Doublethink

Doublethink

*Warning: this is a pretty long stream of consciousness. You may want a comfy chair and some time on your hands before reading. It's pretty pedantic but I wanted to get out my thoughts about the book because I just find it so interesting and wanted to start a discussion about it. Also, while I personally enjoy it, there are definitely moments that are uncomfortable or outright awful while reading, so reader discretion is advised. Potential spoiler alert, btw.* I'm currently reading George Orwell's "1984" and loving it. It's effort at world building and lore creation are commendable and extremely plausible when explained with context from the novel (or, horrifyingly, when one compares the fiction of Oceania with the reality of North Korea) and it's easy to find yourself engrossed in the story. I highly recommend it, and even though it's required reading it never feels like a chore or responsibility, at least in my opinion. As someone who is openly fascinated with language, however, one of the most interesting parts of the novel (to me) is the developing lexicon of Newspeak. Several parts in the book are directly dedicated to explaining and highlighting words, such as "blackwhite" (the forced acceptance of a lie and rejection that anything else had been true,) "crimestop" (best defined as a "guarding stupidity" to avoid thoughts that are treasonous when ANY thought is treasonous) and the ever-important "doublethink". I find this last one to be particularly interesting; it is defined as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, while accepting both as fact." It is such an important word, in fact, that my phone did not attempt to autocorrect it as it did with "blackwhite" or "crimestop"; doublethink is literally so important that whoever programmed this device thought to include it as a real word with real meaning. This may not seem interesting in the slightest if not closely inspected. After all, we don't have a grand "Party" with a Ministry of Love sending thought police after us at the slightest hint of humanity, or live in a society where individuality is a sin and not a virtue. It couldn't possibly apply to the real world... But in a certain way, it does. I was reading the passage about "doublethink" as I was talking to someone I used to have feelings for, and as I thought about the two in conjunction with each other I realized that I was actively committing an act of doublethink: I denied that I ever had feelings for this individual while simultaneously lamented the fact that my feelings were never returned. To deny the former would destroy the latter, while to consider the latter would concede the former. And as I thought about it I couldn't help but wonder what other facets of my mind had been clouded by "doublethink".... And as it turns out, many of them were. Relationships, experiences, feelings, opinions... all of these were subject to doublethink to some degree or another. To know someone doesn't have feelings for you while simultaneously holding out hope that the two of you will end up together: doublethink. To promise yourself that you'll start a diet when you know full well that you won't: doublethink. To read this essay and reject the ideas within it while simultaneously (and secretly) contemplating their plausibility and searching your mind for signs of doublethink: in itself, an act of doublethink. Does any of this matter, though? It seems harmless enough, it's not as though we are rejecting reality in favor of the propaganda of a totalitarian political machine, so is there any harm in having moments like this? The answer, of course, is still yes, because to deny the relevance is, you guessed it, another instance of "doublethink". By rejecting the reality that I am lying to myself, I've created a hole of circular logic. I KNOW the aforementioned individual does not, and has never reciprocated my feelings, though I reject this knowledge and use other scraps of evidence to accept ANOTHER form of reality, even though it has no *basis* in reality and has been altered extensively by my opinions, desires, and hope. In this way, I act as my own Ministry of Truth, my mind churning out lies and propaganda against the reality I perceive, tricking me even as I perceive it. To refuse to acknowledge doublethink is to commit doublethink; as long as we allow hope and our subjectivity to guide our perceptions and opinions we are constantly in a state of doublethink. Maybe that's why the word was important enough to add to the available lexicon for autocorrect... It has a basis in the real world; within each of us. We are all our own Party, lying to ourselves and creating our own realities based on our preferences in what we choose to perceive in the reality around us. While it seems impossible that any thinking, real human would ever be able to entrap themselves in a state of doublethink, we do it TO OURSELVES every time we choose to believe something without real evidence, or contrary to real evidence. Here's what's important about this stream of consciousness... If we can and already use doublethink to alter what we know, who can say that it is impossible for a society, or a government or any institution to use the same principle as a means of control? The dangerous part about this question is that it is difficult to answer... And let's all hope the world never gets close enough to totalitarianism for us to find an answer.

Poem 003

"Letters move like lines of code, forming into words And arrange those words to get a verse to sing like we were birds... The meaning of those words can change till no-one understands But the feelings they convey are never lost and will withstand." I was thinking about coding and I have several (very similar) ideas for poems on a similar wavelength. I'm not sure which one I like the best but I'll eventually post all of them and figure out which one I want to keep. Poem 1 of CODE

he was trying to sing along :-(

Who doesn't love a sunset at the beach? This is why I can't live inland... I don't know if I could live without the salty sea breeze, marine-layered-mornings, and the burnt golden sun sinking into the blue

Poem 002

"In order to stay true ourselves, we all will have to lie That we are happy where we are and aren't afraid to die. If life's a game, how can we win unless we can adapt; Our will to live will drain from us and be completely sapped. But if I change, then who has won? The me who started, or the me who's done? Am I the same Or have I changed? Even my name Becomes rearranged; I know my heart and mind and soul have grown and broke and hardened, But if they hadn't then I would not have lived and become ardent. Maybe who I am and who I was are the same person, But if I hadn't turned the page my story would have worsened." I was reinvigorated into writing more by someone's very polite and encouraging messages, so here's what I came up with. I'm definitely going to try writing a little more often and we'll see if it doesn't improve. Constructive criticism always welcome.