1984 by George Orwell – Introduction w/Jesan Sorrells

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Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand

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yet another business book on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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Podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting and analyzing the great

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books of the Western canon. You know, those

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books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

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between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high

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school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

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entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn’t have the time

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to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from

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literature to execute leadership best practices in the

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confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

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inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western

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Civilization at the intersection of literature

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and leadership. Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books Podcast. Hello, my name is

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Jesan Sorrells and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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podcast. Episode number

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151

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the 20th century was an era, at least the

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middle part of it, of the most literate readers in the history

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of the Western world. The

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readers, readers in general of the mid 20th

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century were reading, absorbing and of

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course thinking about ideas that existed

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at the high water mark of print

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culture. Many books, essays,

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magazine articles and news reports were written during the 20th century to

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prove many points and to advance many, many

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ideas. The mid 20th century was also the start

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of the West’s obsession with an endlessly

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unfolding visual culture, including

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a fascination with an obsession with the power of

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screens, both television and

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movies. The mid 20th century was also the

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logical high water mark and at the same time marked the

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decline in fall of the Enlightenment project that had begun

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300 years earlier in the late

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17th century. These two

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monumental moments, the high watermark of print culture and the

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beginning of the fall of the Enlightenment project

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collided in the writing and in the reportage

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of journalists, poets, prose and narrative

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writers, and of course inevitably

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political writers. With these

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talents colliding at that dynamic mid century mark,

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pessimistic and cynical views of human nature dominated, along

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with the ever growing desire, the ever growing lust, such as it

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were, for institutional power, institutional control

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and dominance of the individual. A totalizing

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dominance of the individual.

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The main way for an increasingly intellectual and literate reading public

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to understand and to get these

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views delivered to them. And of course the opinions

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about human nature delivered to them was of course

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the novel. Today on

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the podcast we will be introducing the author and

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talking about some of the dominant themes and talking

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about some of the thoughts that I have on one of the seminal

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dystopian novels of the 20th century,

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George Orwell’s

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1984

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leaders. Some books are so frozen in time

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that anyone can graft any idea onto them at any time

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after publication, then can successfully leverage

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that grafting to move masses of people

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to action. And this,

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this is one of those.

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Books,

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Sam.

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So as usual in this episode of the show, we’re going to

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cover, we’re going to talk about some of the

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areas that are around 1984.

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Now one of the interesting things is that 1984 is of course a copyrighted

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work. It is not in the public domain. Therefore

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we will not be reading excerpts from the book on the

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show, which I don’t know if that would make Orwell happy or not.

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I do find it to be somewhat ironic that his

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estate viciously protects the

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Orwellian machine, such as it were,

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that continues to print cash based off of this

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dystopian novel. But

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the fact of the matter is these works are

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copyrighted and so we will not be reading them from the show. But I would

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encourage you to go out and pick up your own copy of 1984.

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Today we’re going to talk about the

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literary life of George Orwell and we’re going to begin to lay down the

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foundation of some of the themes that are explored in

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1984. Some of those themes, you know, but. There’S a couple

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of themes that I want to explore that I want to talk about that are

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in essence, for lack of a better term, minority reports.

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Yet another dystopian term that came

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from the mind of someone influenced by George

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Orwell. When we think about George

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Orwell, we have to think about who he was as

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a writer and as a creator. And

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so lets start with this. Eric Arthur Blair was

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born June 25, 1903 and died January

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21, 1950. He was born in Matahari,

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Bengal Presidency in British India,

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into what he described later on as a lower upper

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middle class family. Eric Arthur Blair was an

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English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who

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wrote under the pen name of of course, George Orwell.

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Orwell stood as probably the most famous post

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colonialist or post colonial British

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polemicist of the late 20th of the mid to late 20th century

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and wrote essays on politics, literature, language

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and culture. And in these essays Orwell focused

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primarily on social criticism. He was vehemently

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opposed to all totalitarianism, but both

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authoritarian communism and fascism. And

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he wrote in support of, in rabid support of

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democratic socialism.

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Orwell’s most popular and accessible writing came in the form

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of two novels published towards the end of his Life, the

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aforementioned 1984, of course, and Animal Farm, which was

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published in 1945.

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Now, Orwell came out of a very specific

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colonialist and Victorian perspective. In

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England, he went to what we would consider to

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be private school, but in, in England that

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is considered to be public school. And his family was not a family of

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means. He was separated from his father for many

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years and raised by his mother and his

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and his sisters. His sister, sorry

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Orwell did not have any biological children. In

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fact, he adopted a son who continues to preserve

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his legacy. And his second

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wife was the woman who eventually

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became owner of the copyright of all of his books,

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all of his publications, and all of his writings, an

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interesting woman named Sonia Brownwell

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Brownell, sorry Orwell, who died in

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the 1970s. There’s never been an

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official autobiography really of George

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Orwell, or at least not one that has been

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gotten the, the thumbprint of approval from the,

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from the family or from the estate of George Orwell.

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And that’s because I think, think Eric

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Arthur Blair or George Orwell, at the

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root was a difficult, persnickety, and personally

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unpleasant man. And he understood very

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little about how actual individual human behavior

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worked in relationships between people. He struggled

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from the time he was a child in understanding and relating to other

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folks. As a matter of fact, there are many stories if you go look at

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his Wikipedia biography, about him being

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ill adjusted at school with his

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mates and his friends, and then later on being ill

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adjusted when he was in the military and

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serving in an outpost, and then much later on when he

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served, not notably in the Spanish

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Civil War. He was

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intensely interested, however, as most people are who don’t really understand

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human nature, he was intensely interested in dictating in, in

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an almost unironically totalizing way,

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what people should do in relation to systems and

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institutions. And you can see that in some

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of his writing and his essays. Actually in a lot of his writing and in

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his essays, including the essay that we covered,

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and we’ll, we’ll take a look at some pieces of it or quote some pieces

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of it on the show today. The essay Politics and the

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English Language, which we covered on the podcast last

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year. Go back and check out that episode.

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So Orwell, a funny, smelly little man,

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was consumed with thinking

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and examining and pulling apart smelly little

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orthodoxies, wound up writing one

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of the seminal dystopian novels of the

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20th century. SA

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SAM.

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So one of the things that leaps out to you

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when you read 1984, and I’m about,

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oh, three quarters of the way through it in preparation

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for our next episode where we’ll go into a deeper dive

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into some of the themes of the book. One of the things that jumps out

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to you is that this book is written in

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a fashion that is designed to be a punch in the

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mouth. It’s designed to be a

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rhetorical swing right. Orwell

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was attempting to work out the problems and

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the issues and the challenges that he was having with

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not only the fascism of Nazi Germany

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at post World War II Nazi Germany Fascism, but he was

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also working out his

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problems that he had with the

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hangover from Stalinism that was occurring

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in the worldwide left and particularly in the British political

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left in the 1940s

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and all the way through World War

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II. Orwell wrote 1984,

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even more so than Animal Farm as protest

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literature. He wrote it as a pamphlet.

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Now, most protest literature, whether written by

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minority activists or female activists, is really just

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glorified pamphleteering. And we made this point before

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with the Color Purple by Alice Walker. We also made this

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point when we discussed James Baldwin’s Everyone’s

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Protest everyone’s protest novel. And we’ll reference James

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Baldwin again here in just a minute. And we also made this point where we

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talked about Joan Didion slouching towards Bethlehem. The

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protest novel as glorified pamphlet

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was a form of reportage. It was very popular in the

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20th century, but particularly popular

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for writers of a more leftist political

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bent. Protest literature written by

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English socialists about the failures of communism social served

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as a critique, weirdly enough, from the political right of the

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political left. And this Critique,

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particularly in 1984, comes off as confused

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and bitter and not particularly in spite of

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Orwell’s probable

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objections or protestations to the contrary.

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Not well, not well written.

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Pamphleteering has always been a poor substitute

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for masculine action, and it is indeed

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the natural outcome of the industrialized system of interaction between human

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beings that seeks to overlook, deny and evade

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man’s fundamental complexities. In

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the case of Orwell, remember I mentioned earlier, he said, served

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somewhat ignobly in the Spanish Civil War.

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And I’m going to give you this quote directly from his Wikipedia article.

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Quote, Orwell set out for Spain on or about December

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23, 1936, dining with Henry Miller in

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Paris. On the way, Miller told Orwell that going

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to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was,

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quote, unquote, sheer stupidity. And that the

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Englishman’s ideas, quote, about combating fascism,

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defending democracy, etc. Etc. Were all, quote, unquote,

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baloney. And that’s really one of the things that comes

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through in 1984.

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Yes, it is a totalizing critique of both

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communism and fascism. It is a

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totalizing critique of totalitarianism. And yet.

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And yet there are many, many ideas

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in it that can be grafted onto other ideas.

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Which means it might not exactly be

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the most nutritious ideas you could eat out on.

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Hello. So I’m gonna do some shilling here

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and hopefully this will be a pause in

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our riveting conversation for you. I have an

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offer for you. My most recent book is 12 Rules

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for the foundation of Intentional Leadership. It’s available in

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paperback, hardcover, or as an ebook on Amazon, Barnes and

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Noble, Kobo, and any other place you order books

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Now. In this book I address the 12 leadership areas that I have found

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leaders need to be the most intentional in to be the type of leader

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followers actually want to follow from

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establishing a foundation of leading teams through managing conflict effectively

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all the way through leading teams through change. Knowing what to do and

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00:17:32,920 –> 00:17:36,640
why to do it can help readers like the

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ones listening to this show become better leaders.

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Look, reading this book and living it is like getting coaching from me

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00:17:44,840 –> 00:17:47,960
directly without having to pay my full coaching rate.

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00:17:48,760 –> 00:17:52,560
Head on over to LeaderShipToolbox US. That’s

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Leadership LeaderShipToolbox US. And scroll down the homepage and click on

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00:17:56,310 –> 00:18:00,070
the Buy now button to purchase in hardcover, paperback and Kindle format

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00:18:00,150 –> 00:18:03,990
on Amazon. 12 rules for leaders the foundation for

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00:18:03,990 –> 00:18:07,350
Intentional Leadership. And that’s it for me.

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Now back to the show.

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All right, so remember how I said we were to going going to revisit

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something that we talked about earlier on an earlier

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episode of the show? Well, on episode 85

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of the Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast back in

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2023, we had discussed with our guest co

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host Tom Libby George Orwell’s Politics

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and the English Language. Now

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Politics in the English Language is an essay that he he wrote rendered

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and in the essay he talks about the nature

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of the decline of English,

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the use of the English language and how people can

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bring it back and how people can use that

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that attempt those attempts to restore or refurbish

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the language in order to

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take conscious action in order to affect

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conscious action over the debasement of the

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language. That’s number one. But also number two to

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get control of their their thoughts and

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get control of, well, get control of the decadence

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of English society in a mid war

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period. Just a couple of quotes

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by the way, from Politics and the English Language.

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First quote, our civilization is decadent and our language, so the argument

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runs, must inevitably share in the general collapse.

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Also from Orwell. This is the second quote the Same thing is happening in the

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English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our

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thoughts are foolish. But the slovenliness of pit

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language makes it easier for us to have foolish

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thoughts. Close quote

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the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for

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us to have foolish thoughts.

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If one gets rid of these habits, one will think more clearly. And

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of course, to think clearly is the necessary first step towards political

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regeneration, so that the fight against bad English is

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not frivolous and it is not the exclusive concern of

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professional writers. Orwell makes this point

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in his essay and the

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There are some leadership lessons to be gained there about the

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efficacy of having clear thinking and engaging in clear thinking,

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but also the efficacy of engaging in clear speech.

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But then you turn and you look at the writing of 1984

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and and Orwell, as a political

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polemicist who was also a glorified English

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pamphleteer, was a bad novel writer. Nobody really wants

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to say this out loud because he’s entered into

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or become part of the Mount Rushmore of British of

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post war British literature. But the fact of the matter is

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his talents were best confided or. Or best

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confined at least to political reportage and

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documenting the nature and depth his obsessions

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in a political fashion. His

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two most famous novels, an allegory and a blank

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dystopia upon which any regime can write

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anything, have been read by high school students for decades,

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which of course indicates their lack of literary

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depth. And by the way, this is not to knock high school students, this

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is actually knocking Orwell. If he had written something that was

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denser, it probably would not have sold as much, nor would it have

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entered into the larger Western cultural zeitgeist

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as a warning against the very things he

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was railing against. But but

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because it was written so simply, anything and

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anyone could write or graft anything onto

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the face of 1984 and call it by

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a name that he picked up as a pen

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name, but that has now become an adjective for

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totalitarianism. Orwellian.

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SA.

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So let’s mark where we’re at in

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2025 upon a reading

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of 1984 by George Orwell.

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Book bans words that change their meanings in real time.

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No freedom or lack of freedom of association,

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technological monitoring, one world government

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lack of or a curbs or a curb on free

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speech Social and cultural totalitarianism,

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social control speech codes cancel culture

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rampant and rampaging poor pornography for both men

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and women bread and circuses and

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sports ball thought police monitoring

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your every click and making sure your social

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credit score is high Gulags

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concentration Camps digital, of course, at first,

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but we always know what the cul de sac at the end of

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that road is. Illegal arrests, bad

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food, and of course, ubiquitous

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and ill fitting uniforms.

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We are living well past that dystopia

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that Orwell predicted in his book and that he

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laid out in such

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minimizing language. And for those of you who aren’t convinced of that,

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well, I propose to you this. We’re

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going to need an alternative explanation of the institutional and governmental

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behaviors of governments in the supposed Liberal west

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since September 11, 2001, all the way to

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the breaking of those same institutions and

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governments by the showing up of one man on

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November 5, 2024. You need to provide

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me an explanation for the last 25 years of

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chaos because the only explanation that

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works is that we’re currently in a really well managed

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dystopia. We do not have,

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by the way, a the imagination to

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project forward an appropriate dystopia for

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the future of our own time, partially because we have achieved in

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reality all the dystopic terrors that we made up in a post

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World War II fever dreams successfully articulated

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through our books, our films and our television

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shows. We also,

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because of the corruption of the language and the decadence of the language, and I

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think Orwell would agree with this, we also don’t have the ability to

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imagine a better world. We actually can’t imagine

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a utopia anymore because we have imbibed

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fully at an individual level all, all the way down to the bottom,

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all the cynicism and pessimism inherent that goes

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along with, and comes part and parcel with fantasizing what

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a dystopia would actually be like? Which means our

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fantasies are now all our terrors.

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Our golden age is actually a nightmare.

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And how could a person, a culture, or even a leader imagine a

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quote unquote golden age if that same person, that same

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00:27:13,190 –> 00:27:16,510
culture or that same leader can’t shake off the

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00:27:16,510 –> 00:27:20,270
psychological overcoat that shrouds them from seeing possibilities

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we don’t believe are actually there.

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Or to frame it in another way, if you read 1984

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and then you realize that we’re living in 1984, how can you

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have hope about anything or, or build anything on the other

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side of 1984?

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Oh, brave new world that we live in and what

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people are in it. But here’s the

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00:27:48,190 –> 00:27:50,630
problem. Those people are going to have children

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and those children aren’t going to know anything about

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00:27:55,830 –> 00:27:59,510
the roots of the terrors that we have imagined and brought to

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fruition. If in our dystopic present.

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And so we must come up with a better idea

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for a golden future. We must have the courage to

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imagine something that is not pessimistic or cynical

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00:28:14,660 –> 00:28:18,220
and then actually have the courage to start building it

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with our hands. And by the way, that’s something

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00:28:21,860 –> 00:28:24,980
that Orwell, a bitter and unpleasant little man,

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can’t possibly lay out for us. And

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well, that’s it for me.

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Sam.

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00:29:29,490 –> 00:29:33,010
Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast today.

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00:29:33,730 –> 00:29:37,450
And now that you’ve made it this far, you should subscribe to

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Toolbox and hit the subscribe button there on YouTube.

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And while you’re doing that, leave a five star review. If you

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like what we’re doing here on Apple, Spotify and

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YouTube, just go below the player and hit five stars.

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We need those reviews to grow and it’s the easiest way to help grow this

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show. And tell all your friends, of course, in

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00:30:22,480 –> 00:30:26,240
Leadership. By the way, if you don’t like what we’re doing here,

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00:30:26,240 –> 00:30:29,560
well, you can always listen to another leadership show. There are several

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00:30:29,800 –> 00:30:33,640
other good ones out there. At least that’s

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00:30:33,640 –> 00:30:36,940
what I’ve heard. Alright, well

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00:30:37,660 –> 00:30:38,860
that’s it for me.