"Yes, I believe we should give
up our liberty for freedom"
said a silly woman after the
London subway bombing when
she was asked about giving up
liberty for security.
His mind slid away into the
labyrinthine world of
doublethink. To know and not to
know, to be conscious of
complete truthfulness while
telling carefully constructed
lies, to hold simultaneously two
opinions which canceled 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.
- George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty
Four)
- Details
- Hippie Johnny