Literary allusions

I sometimes wonder whether my colleagues at work think that I'm a little weird. Instead of talking about football or the wonderful dish I cooked the other night or even work, I tend to insert little pieces of culture which seem to come from nowhere.

People's ringtones are a rich source of information to be shared. Yesterday I found myself telling people about the pentatonic scale after hearing someone's Japanese sounding ringtone, and indeed my own general ringtone is a souped up, syncopated version of Eric Satie's "Gymnopedie" (which I got from a colleague who simply thought that it sounded nice). I actually bought a disc of Satie the other day, which I find quite pleasing and relaxing, although I must admit that I prefer a chamber orchestra to solo piano.

During a discussion about stock control and purchasing strategies, the immortal words of George Orwell suddenly entered my head.

He who controls the present controls the past
He who controls the past controls the future

How apposite! One part of the purchasing strategy looks at the average use of raw material over the past few months, the number of months being variable. Normally it's six months, but I could change this. He who controls the present controls the past - changing this variable can cause changes in the average use, especially if it's a new part. Future orders in part (excuse the pun) depend to a certain extent on this average, and so he who controls the past controls the future.

As usual, no one knew what I was talking about.

Another pair of quotations from '1984' also finds favour in these quarters, especially when talking about databases and user privileges:

Knowledge is power
Ignorance is strength

Most of the time I don't actually express these literary allusions but keep them to myself, because I know that most lack the references. Israeli youth do not read Orwell or Eliot in school; they read the Bible (in what seems to me to be the least most important subject, even less useful than trigonometry). As opposed to earlier generations of British schoolboys, I didn't have much Shakespeare forced upon me (that's why I was reading Orwell or Eliot), but I did pick up a little S, here and there. Playing The Young Cato in our school's production of "Julius Caesar" made me appreciate his language much more than trying to read his unpenetratable plays, but Israelis read even less than I did (although I think that all of S's plays have been translated into Hebrew). References to Brutus tend to fall on deaf ears, although people do know about knifing in the back.

Possibly I read '1984' and its soulmate 'Animal Farm' too young. I know that I was genuinely frightened by these books, both by the physical violence displayed in the former, but also in the latent violence present throughout. The thought that people could change their ideological outlook overnight is something that dismays and frightens me to this day - and in a way, I've been a party to it myself. I have often compared the ideological switch of the kibbutz movement (from "share and share alike" to "take what you can get") to the overnight changing of allegiances in '1984' (we have always been at war with Eastasia) - but again, few seem to know what I am talking about.