Where did this nonsense "'Liberty' means 'license'; 'permission'" come from?
Oh, right- from the world's biggest enemy of liberty: government. Particularly from the military's intentional misuse of the word.
It's the same as the enemies of liberty changing the peaceful, voluntary nature of "anarchy" and making it mean (in brainwashed minds, anyway) "death and destruction".
If "they" can fool you into not understanding what a word means, they won't have to worry about what you think- because they will have gotten inside your head to steer your thoughts. You'll not be able to think outside the definition they approved. Or, it will be much harder and you'll need to come up with other words where "old" ones were perfectly fine.
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This is what Newspeak's all about - to keep you thinking only Goodthink. The more they mess up the meanings of words in people's heads, the less possible Oldthink becomes. Then, sooner or later, Oldthink becomes Crimethink. Reactionary holdouts will be arrested and their reputations ruined.
ReplyDeleteThe moral of this story: Don't let the bastards tell you how to think, much less what to think.
Yes, and you need "blackwhite" which is explained like this: blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever "truth" the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as "...loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary."
ReplyDeleteAnd this is very scary because I see this happening all over in the U.S. now.
Wish I knew why half of my comments don't go where I intended them to go...
DeleteTo continue with the George Orwell novel, 1984, today most people are under the influence of doublethink.
ReplyDeletedoublethink - Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An excellent example of doublethink in modern society is the war on drugs. If you ask people their opinion on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, most people would agree that it was a complete failure. People agree that it only caused more crime, it made gangsters rich, it corrupted politicians, and most importantly ... it didn't keep people from drinking.
Yet, we have almost the exact same situation today with war on drugs, yet most people think that our modern prohibition is a good idea ... and more than that, they believe that anybody that thinks that the war on drugs isn't a good idea must be completely out of their minds. In order for a person to be effective at doublethink, they must master the art of crimestop. (http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html)
crimestop - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity." (Ingsoc is English Socialism.)
And, even as demonstrated in your last sentence, many people are unable to distinguish between "the US" and America. They don't even think about it, but use the terms interchangeably. That's like you being "The human, D. M.", but me pretending your name is "The Human" rather than "D.M.". It's really messed up.
ReplyDelete