Orwell - a man of his times, before his time

George Orwell was writing for an earlier era, but clearly his frame of reference could have easily been contemporary times.

Writing in the 1946 published “Why I Write” about the challenges of the then World War Two, he articulated the difficulties arising from the past fighting the future.

He wrote: “The past is fighting the future, and we have two years, a year, possibly only a few months, to see to it that the future wins.”

The practicalities and dynamics of our climate were understood then by only a few people and the idea that humans could actually change something so massive was unimaginable to most.

Yet change it we have and Orwell’s writing, though about something entirely different, was prescient.

He wrote: “We cannot look to this or any similar government to put through the necessary changes of its own accord. The initiative will have to come from below.

“That means that there will have to arise something that has never existed in England, a socialist movement that actually has the mass of the people behind it,” he wrote.

Although severely dated, Orwell’s observation is timely for it seems that adherence to a market-driven economy and way of life, which is the antithesis of what he sees as ideal, will only worsen climate change and further distance us from any solution that could see the planet remain habitable for humans.