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+--- Thread: Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed (/showthread.php?tid=6745)
- Sir O - 07-04-2003
1984 by George Orwell is the most prophetic book of the 20th century. Orwell's concepts of Newspeak and Prolefeed are indispensable to an understanding of the development of American culture during the latter half of the last century and the first part of this one. A thorough knowledge of Newspeak, as it has been implemented in America, is the best means by which one can avoid an immense quagmire of faulty thinking.
* Newspeak
The effect of Newspeak is not to extend but to diminish the range of thought and to make all other modes of thought impossible, so that an idea divergent from the prevalent philosophy will be literally unthinkable.
This is done partly by stripping undesirable words of unorthodox meanings. For example: The word "anarchy" still exists but it can only be understood as meaning a completely lawless and chaotic state of nihilistic destruction. It cannot be used in its old sense of "a social condition from which the institutionalized use of coercive aggression is absent" since politically such a condition no longer exists even as a concept, and is therefore nameless.
Another example is "inflation." When people today refer to inflation, they do not mean an increase in the quantity of money substitutes, but the general rise in prices and wages which is the inevitable CONSEQUENCE of that increase. This semantic innovation is by no means harmless. First of all there is no longer any term available to signify what "inflation" used to signify. It is impossible to fight an evil which you cannot name. You no longer have the opportunity to resort to a terminology accepted and understood by the public when you want to describe a financial policy you are opposed to. You must enter into a detailed analysis and description of this policy with full particulars and minute accounts whenever you want to refer to it, and you must repeat this bothersome procedure in every sentence in which you deal with this subject. Second, those who wish to fight inflation are diverted in their struggle away from the fundamental nature of inflation and are forced to direct their attentions to its consequences. They end up flailing at the symptoms rather than eliminating the cause. Merely snipping at the leaves of the weed rather than hacking at the root.
An especially corrupting abuse of language can be seen in the ambiguous use of the words "think" and "feel." This use equivocates cognitive assessment with emotional response, and leaves the victim unable to discriminate between his thoughts and his emotions.
The special function of Newspeak words is to destroy meaning. In Newspeak it is seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it IS heretical; beyond that point the required words are nonexistent. It would be possible to say, "government is unnecessary," but this statement could not be sustained by a comprehensible argument, because the requisite words (such as "anarchy") are not meaningfully available. An example of a phrase designed to destroy meaning is in this suggestion, made by a proponent of international trade barriers: "A more accurate name than the persuasive label 'free trade'--because who can be opposed to freedom?--as 'deregulated international commerce.'" If accepted, his proposal, that his adversaries use this mouthful of multi-syllabic obfuscation as the name of their political goal, would be the first step toward destruction of the concept "free" in the minds of his opponents. And in the minds of their audience.
Nowhere is this semantic fraud more blatant than in the government's dishonest descriptions of its own activities, in which words are used merely as tools to manipulate the social environment.
For example: In 1993, Congress required the Dept. of Health and Human Services to examine the feasibility of shifting some biological weapons research from the Army to the National Institutes of Health. Thus, under the direction of the Dept. of Health, the National Institutes of Health will now be engaged in germ warfare. Orwell was right--"War is Peace" or, more appropriately, "Health is Death."
Perhaps the most long-lasting and widespread manifestation of the government's use of another of Big Brother's slogans ("Freedom is Slavery") is the "selective service."
In Newspeak, certain words are deliberately constructed for political purposes--words which are intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them and to make it impossible for him to hold any contrary attitude. This is the explicit goal of the "Politically Correct" movement.
What a Newspeak user acquires is an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped "false gods." He did not need to know what these gods were, and probably the less he knew about them the better for his own orthodoxy. This sort of orthodoxy was explicitly fostered during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, when accusations of "communist!" were thrown around indiscriminately while no one, neither the accusers nor the accused, had any idea of what a communist is. Nor did they dare ask publicly, for fear of being labeled a communist merely for making the inquiry.
Thomas Szasz coined the very useful word "semanticide" to designate the murder of language. Semanticide is the ultimate goal of Newspeak.
Many words, such as "freedom," "patriotism," "liberty," etc. have been appropriated by wanna-be tyrants (especially by Right-wing political Conservatives) who use those words to designate the opposite of their historical (and cognitively correct) meanings, thus leaving the majority of people with no way to distinguish libertarians from our totalitarian enemies. Conservative zealots claiming to speak in the name of libertarianism have fomented a dangerous agenda that is corrupting our most cherished ideals and deceiving others about our fundamental principles.
Because of this semantic corruption, you will frequently hear the claim that libertarianism has not been defined. Remember this: the fact that you have encountered some ignorant and/or dishonest people does not absolve you from determining the truth.
The only way I can see to combat this dismal situation is to attack it not on its surface, by making futile attempts to persuade people of the correct definitions of those critical words, but at its roots, by renouncing epistemological relativism and asserting the idea that DEFINITIONS ARE NOT ARBITRARY. Unless your audience realizes this, any argument you engage in will be merely a verbal battle of wits with your adversary--the outcome dependent on who can make the most clever use of phrases that are meaningless in the minds of the audience.
The result of Newspeak is boastful inarticulateness on the part of those who haven't anything to say, and helplessness on the part of those who have. "Those who cannot carry a train of consequences in their heads; nor weigh exactly the preponderancy of contrary proofs and testimonies may be easily misled to assent to positions that are not probable." ... John Locke
People who can't analyze and dissect their language cannot separate meaning from words and thus cannot perceive an existence separate from the words used to describe it. For those people, the Law of Identity is quite literally meaningless. After they have been told enough lies, they may just abandon what feeble and implicit hold they ever had on the Law of Identity. When they end up as schizophrenics you can do anything you want with them, EXCEPT make them technologically competent.
Freedom of the mind requires not only the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities.
* Brainwashing
These are the elements of brainwashing. At least some of them are used, in greater or lesser intensity, by all authoritarian organizations, and by anyone attempting to assert psychological dominance.
Get your victim at your mercy.
Take away his ordinary inputs--his accustomed environment. Isolate him and deprive him of social support, to develop an intense concern for himself.
Deprive him of all opportunities for self-expression.
Control his perceptions, with darkness or bright light, or by creating a barren environment and restricting movement, to fix the victim's attention on his predicament and to eliminate distractions. Inundate him with strong and novel sensory experiences.
Subject him to physical degradation, by prevention of personal hygiene and imposing various other humiliations, so as to reduce the victim to concern with "animal values."
Induce debilitation and exhaustion, by semi-starvation, exposure, sleep deprivation and induced illness, so as to weaken the victim's physical and mental ability to resist.
Demonstrate omnipotence, to suggest the futility of resistance. This is carried out by such techniques as pretending to take cooperation for granted or demonstrating complete control over the victim's fate.
Issue threats, to cultivate anxiety, dread and despair.
Enforce trivial demands, to develop a habit of compliance.
Perform occasional indulgences, such as unpredictable favors and unexpected kindness, to provide motivation for compliance.
* Prolefeed
One element of brainwashing, "control of perceptions," gives rise to the phenomenon of "Prolefeed." Prolefeed augments Newspeak, in that its effect is to render people less able to make rationally-based value judgments. In doing so, it leaves them more receptive to judgments imposed on them by authority figures. Responsibility for the implementation of Newspeak must rest mainly with the government, and those who worship it, but Prolefeed is the product of the advertising industry of America. Corporate advertising in America is likely the largest single psychology project ever undertaken by the human race, yet its stunning psychological impact remains mostly ignored by mainstream psychologists. (But not completely ignored: the February 2001 issue of Scientific American magazine contains an essay "The Science of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini, in which he presents an analysis of the techniques used to influence people's judgments.)
There is nothing unethical in attempting to induce people to purchase your products, but the techniques the advertising industry has used in pursuing this goal have had unforeseen results which are psychologically and intellectually devastating. Advertising, both commercial and political, has resulted in a merciless distortion of authentic human needs and desires. The victims learn to substitute what they are told to want for what are in fact their objective needs. By the time they reach adulthood, their authentic feelings are so well buried that they have only the vaguest sense that "something" is missing from their spiritual life. Having ignored their genuine needs for so long, their souls are empty, but the emptiness is continually denied. It is far easier, in the short run, to listen to the commercials, which are always beckoning, always promising, always assuring that this time, with this product or this candidate, it will be possible to fulfill the heart's desire, than to take the initiative of making difficult personal judgments.
Prolefeed is a format of radio and TV programming whose result is intellectually debilitating. It is a format of information presentation which, by inducing detrimental psycho-epistemological programming and deprogramming, results in severe inhibition of cognitive efficiency. The cognitive debilitation results, in part, from continuous exposure to unceasing repetition of phrases or melodies which contain just enough cognitive content to possess a minimum of intelligible meaning, thereby distracting the mind from self-generated activity, without giving the mind sufficient content for significant externally-induced activity. Observe, please, that it is not the CONTENT of the input that induces the debility, but the FORMAT of its presentation.
Consider a common phenomenon: there is a radio playing in the background at the place you are working. In order to concentrate on your work you "tune out" the radio--you make an alteration in your mental functioning which renders your conscious mind unaware of the sounds of the radio. Since your ears (unlike your eyes which can be physically closed to sensory input) are continually feeding signals into the brain, all the sound that enters the ears is transmitted into the brain. Thus there is a part of your mind that is always aware of this sound. The only way you can "tune out" the background noise is to erect a barrier between your conscious mind and that area of the subconscious mind that receives input from your ears, a barrier that prevents the awareness from getting through. The psycho-epistemological programming that erects these barriers is one of the most pernicious aspects of Prolefeed. Not just because it produces the psychological self-alienation of a divided mind, but because it goes further by inflicting a profound impairment of judgment, an impairment resulting from the conflict of the subconsciously acquired prolefeed information with consciously derived value-decisions.
"You turn on the radio; if you have any soul, you go crazy." ... Richard Feynman
Frequent instantaneous shifts of subject matter--e.g., interrupting programs with commercial messages--inhibit the mental function of integration and diminish the attention span of the victim, thus promoting schizophrenia. Such interruptions immediately following an information presentation can inhibit the victim from consciously evaluating the information. Thus he will be more likely to accept it subconsciously as truth, and will be left in a condition wherein the ideas in his mind have not been critically examined. Without firm awareness of its truth value, he will experience a nebulous state of uncertainty regarding his knowledge.
The story line of a TV program is interrupted every several minutes by commercials. This breaks the viewer's concentration on a single subject and, over a long period of TV viewing, instills a habit of jumping from idea to idea. How many children who are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder merely have a habit caused by this on/off of TV viewing? With this habit from TV already formed before children ever go to school, is it any wonder they can't concentrate for any length of time?
Consider The Orienting Response, an automatic subconscious visual/auditory/somatic reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats. In this phenomenon, the brain focuses its attention on gathering more information while the rest of the body quiets down. The simple formal features of television - cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises - activate the Orienting Response, thereby keeping attention focused on the screen. In ads, action sequences and music videos, formal features often occur at a rate of one or more per second, thus keeping the Orienting Response continuously activated. Thus it is the form, not the content, of television that has a significant effect on the subconscious mind.
We're bombarded with advertising, a steady chattering noise in our eyes and ears. So we learn to tune it out. In order to function, we have to make ourselves deliberately blind and deaf to a part of our environment. The advertisers know that we do this, so they increase the size, color, intensity, volume, and repetitions of their ads. They give us more, better, and different ads. And we try even harder to tune them out. Commercials are designed to catch your attention and instill remembrance, an increasingly difficult process because its effects dampen its effectiveness. The din eventually gets painful because it is cumulative. People unable to hear one another speak raise their voices--which encourages their neighbors, who can't hear themselves speak, to shout--which makes their neighbors, who can't hear themselves shout, scream. Eventually we are so tuned out that we can no longer see the sky, the stars, the souls of our lovers, and the reality of the world we live in.
Such programming causes severe value hierarchy distortions. It does this by presenting mundane things as having supreme importance. Consider an advertisement showing a man about to bite into a hamburger. His facial expression clearly and blatantly portrays the idea that this hamburger is the greatest thing ever to enter his life. One wonders how he contemplates his wife when he goes home from work at night. After he has displayed such an attitude toward a hamburger, what could he have left to display toward her?
Being continually bombarded with the notion that each product--whether it be a hamburger, chewing gum, the latest model Chevy, or a political candidate--is a sine qua non of the utmost value and importance, is a process that severely distorts, and even destroys, any rational value hierarchy and leaves the victim in a judgmental vacuum, lacking a sensible means to evaluate the phenomena which are IN FACT important to his life.
Years of value-depravation crush all emotions, all hope, leaving the victims with eyes that have stopped seeing, ears that have stopped hearing, and souls that have stopped living a long time ago. It is truly the twilight of the gods.
It must be strenuously emphasized that people are, at least in part, their own censors, and thus are themselves responsible for much of the devastation I describe. They refuse to buy newspapers or watch TV shows that challenge them to think or that upset their prejudices, so they get fed this dreadful pap. The goddamn TV does, after all, have an on-off switch!
It is no mere coincidence that the rise of popular radio and TV programming in the 1950s and its widespread availability (the transistor was invented in 1948) immediately preceeded the plunge of the SAT scores of American high-school students from 1963 onward.
Prolefeed has had a devastating effect on American society. Mammoth quantities of brutally superficial distractions bombard and fill the minds of today's youth, resulting all too often in a complete inability to express anything even remotely seeming to ensue from a rational thought process. Children grow up in an environment of commercial and political lies and manipulations that is tantamount to cultural child abuse. Every time an official lie is told it teaches young people not to trust social institutions. Thus when something like the AIDS epidemic comes, they will ignore admonitions to protect themselves.
Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children. Psychological stress sculpts the brain to exhibit various antisocial, though adaptive, behaviors. Whether it comes in the form of physical, emotional or sexual traumas or through exposure to violence, famine or pestilence, stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently wire a young, growing brain to cope with a malevolent world. Once these key brain alterations occur, there may be no going back. Throughout this chain of events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation.
But while you are contemplating lugubriously the weltanschauung of Orwell's book, keep this in mind: the world Orwell depicts can have only a limited actualization. For this reason: the men in the white coats KNOW what is real. They HAVE to know. Without those men, there could be no technological civilization--there would be only barbarism. NO society rises above barbarism except by recognition of the Facts of Reality by someone who is instrumental in the conduct of society. This is why no matter what the State decrees, someone HAS to know reality: the scientists who conceive material wealth; the engineers who translate those conceptions into functioning technology; the mechanics who maintain this technology. These people HAVE to be in cognitive contact with objective reality. That cognitive contact is an unconditional prerequisite to the existence of a technological civilization, and it is a continual limitation on government omnipotence.
- Kid Afrika - 07-04-2003
going for longest post ever?
- onehung - 07-04-2003
Yay.
like anyone will read that.
- Gooch - 07-04-2003
Jays, comment?
- Kim - 07-04-2003
Ok...whatever... :27:
- The Jays - 07-04-2003
.... so did Orwell write that or did you?
- Sir O - 07-04-2003
How could Orwell have written that? He's been dead for 53 years.
But no, I didn't either.
A Guide to the Philosophy of Objectivism
- IrishAlkey - 07-04-2003
Plagiarist.
- The Sleeper - 07-04-2003
post one of your college papers and show this bitch up!
- Sir O - 07-04-2003
Quote:In order to promote the maximum dissemination of the ideas, I have decided to place all my writings into the Public Domain. I grant permission to anyone to use my writings, or any parts of them, in any way that may help to further the spread of reason and freedom in our society.
- Galt - 07-04-2003
Hey, I've got an idea:
How's about you stop stealing my fucking Ayn Rand schtick, K?
- IrishAlkey - 07-04-2003
The Sleeper Wrote:post one of your college papers and show this bitch up!The sounds of neurons colliding would outshine the fireworks tonight.
- Sir O - 07-04-2003
But this is about Orwell, not Rand...
- Galt - 07-04-2003
OBJECTIVISM = RAND, CUNTRAG
- The Sleeper - 07-04-2003
HOW ABOUT YOU BOTH STOP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS AND MAKING ME FEEL INSECURE ABOUT MY ILLETARACY!!
- Galt - 07-04-2003
You want me to tell you what happened in the Harry Potter books so you can pretend?
- The Sleeper - 07-04-2003
Harry Potter is a little fruitcake
- Sir O - 07-04-2003
And I know this. So this was taken from a site about Objectivism, big deal. You will find no mention of Rand or Objectivism in the passage I posted. I just thought it was relevant...
- IrishAlkey - 07-04-2003
That's a "yes".
- GonzoStyle - 07-04-2003
Quote:Harry Potter is a little fruitcake
I miss fbdling :29: