Semester begins tomorrow. Coursework is not particularly exciting - a course on systems engineering which I daresay would be tedium, one on advanced reaction engineering which might hold something interesting and a graduate course on immunology; I'm looking forward to the last one for that is the only one of direct relevance to my research at the moment.
Florida turned out to be a welcome break for all sorts of reasons. For one, it helped me get away from the sense of mental haste that seems inescapable in Boston. Besides, thanks to my father, I indulged in a good deal of luxury and leisure during those five days. When pleasure ceased to please me, I thought. Some hovering delusions became apparent in the light of calm and calculated reason; the path of liberation, however, was not so evident.
My mind seems to waver and I cannot pay attention to the news either. Moving on,
I plucked out my tattered copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four and started flipping through its pages. Few books have affected me as this one did five years ago; it was like being punched out of a coma. I leave you with some of my favorite passages:
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Florida turned out to be a welcome break for all sorts of reasons. For one, it helped me get away from the sense of mental haste that seems inescapable in Boston. Besides, thanks to my father, I indulged in a good deal of luxury and leisure during those five days. When pleasure ceased to please me, I thought. Some hovering delusions became apparent in the light of calm and calculated reason; the path of liberation, however, was not so evident.
My mind seems to waver and I cannot pay attention to the news either. Moving on,
I plucked out my tattered copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four and started flipping through its pages. Few books have affected me as this one did five years ago; it was like being punched out of a coma. I leave you with some of my favorite passages:
Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.
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Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien: You do not exist.
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We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.
2 comments:
There is a girls school near work.
All the girls wear sashes around their waist.
Everytime, I think of the Junior Anti Sex League. And the cigarette I am smoking becomes a victory cigarette.
I totally share what you felt about the coma. I could not bring myself to move for about 15 minutes after I read it.
@kp: I'm awaiting your next mail :-)
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