After reading my last read, I’m starting to believe we all live on Animal Farm: a farm which begins amazingly but leads to destruction. I read Animal Farm because I thought it would be an easy read; the book is thin and the last George Orwell book I read was a distant memory. Although the book is largely about politics, it spoke to me about three other things too. It wasn’t an easy read but… it was worth it.
Ideal Leadership
In the book, the animals remove the farmer called Mr Jones from the premises and run the farm themselves. The way in which the story was written kept leading me to think about leadership.
Napoleon’s World
After this occurrence, Napoleon, the boar, leads the farm. As an inspiration, he helps the animals dream of how much better the farm will become. He inspires the rest of the animals to work harder. As time progresses, he becomes less of an inspiration and instead of leading them well, he becomes arguably worse than his predecessor.
It’s funny because at work, we always see how bad our leaders are and we always tell ourselves that we could definitely do a better job.
When the leadership position arises we often make similar mistakes to our former leader.
Building leadership skills before becoming a leader is like taking driving lessons before you’re legally allowed to drive on your own.
Preparing to be a leader and gaining experience in the field before getting there is one thing that would help many people lead a team better when the opportunity appears. Most importantly, it would prepare us to lead and guide each individual as well instead of just steaming forward towards the goal.
Gaining Information vs Digesting Information
I loved reading this book because it’s a clear reminder of how we all need to keep educating ourselves.
There are points in the book where the leader changes the rules or even the information about the past. In these instances, it’s clear the animals on the farm are easily manipulated because the majority of them are not educated.
We live in an amazing period because we can gain so much information about history, geopolitics, mathematics, science, and multitudes of subjects. But, information being available and developing educationally are not the same thing.
Educating yourself means having a firm foundation of what facts are. Then when time and culture change, you can fully dissect the changes and any new information yourself, instead of relying on people to translate it for you.
Maybe it just feels like we all live on Animal Farm because continual education is less of a priority for many, in comparison to before.
Mind Your Mind
I read a lot of self-improvement books and I’ll continue to do so. Animal Farm, however, reminded me of how important fiction books are, especially the ones that fall into this genre.
Sometimes it’s important to read books that allow the reader to gain many interpretations from it. This is because books like this make the reader come up with their own theories and answers instead of just being told how life should be lived.
Often, it feels like we live on Animal Farm because we make ourselves busy and don’t have enough time or make enough time to do this. Like the animals in the book, we just work harder instead of allowing our minds to be watered and fed to prevent ourselves from just following the fashion of the age.
Where Is the Exit?
Many have read Animal Farm and after finally taking it off my to-read list, I understand why. It touches on issues we face in our current political climate but there are also so many underlying lessons that one could gain if you give it the time. Despite the fact that the book was written decades ago, its lessons on leadership and education are so relevant to today’s world. I’m packing my bags; it’s time to leave the farm.
Title: We All Live on Animal Farm
Author: Leonie Thomas
Date Published: 31.10.2024
Leonie Thomas 