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Aug. 22nd, 2005 07:49 pmI'm remembering that back in 1984, there was a lot of talk about how we'd reached the date of George Orwell's story of the same name, and there was even some minimal examination of our society at the time, with the conclusion that the events in Orwell's book had (thankfully) not come to pass. And being a dumb kid, I was like sure, nobody's being disappeared in America that I know of, we're not directly at war with another superpower, and so on, so sure, it hadn't literally come true. But that was the point, really. 1984 is an allegory. It's meant to depict the danger of thought control, and it's exaggerated to get the reader's attention. An actual working system of thought control would have to be invisible to those being controlled by it, as described in the book. But there's an even larger problem with the 1984 assessment... no system of power is going to come out and say that it's controlling people's minds and working to eliminate dissent. Who on earth is going to admit to that? Of course they said Orwell's book was mistaken. What other answer is there?
So, uh, don't be dumb, folks.
[Addendum: the real sticking point with most people who read 1984 is the concept of 'doublethink.' It's presented as a really exotic, unnatural state of mind, induced by some undescribed future technology, like it's science fiction. Orwell really hobbles the book in this way. Doublethink is just another way of saying that human beings are able to reconcile two totally contradictory ideas mentally, because human beings are not computers. Illogic doesn't hinder their functioning in the slightest, and people deny the truth to themselves constantly in order to keep doing what they're doing, particularly if there's some advantage in doing so. Or they refuse to consider the consequences of their actions, by choosing some reason why this would compromise themselves or their values or so on, or just shutting off that line of reasoning. In short, human beings will naturally route their thinking so that it lets them do what they imagine will be advantageous to them. In even more short: people deceive themselves for personal gain. Human cognitive structures are not subject to what we call 'logic', which is an artificial concept rooted in a (theoretically) objective external causality. Or something... does this make any sense?]
So, uh, don't be dumb, folks.
[Addendum: the real sticking point with most people who read 1984 is the concept of 'doublethink.' It's presented as a really exotic, unnatural state of mind, induced by some undescribed future technology, like it's science fiction. Orwell really hobbles the book in this way. Doublethink is just another way of saying that human beings are able to reconcile two totally contradictory ideas mentally, because human beings are not computers. Illogic doesn't hinder their functioning in the slightest, and people deny the truth to themselves constantly in order to keep doing what they're doing, particularly if there's some advantage in doing so. Or they refuse to consider the consequences of their actions, by choosing some reason why this would compromise themselves or their values or so on, or just shutting off that line of reasoning. In short, human beings will naturally route their thinking so that it lets them do what they imagine will be advantageous to them. In even more short: people deceive themselves for personal gain. Human cognitive structures are not subject to what we call 'logic', which is an artificial concept rooted in a (theoretically) objective external causality. Or something... does this make any sense?]
