Reading the Future in the Past.
A few thoughts on classic literature and the modern world.
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Perhaps my life experience is not all that it could have been, but if there’s one constant therein, it’s that I’ve had relatively decent exposure to popular culture these last four decades. Whenever I hear someone speaking on what it means to be ‘Orwellian’, there are usually one of two themes at play. The thing in question is either fascist/communist in nature, al la Hitler and/or Stalin and their oppressiveness, or said thing involves the excessive policing of language by certain moral power-mongers screaming into the zeitgeist, usually just to hear themselves talk. Generally speaking, I find it’s the latter, but I digress.
Language changes over time, as one would expect, as does the appropriate use of any given term. As this Cracked.com listicle demonstrates, the word ‘slut’ no longer means what it used to in days past. The famous writer Cory Doctorow uses terms in his recent writings that I’ve never heard of before the past year…
