadcast tee vee, but she interspersed them and added commentary that called into question the morality of large corporate empires to degrade women, foist aggression on males and basically present a misogynistic ethos over our culture in the hopes of using the angst created for both sexes to sell product, influence culture and set back womyn's rights three or more decades.
The Universities and Technical Colleges, at least in America are suffering under the assumption that difficult questions, especially ones that might make someone uncomfortable, are to be avoided rather than discussed. The oligarchs routinely threaten to stop donating to large and small institutions alike if their sensibilities are threatened by educational research, discussion or critique taking place in the classroom and now, even on social media. I have seen it myself. The firm hand of censorship slowly strangling creativity, taking the "rough edges" off hard questions and turning critical eyes into vacant stares. I will include the original messages between my daughter and I here so that I will not color your perception more than I have to in order to get the message across clearly.
 |
| This shows how angry I get when people, especially the oligarchs, mess with me or my family! |
This is where one has to remain a stand for truth in the teeth of power. EEEEEK! What sort of "insty-ruction" are they sanctioning? Are not my tax dollars spent on their very institution? You are expressing my ideas, not just your own. We are simpatico. He (the teacher) probably is not even aware of the fact that the tip of his penis was cut off just after being born and that is why he does not want to be bothered with concepts about the self image of more than half the population. I am appalled and horrified that in an educational setting, for adults, as you point out, one cannot bring up such deep and meaningful ideas without first getting "approval". It is difficult to speak truth to power, but going forward, know that you are completely right and a valuable asset to the development of your fellow classmates.
The discussions that have followed this event have been stark and brutal. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, if you look closely, examples of scholarship being cut off because funders got squeamish about the results. Tenure offered and revoked, programs discontinued, arts being eviscerated from Universities because their stories were too real. Heck, scientists have been let go or pushed out because their findings were too clear. My own research, which led me to coin the term heat islands back in 1987 was deemed unworthy of even discussion, until my professor stole my work as his own a few years later. Of course he couched it is much softer terms and actually never drew my final conclusions that these heat islands also affect climate, destabilizing the atmosphere from ground level on up to the stratosphere. Not only was my work deemed trivial, but the message has been shut out of academic discussion.
The powers that be are adept at guiding the direction of civil discourse and the public can no longer stand for being told what to think. The time has come for each one of us to teach another and to lay out the foundations of a civil society that supports all of us in our special systems of inquiry, our unique interpretations of what we feel we are seeing, hearing and finding out about, and we need to feel that there is enough tolerance and support for us to take tentative steps toward understanding, no matter who it makes look bad. Often, it is through expression of new ideas that other humans feel that they are not alone in thinking this way and that there are new truths that lay beyond our ability to discuss. When we need to develop new terms and new understandings, the best places to do it are among others who are at the forefront of learning and the cross pollination of ideas is as important to our evolution as any genetic tampering.
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