All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances and were overthrown; or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force and once again were overthrown.
They fell, that is to say, either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is the achievement of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no other intellectual basis could the dominion of the Party be made permanent.
If one is to rule and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.
Doublethink
It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is.
In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, 'reality control'.
In Newspeak it is called doublethink, though doublethink comprises much else as well.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated.
The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.
To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary.
Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history.
In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
The War
One clear illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social scale.
Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the subject peoples, such as those of Africa and other very poor parts of the world.
To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to them.
They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones.
The slightly more favoured workers whom we call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of the war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.
It is in the ranks of the Party and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.
These first two posts are setting the background and terns for what is and has been happening on the home front. Edited from Orwell's 1984
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Monday, August 23, 2004
Edited-From Orwell's 1984 'expansion of private property by incorporation.
FIFTIES AND SIXTIES
After the revolutionary period of the fifties and sixties, society regrouped itself, as always, into High, Middle, and Low. But the new High group, unlike all its forerunners, did not act upon instinct but knew what was needed to safeguard its position. It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism OR INCORPORATION (ED).
Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called 'expansion of private property by collectivism. OR incorporation. ed' which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group (Collective OR corporation)instead of a mass of single individuals.
Individually, no member of the ruling Party owns anything, except petty personal belongings. Collectively, the Party owns everything because it controls everything and disposes of the products as it thinks fit. In the years following the Revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost unopposed, because the whole process was represented as an act of incorporation.
It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated.
Factories, mines, land, houses, transport -- everything had been taken away from themas individuals: and since these things were no longer individual private property, it followed that they must be public (Collective OR corporate ed.) property.
The new parties which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.
Four Ways To Fall From Power
But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power.
1.Either it is conquered from without,
2.It governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt,
3.It allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being (A new voting bloc- Catholics ad Cons)
4.It loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.
These causes do not operate singly and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.
After the middle of the present century, the first danger had in reality disappeared. Each of the three powers which now divide the world is in fact unconquerable and could only become conquerable through slow demographic changes which a government with wide powers can easily avert.
The second danger, also, is only a theoretical one. The masses never revolt of their own accord and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that
they are oppressed.
The recurrent economic crises of past times were totally unnecessary and are not now permitted to happen but other and equally large dislocations can and do happen without having political results, because there is no way in which discontent can become articulate.
As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare (see Chapter III), which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.
From the point of view of our present rulers, therefore, the only genuine dangers are the splitting-off of a new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people and the growth of liberalism and scepticism in their own ranks.
The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way.
Edited-From Orwell's 1984 'expansion of private property by incorporation.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catholics-and-cons/
After the revolutionary period of the fifties and sixties, society regrouped itself, as always, into High, Middle, and Low. But the new High group, unlike all its forerunners, did not act upon instinct but knew what was needed to safeguard its position. It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism OR INCORPORATION (ED).
Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called 'expansion of private property by collectivism. OR incorporation. ed' which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group (Collective OR corporation)instead of a mass of single individuals.
Individually, no member of the ruling Party owns anything, except petty personal belongings. Collectively, the Party owns everything because it controls everything and disposes of the products as it thinks fit. In the years following the Revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost unopposed, because the whole process was represented as an act of incorporation.
It had always been assumed that if the capitalist class were expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated.
Factories, mines, land, houses, transport -- everything had been taken away from themas individuals: and since these things were no longer individual private property, it followed that they must be public (Collective OR corporate ed.) property.
The new parties which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.
Four Ways To Fall From Power
But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power.
1.Either it is conquered from without,
2.It governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt,
3.It allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being (A new voting bloc- Catholics ad Cons)
4.It loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.
These causes do not operate singly and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.
After the middle of the present century, the first danger had in reality disappeared. Each of the three powers which now divide the world is in fact unconquerable and could only become conquerable through slow demographic changes which a government with wide powers can easily avert.
The second danger, also, is only a theoretical one. The masses never revolt of their own accord and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that
they are oppressed.
The recurrent economic crises of past times were totally unnecessary and are not now permitted to happen but other and equally large dislocations can and do happen without having political results, because there is no way in which discontent can become articulate.
As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare (see Chapter III), which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.
From the point of view of our present rulers, therefore, the only genuine dangers are the splitting-off of a new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people and the growth of liberalism and scepticism in their own ranks.
The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way.
Edited-From Orwell's 1984 'expansion of private property by incorporation.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catholics-and-cons/
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Felony conviction an asset rather than a liability.
With 30 million convicted felons and 60 million Catholics in the USA, is there a new voting bloc in the near future? Italy and many countries in the E.U. ex-convicts regularly run for local, regional and national offices. Many times they even get elected. Catholics believe in second, third, fourth, etc., etc., chances so Catholics and felons working together can bring freedom to the USA at last.
The felony conviction thus becomes an asset rather than a liability.
The felony conviction thus becomes an asset rather than a liability.
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