Category: Review

I said it a couple weeks ago, the spiders are creating more cobwebs. I have been done with the book over a month ago. Sometimes, I write ahead and queue up posts at the time. Not this time, life has been way too busy. But, no worries I took some notes about what I wanted to say.

From my research on the book, it is pretty clear that Orwell wrote this book as an observation on Communism, particularly the Soviet style. In that vein, China hadn’t even had their revolution before Orwell was dead. So what other examples did he really have? The funny thing is, Orwell was also an advocate for Socialism. That is what I would call Communism’s softer, more attractive brother.

It’s hard to blame Orwell. He really died as Communism was budding. But, he also didn’t live to see that Socialism follows the exact same path as Communism, it just takes a lot longer to materialize. That is my take on it anyway. And I should add that my perspective is coming from an American point of view. I am not talking about countries that have a history of being subjects. To them, socialism represents some boundaries to absolute power (I speculate)

The point that I am trying to get across is that whatever you call it, it is not freedom to me. Even though this was a story warning of the ills of the Soviet Union, you just have a look and see if these things aren’t happening here.

Point One: Rally the people to a common cause. If you were an adult like I was during 9/11 or the most recent pandemic it is so much easier to manipulate people when they are united. It is the unity that enables fundamental changes such as the Patriot Act. Once that is enacted, it is never going away. That leads directly to Point Two.

Point Two: A successful revolution can only happen once in a generation. Incrementalism is the name of the game. I will ask, how many people are looking to repeal the Health Care mandate now? None, its over and it is never going away. People have accepted it for what it is. No matter how radical a change is, someday it will be the way it has always been.

Point Three: When the rules don’t suit, change the rules. This was abundantly spelled out in the book. Some examples below.

• All animals are equal. Some more than others.
• Animals shall never drink alcohol to excess.
• Four legs good, two legs better.

This is actually a complicated strategy. The rules are really used as a division point between the ruling and the ruled. Remember my diversion into the iron law of bureaucracy last week. The rules are to be adhered and respected by those who’s belief is the mission. It is the rulers setting the rules.

Point Four: The tools of propaganda are repetition and misdirection. If you say something enough times in the right way, it is believable. For instance, how many people think that there is a gun violence epidemic in this country? Read this quote.

More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides. Despite the increase in such fatalities, the rate of gun deaths – a statistic that accounts for the nation’s growing population – remained below the levels of earlier decades.

Now, read it without full of context. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If you read further into the article, you will find this quote. Though they tend to get less public attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (26,328), while 43% were murders (20,958), according to the CDC. The remaining gun deaths that year were accidental (549), involved law enforcement (537) or had undetermined circumstances (458).

I am going to end this line of here. But, how many times have we heard about gun violence this year? I am not saying that there isn’t room for significant improvement. What I am saying is that be careful with the interpretation of meaning. It is true that there was an increase in deaths. Facts are facts, they are neither good nor bad.

I don’t know Orwell’s mindset here. From what I read about him and the book it seemed like this was a persuasion piece in the category of ‘for Socialism’ by contrasting how bad Communism was. It is my speculation that the story was easily transferred from the pages to the reader. Meaning, they got it intuitively.

End Your Programming Routine: If you believe my premise, then I think I made my case. America has jumped the shark on freedom. Socialism is now the name of the game. It is a matter what flavor do you want. Regardless, those tactics in Animal Farm are the same ones that we have here in real life.

We made it. Both Friday and to the end of the book. Next week, I will have a wrap on the whole book, but this week I will stick to just the last chapter. Now that we have fastidiously evaluated each chapter, was the pace too slow? Maybe. I am ready to move on, but I have appreciated the relief as the rest of my life has gone crazy.

This is that time lapse part of the story. Years go by and life before is forgotten. The spirit of the revolution had dimmed and life is what it is. I referenced the Earnest Hemmingway quote in my podcast earlier in the week “gradually, then suddenly”. This book is the perfect illustration of that. Each chapter there were small changes then you look back and nothing is what it was.

Of course, that phrase wouldn’t have any impact without going through the rest of it. That is the clarity of perspective. Of the original rules, I think nearly every single one of them was modified. And dare I say that not for the better. But lets save the overall analysis for next week.

As the sad life moves on, the story closes with the pigs interacting with humans. It appears that pigs and people have become peers. There is no more animosity between the two species. The last sentence ends with pig looks like man, man looks like pig, neither distinguishable (paraphrased).

There is a theory that if you continue to do things a certain way, you start to assume the principles and traits of that way. I suppose the simple way of thinking about this is when you are a teenager and start hanging out with the a goth crowd. You may not make the whole transition of dress and makeup but it is pretty likely that you are going to adopt at least some of the identifiers, even as simple as dressing in all black.

Before I get out of my league with goth association, what I am saying is your mother’s sentiment of your friends are a reflection of you. Teenagers (read naïve) fight so hard to present the neutral point that they have not changed or are not influenced by association and that is just not true. The difference between a teenager and myself is that I can see and recognize the effect. I choose to continue association rather than it happening without my cognizance.

I have written about my passive personality. There aren’t a lot of things that get me real juiced up. When it is hunting/gardening/fishing/camping season, I always think that I am going to do this and that next year and get more into it. The more distance that is put between the season, the less motivated I get and then I start over the next year. To me, that isn’t real passion that is an interest. You could call it semantics, but to me passion is something that is done hell or high water.

I do find joy and interest when others are passionate about what they do or are talking about. For instance, I listen to some podcasts about permaculture. It is not my particular jam but because the host is passionate about it, I find myself adopting and becoming interested in it. It could be categorized that I have been persuaded to look at things from a different perspective.

Permaculture is the combination of two words Permanent and Culture. There is a heavy component of self sufficiency in growing your own food and self reliance in living outside of normal systems. That is how we get to the culture part of it. And that’s the part of it attracts a lot of the touchy-feely, granola crowd. In years past, I would have scoffed at that and wouldn’t be found ten miles away. But, I have to come to the understanding that we both want the same things, just with a different approach to how to get there. As a result, I have come to empathize with that perspective to no small degree.

To quickly summarize, a group of individuals agree to live together with an established set of permaculture ethics.

1. Care for the Earth
2. Care for the People
3. Fair Share (Return of Surplus)

Number three is the most controversial and has two interpretations. The interpretation that attracts the hippie crowd is a strong socialist leaning: I should get my fair share from you. From my outside observation, this kind of thinking eventually leads to the breakdown of ethic number two. I think the more enlightened crowd interpret fair share as I take as much as I need and return the rest to the earth or the people, whatever is more appropriate.

Permaculture also has rules. I am not going to go into them at this point. What I am trying to say that if a homeowners association had ethics there would be no difference between living that way and living in a camp in the woods. Too many people sign up for rules that they don’t agree with and then get into battles with their neighbors.

Animal farm also had rules, but they didn’t have ethics. Rules without ethics become arbitrary and subject the whim of the rulers. Rules get changed because they don’t adhere or support a principle, they simple augment the power of an organization. They are used for punitive effect or justification. The pigs and humans began to assume traits of each other because of their proximity and habits. The deeper question is why in the first place? I think that I will explore that next week

End Your Programming Routine: I was struggling to get something going this morning and then all of the sudden permaculture came into the picture. I sense a podcast in here now that I see the connection between ethics and rules. The programming here is don’t let your associations define you. It is natural to want to look and act the part when associating, but we need to have our own ethics sorted out before we start adhering to the rules.

We are getting close to the end of the book. There is one more chapter to go. I will tell you a secret, not only have I read this book before but I also finished this weeks ago. The book is so short that you can probably read it in a long evening. But that is OK, I am taking it slow to dissect and enjoy it. I have to clear the cobwebs a bit. Now that I have scanned through the chapter again, I am ready. So, let’s go.

Boxer worked himself to death. After the windmill was blown up and they had to start over, it was Boxer that did the heavy work. In the process he got old, injured and used up. Boxer’s last appearance in the book had him taken away to the glue factory while the pigs were saying he was going to the hospital.

I have been Boxer in my life. I have ignored problems thinking that I can solve them by working harder. This was a huge lesson in my life. In some ways, this is the inspiration for this AltF4.co endeavor. It came across in a different time and a different manor, but I now know what it means.

I was in my twenties and I was running the laboratory. Every plant task that failed to work properly, I would assume as my own. Pretty soon, I was running formulating, wastewater, quality, IT and automation. I had a mentor and he told me as I was leaving that the company would always let me take more work. It was up to me to stop it.

I think more than I was trying to do it all, I was not getting anywhere other than convincing myself that I could do it better. What I was ignoring was the system of accountability for the people not doing a proper job and the consequences for not doing so. I was so vested in the outcome that I couldn’t see my effort was self-harmful as as much as helpful. I didn’t leave as a result of that (story for another day), but I left wiser as a result.

I won’t say that I completely got this lesson, it probably took another 15 years but now I have it. If you work for someone else, you do not own the output. It doesn’t matter if there is profit sharing or employee ownership, you still do not own the output. I think of it this way, any form of revenue sharing is actually a trap to provide the illusion of effort equals results.

The ones that set the rules are limiting the distribution pool. Then there are others that do not deserve to be rewarded. Decisions are made with no input and rules are made to prevent risk or innovation. For all of these reasons, I have realized that for me to be happy with my career and output, I need to be in control of it. Ultimately, this is what drove me to leave my job and it is a strong driving factor in Altf4.co.

Those concepts are the reason that socialism will ultimately have it’s detractors. I didn’t work like a madman because I wanted to get rewarded. I did it because I believed it needed to be done. That being said, when it comes to compensation, I saw that I did all this and this is all there is. Oh and to top it off, things aren’t really better.

Getting back to the book, this chapter is the perfect illustration of the iron law of bureaucracy. There are those committed to the mission (Boxer) and those committed to the organization (pigs). I think that it goes without saying that whichever side you pick, you are all in. How would it look if your star performer actually worked himself to death. That was a situation that had to be dealt with for PR purposes.

It seems completely logical that the pigs would lie about Boxer’s disposition to make everything seem normal. After all, a revolution would be pretty dangerous to the organization. That is really the moral of the story. You can trust the when a choice between the organization and the constituents has to be made, those that are on the other side of the iron law are going to make the choice for the organization.

End Your Programming Routine: Of course, charity is a tenant of Christianity. That being said, charity is not collectivism. And speaking of morality, thou shall not steal. If you are not doing your fair share, then that is stealing which is a sin. Collectivism actually fosters inequality. Reading this is a warning, if you work yourself to death then you have to know that it is your choice, not because there is personal profit.

This week I am combining chapters seven and eight. The reason is that I feel like they are continuations of the same themes. I had to sort of scratch to see if there was actually something new in these chapters. The truth is, I don’t feel like there actually was, but I looked a little deeper to see if there was anything else.

Starting out, the move to the boogeyman has become absurd. Chapter seven is where I think Orwell jumps from generally foretelling to the protest against totalitarianism. For some unexplainable reason many animals admit to conspiring with Snowball and against the Animal Farm. This of course has fatal consequences.

Knowing that they will be killed, the animals knowingly fabricate false and ongoing relationships with Snowball. Ultimately, they are punished for their crimes. I don’t know if this is because things are so bad that death is better than innocence? Or maybe it is this impending sense of fatality that whatever is going to happen regardless of what they say?

I was doing some reading, and this book was published in 1945. There is a thought that this is a direct corollary of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. It very well could be that Farmer Fredrickson is Hitler personified and that Hitler betrayed Stalin with attacks on the Eastern Front.

In the book, Fredrickson buys the stack of lumber from Animal Farm. It turns out that the cash that was used was counterfeit. To make matters worse, this was immediately followed by the farmer’s attack and the sabotage of the windmill project. The animals fought back at a very high cost, just like Stalin.

I suppose what I am struggling with a little bit is that if Orwell is protesting totalitarianism in his writings, why then would he personify Stalin/Napoleon as a hero? It very well could be that Orwell is justifying Napoleon’s behavior by the sequencing of events. Or even possibly, this is just an interpretation of the facts and how they translated into history. I guess that we will have to wait until the book is finished to see.

I suppose that it is also possible that when the book was written, the opinion of Orwell of Stalin is not colored by the full force of his actions. Said another way, Stalin’s career was far from over in the mid 1940s. So, what may have looked like a hero in 1944 may not be so shiny in 2023. Again, I will form an overall opinion at the end of the book.

Finally, the cabal between the opinion of friend and foe and it’s daily change be it Snowball, Fredrickson and Pilkington is representative of politics. Hussein was a friend in the Iran/Iraq war and bin Laden was a friend against the Soviets but a foe in the war in terror. The time frame was different in real life but the concept is the same. It doesn’t matter what is said or who is the target, it only matters that everyone is focused how bad everything is at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: Propaganda is programming. I think like I said last week that the Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies and that the minute a person starts blindly following a person versus an idea, they are fraught with the potential to be mislead. This is particularly true when that person is more into advancing the organization than the objective because it could be that the person is more misinterpreting the idea or that they know that they don’t have to justify their actions.

Happy Friday. Maybe this is how parables are written or maybe it is just this one that is packed full of little things. This chapter is no exception. But, it could also be that it is just the way things go and not just a story. I don’t know, all I can say is that this story just seems to be giving truths.

I will keep it short because the chapter is only ten pages or so. It does seem to get a little old saying every other sentence is a validation of the world the way that it is too. I guess I would be remised if I didn’t acknowledge the significant number of truths and parallels that are in the chapter. So, let’s get into it.

Now that the animals have all been unified under Napoleon and the project focus is building the windmill, it seems like that takes all the focus at the expense of everything else in the world. We might not all remember or were around after 9/11 but I am pretty sure everyone reading this were around during Covid. So, let’s use that example even thought I want to eventually evolve away from that period.

We as a society did everything we could possibly do to focus on Covid. Never mind that people were still getting the flu let alone cancer or having their own personal disasters (and to be fair triumphs too) that happened in the midst of this. In our effort to combat the common cold, we destroyed our economy and nearly ourselves because we couldn’t see the forest from the trees. This is animal farm. Every bit of effort went to build the windmill and so the harvest suffered along with the people.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read this book a storm ruins the work. Wouldn’t you know it we have to find someone to blame. In the case of the book it was Snowball. But, we can find plenty of other patsies in our recent history. It was Osama bin Laden, well actually it was Saddam Hussein, no I think it was Muhammar Khadhafi. I don’t know, kill ’em all. Whatever we can do to transplant anger from our own administration and questionable decisions keeps the heat of our own problems.

Regardless of our problems with the boogie man, a modern society has a desire to trade outside of the internal economy. Even North Korean and Iran have limited trade partners. I think that it is arguable that an actual animal farm would need to go outside the farm, but when members want more than what is offered they need to look outside. Because animals are now building a windmill, they need supplies to finish the project and increase the overall comfort.

Finally, when the leaders find it advantageous, they are willing to change principal for their own gain. In this chapter, the pigs are living in the house and sleeping in the beds. If you remember, that violates the forth rule. Because the animals aren’t very literate they cant read the actual rule and can’t remember the actual rule. They are easily manipulated into what was wrong is now right.

This is the problem that we have today. We are actually moving the needle from what was wrong to now there is no longer a wrong and right. We are doing this by denying actual biology by men can be women and women can be men. It only matters if we feel like being called or acting however we feel. Don’t you dare question the should or shouldn’t of the situation.

Actually I misstated the above. What is actually wrong is not acknowledging that people can be whatever gender they want. We no longer read the rules (of morality) and we no longer remember the rules. The more absurd statements that are made, the more when you retract halfway between where we are and what was said becomes reasonable.

End Your Programming Routine: You know that I don’t really care if people feel strongly about becoming another gender. What I can’t really believe is all the mindless dolt’s who don’t see this happening. But then again, I suppose that these are the same people that thought that once we get Hussein or wear masks for the rest of our lives, things will be alright. I am not for condemnation, just stop getting hoodwinked.