You may baulk at Nineteen Eighty-Four's "Two and two make five" but I challenge you to find fault with these words in George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future:
"So long as they [the Proles] continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern ... Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."
Okay, so I left out "they went to work at twelve" (these days, some never start work at all) and "they married at twenty" (these days, they may still marry at twenty but now it's also legal to marry the same gender), and I could substitute "films" with "television". As for the rest, I could add cricket, even golf and tennis, but above all, it is gambling on which Australians are estimated to lose approximately $25 billion each year, representing the largest per capita losses in the world. No wonder, people are always bitching their welfare cheques aren't big enough!
Published seventy-five years ago, it's amazing how George Orwell could create an imaginary world that is still completely convincing from start to finish. I read it again on a bleak and rainy Thursday at "Riverbend".
