I once read a book by George Orwell called Animal Farm.
I think that this was the childrens version of one of his more mature works, i've heard him mentioned many times with respect to the way the watchtower society is run.
I'm sure that mention of this book or something very similar has been posted on this board before but it is in harmony with the theme of the topic of the thread so I will mention it here as I think it would be a valuable contribution.
****************************************
It was probally the only book that I ever read straight through in lower school, I really hated reading literature because I could never see the point in reading fiction, this was because, to me it (literature at least the kind I was mostly exposed to) never really related to anything usefull that I could apply in real life. I would watch the girls in my class read their 'romance novels' as they would call them and I would grasp at every oppertunity to remind them of my opinion that romance was just another word for sex in that context. When they would disagree with my opiion but to prove my point all I would have to do is flick randomly through the pages in the book and start reading it aloud and more often than not the characters of the book were about to get 'buck nakked' but very often I diden need to do that because of course in many cases the cover of the boo displayed a man holding a woman in his arms with his shirt off exposing all the chest and the abs that the ladies love. But any way... I am now very glad that I did read it though because I can now apreciate the fact that I can relate to the book because I am now witnessing many of the same very themes of that book in real life!
Betrayal;
Abuse of power;
Hypocrisy of the highest calibur;
Sleeping with the enmy;
The loss of your vision;
Becoming what you spent most of your life hating and conspiring against;
Murder;
Information controll;
Rewriting of History;
Turning a blind eye to the events as they unfold for fear of your own well being;
and many others.
-------------------------
It was based on that period of our worlds history in the latter part of the 1800's and earlier half of the 20'th century (1900's), in this particular period of time where majority of the world powers were lead by the 'grate' dictators such as the indivisuals that will live in infamy -- Hitler, Lennin, Stalin... (My history is alittle poor now so I cant rember all the others)
In many countries the mere mention of the word 'democrasy' in a public place or even to the wrong person, was enough cause for you to be executed by the state. (That is of course if you were actually informed enough to know what that word meant!)
The dictators had absolute authority over the entire range of affairs involving the of the running of the state in queston. They had complete and total controll over the history, media, the culture, the common goals of the masses (the vision of what the future will be), what was acceptable and what was unacceptable and very imortantly they had their own political police force to keep them in power, controll the masses and silence any opposition. (Does the last point resembel the familar notion being you brothers keeper taken to the extreme?)
A political police force was almost implemented in the United States whit the FBI stepping out of bounds (over and above the law) attacking the causes of many important indivisuals like M.L.King and others. Even though it was was not looked upon so critically in some respects especially concerning the measures required to stem the tide of KKK growth. But all in all it is a very dangerous thing to have people who will go to extreme lengths to silence the opinions and ideas of others when they conflict with your own opinion of how the world should be. Often these people believe that they aer doing the right thing by lying, misinforming people, slanting facts and disredting anyone who does not agree with them. That is very dangerous thing indeed...
***
The book applied this story to life on a farm, this story had a twist though, the story was told form the perspective of the animal. One would never usually think about the life of an animal whose sole purpose is to work and provide food for another form of life while getting little in return, people try to rationalize this by the fact that animals are not conscious in the way that humans are but one thing is for sure, noone would like to be alive for the sole purpose of ending up on sombodys dinner plate!
The writer adopted the view that the animals were not happy in their present state of affairs having to work long hours while not being properly compensated (who would be) he also applied the opinion that under such a state of constan stress and little hope for the future a rebellion would be likely. These aimals were opressed by the owner of the farm (Mr Jones) and his workmen. Certain animals invisioned a paridise called sugar candy mountain where thy had all the sweets that they could eat and they dident have to work anymore, this made the life that they had all the more bearable to the ones who believed.
The animals included your everyday baryard variety pigs, horse ckicken, dog, cow and many others, it even mentioned the rats.
What made things interesting is that these animals had varying levels of intellegence.
The pigs and the dogs were the most intelegent as far as I can recall, then the animals below them showed a decreasing level of reasoning ability and memory this trend continued unto the next lest intelegent and so on.
One day one of the older animals of the farm announced that he had a dream. In this dream he invisioned that day when the animals would nolonger accept the way they were being treated and rebel against Mr Jones and his 'hench-men' who were considered to be the equilevent of the devil and his fallen angels in the farm community. They (the animas) hated everything human except ofcourse sugr and other sweets.
Well let me just take out one part of the book to make a long story short because I could go on forever making comparisons of Watchtower world to the book in question.
The rebellion did happen but and the animals were sucessful at taking over the farm.
The animals agreed among themselves that never again shall they become inslaved again by humans and be oppressed in such a way ever again. They would rather die!
Grace abounded in the beginning as everyone was happy to be able to breathe easily. They tried to get rid of any trace of evidence that they were under the rule of humans. Objects such as butcher knives were thrown a well and harnesses, whips and other items were set ablaze symbolic of their triumph over human tryany. They stated that no animal should ever live in a house only humans did that, they wanted to truly seperate themselves from anything human.
To make sure that it never happened again rules were developed that all animals should live by and were agreed apon by all the animals.
At this point it the problem arose of how would they rember all these principles that they develpoed. At this point it was discovered that some of the pigs were able to read and write! They accuried this knowledge from some of the books that they found beloging to Mr Jones while he was incharge. They decided to put these principles of the new princples of animalism in a place where all the animals could see. They (the pigs) wrote the rules they had developed on a lareg tarred wall in large whit letters. You could see it from thirty yards off.
It is important to note that not all of the animals had the reasoning ability to distinguish one word from another so the 'more intelegent animals' had to read it to them. And also even the ones that could learn to read were not necessarily able to rember what they learnt a few days later. But all in all the pigs were the brighest of the bunch.
These are the laws that were written they called them:
'The seven commandments' (of Animalism)
1)Whatever goes upon two legs is an enmy.
2)Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3) No amimal shall wear clothes.
4) No amimal shall sleep in a bed.
5) No amimal shall drink alcohol.
6) No amimal shall kill any other animal.
7)All animals are equal.
****
Everything is all well and good they celebrate.
But obviously life must go on, afterall what were thay going to eat? Someone had to organise the animals so they could work togeather and provide for themselves.
Given that the pigs were the most intelegent they naturally took the lead in the running of the affairs of the farm.
In the begining they were had the genuine concern of the farm as a whole and care for the other animals in their hearts. This was because they themselves were the victims of Mr jones some of their parents were sold at the market and others even ended up on thetable at Christmas for dinner.
It all went down hill from here.
At this point in the story the corruption of morals began.
Too much power in someones hands can change them for the worst.
Someone on this board has a signature stating:
Unthinking respect for authority is the gratest enmy of the truthA.E.
This holds so true in the story.
The pigs began to realize that they could do whatever they wanted and could get away with it because there was noone for them to anwser to.
They became close asociates with the dogs giving them special privilages and got them to act as the law enforcers.
They learnt how to read and write properly. Thus furthering the gap of intelegence between them and the other animals.
They slowly began to transform into their once most hated enmy. Slowly but surely as they lost sight of the intrest of their orignal goal and began to care only for themselves.
They started to wear clothes.
They took up residence in Mr Jones' house. Slept in his bead!
They began drinking alcohol.
They began selling the eggs of the hens for profit. Now they had a use for money. Before they thought that money was evil because because it orignated from man, that all changed.
The pigs took Mr Jones' role of being the task master and took the liberty of forcing the animals to work long hours while they relaxed. They even had the audacity that they could justify they, themselves using whips on the other animals!
One amazing thing is that they even started to associate with humans in the community away from the farm! They wanted to converse with other indivusials of their own intellegence. They nolonger considered themselves equal to the anmals. Not to mention that they could trade the humans. (Does this remind you of a certain organisation started associating with the UN? Even after they condemmened others for doing the same origanaly?)
They got to the point where killed other animals who decided to question their authority.
The hypocrisy they displayed was appualing. They even began to slaughter animals themselves. Then they would sell it at the market to humans for profit! $$$ (I think they sid that the animals that they slaughtered went to sugar candy mountain. What was said about the people who died not accepting blood transfusions and other medical treatment. )
Ok you can throw up now.
Since there were very few animals with the intellegence to realize what was happening they got away with it all!
Not to mention the fact that the ones who did realize were infear for their lives so said nothing.
They implemented these changes slowly at times taking it one step at time not to arrouse the suspicion of the more 'able' mided animals.
Compare this to how the Watchtower paves the way for new light.
But they even came to the state where they had so much controll that they could implement a change literally overnight!
In the book one of the pigs was caught red handed in the act of canging one of the laws that the had written up on the wall.
he had a paint brush and was in the process of rewriting one of the commandments. He actually had the brush in his hand and still it didnt arouse enogh suspicion among the other anmals.
I remind you again of unthinking respect for authority.
Who would dear challenge the position of the pigs? Who would back you up in your claims when everyone was so afraid? Noone deared to face the pigs after they saw what they had now become capable of.
The ironic here thing is that the pigs were still seen as having the best intrest of the entire community at heart. This is one of the reasons why many animals allowed themselves to be led by them regardless of the hypocrisy. Noone would dear voice any opinion to the contary.
Nearing the end of the book the principles that all of the animals had formulated and apoted bearly resembled what was their inital goal. Instead they more resembled the very principles that had been used by the humans to inslaved them. Only the pigs benefitted from these new principles. They pain they felt for being oppresed for all those years by Mr Jones and watching their animal friends slaughtered and their offspring sold was long gone. Greed had taken over!
All of their morals had been corrupted with the power they accquired.
#############
The new commandments of 'animalism'
***
1) Whatever goes upon two legs is an enmy.
2)Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3)No animal shall ever wear clothes.[Removed!]
4)No animal shall drink sleep in a bed.[Removed!]
5)No animal shall drink too much alcohol.
6)No animal shall kill any other animal without good reason.(Guess who got to decide what was good reason.)
7))All amimals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. LOL
$$These are not the actuall commands but they are what the principles that they had originally upheld amounted to in the end. I can t rember off hand what they were exactly.$$
***
And at the end of the story noone could tell the difference between the pigs and the humans! Not even the animals.
The book ended with these words:
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from to pig, but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The Bible is a two edged sword wield it for evil and it you may get hurt.