the George Orwell effect

I awoke strangely late (9:00) on this new year's day and for some reason found myself thinking about George Orwell.

"George Orwell"

In my memory banks, Orwell is simply a bright light and a bulwark of sorts -- a vaguely amorphous yet also powerful touchstone whose very specific socialist-leaning and anti-totalitarian essays and novels do not stand out in their academic, sound-intelligent particulars.

Yes, "1984" and "Animal Farm" and "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "Homage to Catalonia" and "Killing the Elephant" are all in there somewhere, but their particulars are long gone and I would flunk a high-school essay exam if forced to write one. Orwell is more like a beautiful woman who has left the room but her scent remains.

Orwell: The hell-raiser who grew up honing intellectual skills in an environment he would later dissect and excoriate with such effect. Without the educational and economic blessing, would his view of the curse been so bang-on? Without the social and cultural lickspittles, how could his fiery fulminations have found so popular a purchase?

How surprising is the light bulb without the darkness?

How informative is what works without the myriad failures of what does not?

How heroic is the hero without the backdrop of cowardice and mediocrity?

Didn't Buddha and Jesus and Ikkyu and Mohammed and all the other pick-your-poison bright lights have vast debts to acknowledge? The wondrous rapscallions are in debt in the mind that elevates them and sooner or later those debts must be acknowledged and paid off. Wallowing among the lickspittles -- seeking out a life based on the agreement of others -- is as suffocating as it is comforting and yet the blazing light that shows the way out requires examination as well: Disagreement is just agreement in other clothes.... the sort of conundrum faced by the second-class atheist who constantly posits God as a means of denying him/her/it.

Lickspittle mediocrity and carelessness is tedious, yes. But anyone who imagines that putting on a white hat can eradicate what is black-hatted is stuck with the farm: It's just another hat. This is just goodness that posits and thus encourages what is seen as -- and what actually may be -- bad. The light bulb is not wondrous of itself but only in concert with the darkness it dispels. It's a trap that is hardly peaceful, however stenciled with "peace" it may be.

Limits point to limitlessness.

Limitlessness points to limits.

For this reason, I suspect it is good to sleep late from time to time.