Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
Existe algum George Orwell brasileiro? Se não existe precisaria inventar, ou aparecer alguém. Os tempos são sem dúvida orwellianos, o que é revelado pela linguagem. Em certos ministérios, e não apenas no MEC, os funcionários da Verdade (do momento), estão empenhados em apagar o passado para melhor controlar o presente e determinar o futuro. Em outros ministérios, como o da Damaris, os tempos são surrealistas-dadaistas-antropofágicos, se não é coisa pior: estupidez, pura e simples... Os tempos não apenas orwellianos em certos ministérios, mas stalinistas, aqueles do Fotoshop manual: primeiro se apagava a foto do sujeito, depois mandava apagar o sujeito. Em todo caso, vale melhorar a linguagem. Paulo Roberto de Almeida
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
George Orwell
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1949 novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. He works at the Records section in the Ministry of Truth where he updates Big Brother’s orders and Party records so that they match new developments. He helps correct the flow of history to ensure that Big Brother is never seen to be mistaken. Big Brother can on no occasion be wrong and Winston is just one of thousands who work to correct the past in order to keep the people ignorant of their history.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell
In Chapter five, Winston has lunch with a man named Syme, an intelligent Party member who works on a revised dictionary of Newspeak, a controlled language, of restricted grammar and vocabulary, meant to limit freedom of thought. Syme says to Winston that the purpose of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought possible in order to make thoughtcrime, a crime against the state, impossible.
There should exist no words that are capable of communicating independent, rebellious thoughts. Because if you are able to numb the language, you in turn numb the mind. Thought corrupts language, so language must also be able to corrupt thought.
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
It is impossible to conceive of rebellion if there are no meaningful words to illustrate such a cause. And so, Big Brother sought to continually diminish the available vocabulary until comprehensive thoughts are reduced to meek terms of simplistic meaning.
…
‘Politics and the English Language’ was published just a couple of months before the publication of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. This essay provides great insight into Orwell’s fears surrounding the declining state of language in the English speaking world, fears he expressed so boldly in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.
I first came across George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ many years ago and I have tried to use it as a guide for my writing, referring back to it every so often when I fear I am losing my way.
The essay opens with, “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.” Orwell, in his usual calm and measured way, shares his thoughts on how the modern writer could help to improve the general state of language. He lists six rules for writing that he believes will aid the fight against restrictive language:
“(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
Notice the words ‘never’ and ‘always’, suggesting these rules are absolute and must never be broken. But, Orwell himself did not obey them. ‘Politics and the English Language’ is riddled with the passive voice and many unnecessary words. The listed rules are an impossible standard, but Orwell knew this himself.
The point of the essay was not to introduce a list of strict commandments, but to encourage the writer to think about how and why they are using words. The writer should be constantly questioning whether the words they write are clear and worthwhile. For the purpose of language is for expression, rather than concealment from one’s truth.
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”
Every word Orwell wrote, particularly in the late 1930s and 40s, was used as a weapon against the wicked force of his age, namely totalitarianism. This was his life’s purpose — to defend language from those who wish to ‘make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’.