George Orwell is one of my favorite writers. His brilliant essay “Why I Write,” for the most part, mirrors my own motivations for running this blog, which represents a constantly updated map of my fascinating reading adventures. That’s why I faced a difficult task of choosing the featured image for one of my latest posts dedicated to the novel 1984: two eyes or three slogans. Eventually, I decided that the former would serve as a finishing touch for a series of three covers, while the latter would serve as a basis for my article about the three slogans:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Inscribed on the white face of the Ministry of Truth, these three great lies represent an induced state of perpetual cognitive dissonance — one of the many ways the Party controls citizens of Oceania. In the dystopian world of 1984, this form of “reality control” is called “doublethink.” George Orwell writes:
Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. 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 cancelled 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.
Complement these three great lies from 1984 with George Orwell on the four reasons why writers write.
I’m a freelance writer with 6 years of experience in SEO blogging and article publishing. I currently run two websites: MindfulSpot.com and OurReadingLife.com. While you’re here, get the latest updates by subscribing to my newsletter.
