Are we living in an Orwellian world?
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The purpose of Newspeak was to drastically reduce the number of words in the English language in order to eliminate ideas that were deemed dangerous and, most importantly, seditious to the totalitarian dictator, Big Brother and the Party. "Thoughtcrime," the mere act of thinking about ideas like Freedom or Revolution, was punishable by torture and brainwashing. Newspeak was the sinister answer. A character in 1984 describes it succinctly: "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought as we understand it now."
Is our real world today, at the beginning of the new millennium, so very different on a fundamental level from what Orwell predicted? There have been countless refutations of the 1984 dystopia: Totalitarianism is on the wane, Communism is dead, there is more prosperity, more community, more freedom than ever before.
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AND THAT MUST BE CHANGED.
Obama's Job?
The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.
But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts.
The key word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.
Thanks Ernest. I second the suggestion.
Or else.
I'll get ya. You know I will. The Merican people told me I could when they voted me inta office. Just ask me----I'll tell ya, in my down home folksy new talk, that I learnt on the campaign trail.
Now don't ya'll go and tick me off by not lettin' me have my way. You don't wanna see me mad, now.