Doublethink
DOUBLETHINK, as described by the author George Orwell (Eric Blair) in his 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984):
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
2 comments:
I remember reading this book freshman year at Oshkosh. I think it was the first sort of required reading that i fully embraced.
that and confessions of thief: the rickey henderson story.
Orwell is an awesome writer, but I like Brave New World better. It's Huxley's Goodfellas to Orwell's Godfather. Same idea, but more realistic execution. We will be controlled through pleasure and complacency rather than brutal oppression. We've got a terrible war going on right now and I spent the morning watching SportsCenter and sipping "gourmet" coffee. Hmmm...
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