The Devs need a much needed thanks!

[Midareyukki]

The human capacity for doublethink is as bad as Orwell portrayed it to be ... too bad so few people read 1984 (or Animal Farm) anymore.

Disregarding that not every piece of knowledge needs to be consolidated into a tome for people to understand a concept and form their own opinion on it... you do know Orwellian situations are grossly misinterpreted even by people who have read 1984, right?

That it really depends on how you view it and life and what you perceive the other side to be? It's all about self-reflection, which reading the book is no guarantee you're capable of. When it came out, you had three camps. People who saw it as a criticism of communism, people who saw it as a criticism of capitalism and people who saw it as a criticism of any extreme faction that turns to authoritarian measures. None but the author could explain for certain, and he was long dead at the time, so so much for that. And even analysing his life doesn't exactly help, because by all standards, he was upset at both socialism and capitalism. So you could just whip out whatever moral you wanted from it. Which, ironically, it too was Orwellian in a way, because it would go on to justify people's own morals rather than promote self-reflection for one's actions.

TLDR: Reading philosophy doesn't make you a guru in any way. People can be smart, use common sense and be perfectly rational and intelligent without having to prove it by being pretentious enough to read classics. And even those who do read them can easily twist the narrative and the point of the book to suit their opinions. It's not necessarily a good indicator.