Today, the Book Club finishes with Chapter 1, “Ignorance Is Strength.” Please leave your thoughts and questions in the comments and I’ll do an omnibus reply later this week.
The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one of which is subsidiary and, so to speak, precautionary. The subsidiary reason is that the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising. But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party.
When you first read 1984, the mutability of the past sounds like sci-fi. Real humans would never believe such nonsense, would they? If you pay a little attention to evolving political dogmas, however, you will soon notice that all of your political opponents keep rewriting the past. The final frontier is attaining sufficient detachment to see that all politically influential sides keep rewriting the past, too. As Tetlock documents, noted political experts are among the grossest offenders; when they make demonstrably false predictions, their first line of defense is to misremember their own predictions!
It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one’s mind, or even one’s policy, is a confession of weakness.
Another popular variant: Confess the “error” of overestimating your opponents’ intelligence, morality, etc. “My enemies are even worse than I imagined. I was so wrong” is no confession of weakness.
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…
Some philosophers will claim that Orwellian doublethink is somehow logically impossible. And many armchair psychologists will pronounce is psychologically impossible. But in all honesty, I see no other way to explain the social world. Most notably: Unless doublethink existed, why would so many people express absurd beliefs with so much sincerity – yet stubbornly refuse to bet on them? Yes, perhaps they’re Oscar-worthy actors. The better story, though, is doublethink. For rhetorical purposes, political activists confidently believe nonsense; for behavioral purposes, however, they modestly defer to common sense.
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.
When Orwell was writing, the “became liberal and cowardly” mechanism might have seemed overblown. The subsequent collapse of colonialism, the Soviet Empire, the Shah, and so on confirm the depth of his insight.
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 general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
At least in the real world, this is overstated. We can tone this down, however, to: “The most extreme political fanatics tend to be very well-informed according to objective tests of political knowledge.”
The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism.
Hyperbole. Most obviously: As Orwell elsewhere explains, Oceania really did expropriate the capitalist class and establish a state-run economy, fulfilling two great socialist dreams in the process.
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
Here we reach the central secret. As we have seen. the mystique of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, depends upon doublethink. But deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists…
Winston Smith gets arrested before we can read another word of Chapter 1. Toward the end of the book, however, O’Brien maniacally completes the ellipses:
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power… The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
I struggle to pick my favorite Orwell passage, but this is definitely a top contender. I understand why people rarely admit to power-hunger; all Social Desirability Bias goes against it. “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power,” is the kind of thing people only say off the record. Nevertheless, I have to wonder: How can anyone overlook the immense role that power-hunger plays in the social world? I see it. Orwell saw it. How can anyone deny it?
READER COMMENTS
John Alcorn
Feb 1 2021 at 2:40pm
Re: Doublethink.
Distinguish two scenarios:
(a) Lucid insiders (The Party) deceive outsiders (the rest of society). I think Orwell underestimates this scenario.
Orwell focusses on the psychology of the sender in propaganda. He narrowly — and, I think, mistakenly — asserts: “firmness of purpose […] goes with complete honesty.” Sometimes honesty and resoluteness are conjoined, but often not. Liars can be hellbent. Honest persons often keep their heads down.
We should consider also the psychology of the addressee in propaganda. If addressees lack competence in lie-detection, then The Party doesn’t need doublethink. If, instead, addressees ‘know a lie when they see it,’ then Party members first must deceive themselves. This brings us to the doublethink scenario.
(b) Party members doublethink.
Orwell defines doublethink as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
Compare the standard psychological theory of cognitive dissonance. When a belief (cognition) strongly conflicts with a desire (motivation), unconscious adaptation often occurs, like a person who turns in sleep and finds a comfortable position. This mechanism explains psychological adaptation to Party ‘rewrites’ more plausibly than doublethink does. Orwell notwithstanding, it’s difficult consciously to believe X and not-X (contradictory cognitions) at the same time. It’s much easier for the unconscious to adapt a belief to a desire (or vice versa). Wishful thinking (to believe X because one hopes X is true), counter-wishful thinking (to believe Y because one fears Y is true), and sour grapes (to believe Z is bad because Z is out of reach) are commonplace mechanisms in political psychology.
Inner conformity is a strong mechanism in social psychology.
Taken together, sheer deception, keeping one’s head down, cognitive dissonance reduction, and inner conformity probably have much greater explanatory scope in totalitarian psychology than doublethink does.
Bryan Caplan writes: “all politically influential sides keep rewriting the past.” Why do they do so? Why does political competition take this form? To adapt a page from Michael Huemer, The History Police Are Messing With You.
Andronicus
Feb 2 2021 at 12:11am
Three questions on power-hunger:
1. How could democracy and term limits ever replace monarchy if “no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it?” Whether by the ballot or the slow decay of time, democractically elected politicans will eventually have to give up power.
2. What fraction of U.S. politicans do you believe are primarily motivated by power?
3. What fraction of those politicians would prefer a constant, moderate source of power to a few years in the spotlight? Say, President for 4 years vs. Supreme Court Justice for 40.
KevinDC
Feb 2 2021 at 7:35am
I think Orwell overstates the importance of this. People seem to put very little stock in how well off they are compared to the past, or to people of other nations. Libertarians love writing essays pointing out how even very low income people in America today have access to things far beyond the imagination of even the wealthiest from a few decades back, and have standards of living in many key areas which are significantly better than a much higher income person in Europe. Yet, nobody who is low income ever reads these essays and comes away feeling reassured. They care far more about how well off they are relative to their peers. It simply doesn’t matter to them that Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan would have envied their access to GPS devices and air conditioning and Novocain or that they have more living space than an upper income person in Belgium, when almost everyone around them has those things too.
An alternate strategy of the Party would be to simply ensure that everyone is equally immiserated. Since people seem to care far more about their relative well being compared to their neighbors, rather than their absolute well being, or relative well being compared to the past or people in distant countries, the proles might have been kept relatively content in their condition. Since the whole society is kept poor, there would be none of the envy and resentment we are so often told is destabilizing for a society.
robc
Feb 2 2021 at 8:35am
It is interesting that a 1940s era socialist is making the exact same argument as a 21st century libertarian.
That doesn’t make them right or you wrong, but it is interesting that both think that should be right. Since it doesn’t appear to have any connection to politics or economics, maybe it has to do with having a historical perspective. If you know history then you are more willing to accept the argument than those ignorant of history?
KevinDC
Feb 2 2021 at 10:04am
I am a bit under-coffeed at the moment, so I may be misunderstanding you, but I’m not sure I follow what you mean when you say “a 1940s era socialist is making the exact same argument as a 21st century libertarian.” I think you are saying that Orwell and I are making the same argument but…we’re not. My comment was expressing disagreement with Orwell. Specifically, Orwell is claiming that people need to believe they are better off than the people of the past and in other countries to keep them content. I’m saying this is wrong – people actually don’t care much at all about being better off than people in the past or people in other countries. People care far more about their relative well being compared to their peers, than their absolute well being from a historical perspective or relative well being to people in other countries.
robc
Feb 2 2021 at 10:21am
I am saying Orwell and these people are making the same arguments.
Although you may be a 21st century libertarian (I have no idea), I wasn’t talking about you, but the libertarians you referenced.
KevinDC
Feb 2 2021 at 11:19am
Ah, I see. That clears things up. Yes, Orwell thinks that believing oneself to be better off than those of the past, or in other nations, is important for keeping people content, or at least keeping them settled. And many modern libertarians seem to share this belief, given how commonly libertarians point out the various ways the (relatively) poor in America are drastically better of than even the very rich of a generation or two back.
Presumably, libertarians makes that argument under the assumption that if more people just realized how well off the (relatively) poor person in America is in both historic and international terms, then people would consider the American version of “poverty” to be less troublesome. And I agree with the facts of the libertarian case (that is, even the poor in America have a standard of living that would be considered inconceivably wealthy for virtually all of human history). But I also think that people just don’t care about that very much.
So, Orwell thought the Inner Party needed to lie about comparative historical and international levels of well being to keep people settled. Libertarians, by contrast, think we can make people happy by telling the truth about these things. But I think both are mistaken about how much people care about this. Most people care far more about their relative well being compared to those close to them, than their absolute well being from an international or historical perspective.
robc
Feb 2 2021 at 2:26pm
I agree with your analysis. However, this is just one more case where people think wrong. They should think like the libertarian suggests.
I just found it interesting that do radically different thought processes led to the same conclusion, that thinking (whether true or not) that life was improving should make people happy and content.
Henri Hein
Feb 2 2021 at 11:45pm
I thought there was some evidence to indicate parents care about their children having a better living standard than themselves.
How do you explain the large number of emigrants? The socialist countries had to put up barbed wire, walls, and sentry posts with orders to shoot escapees on sight. All to keep their own population inside. At least on the Berlin Wall, guards had to be posted in teams to prevent individual guards to jump to the other side. In China, the government were struggling with large numbers of internal migrations, with people disobeying rules against moving by seeking opportunities in other regions, or in cities. All this suggests to me that not only do they care that people are doing better elsewhere, they want some of it too.
KevinDC
Feb 3 2021 at 10:29am
There’s two similar but distinct claims here that I think are getting conflated, and which are important to separate. One, which you are raising, is whether knowing that you could be better off if you went somewhere else is something people care about and are motivated by – this, I agree with. But I was talking about something slightly different – my comment was about whether or not knowing that you are better off than the majority of other people far away from you makes you more likely to be content about your current condition, especially when other people close to you are visibly better off than you. This, I believe, is not true, or at least it’s not true for most people.
If you’re an absolutely poor person in Haiti, you would very likely care a lot about how much better off you and your family could be if you were able to come to America. But if you’re a relatively poor American, simply knowing how much better off you and your family are compared to a Haitian doesn’t do much for you. What matters most to you is how well off you and your family are compared to the people near you.
KevinDC
Feb 3 2021 at 1:01pm
You also mention intergenerational differences – parents are motivated to ensure their children are better off than they were. This I agree with, but like what I also wrote above, my comment was focused more on the other direction. Parents are motivated to ensure their children are better off than they were, but very few people find reassurance in simply being better off than their parents.
This is especially true when people are objectively better off than their parents in an absolute sense, but are in a lower relative condition to the one their parents held. Imagine a person who was raised by upper middle class parents, who in their adulthood ends up lower middle class. They are likely to find that bothersome. And if you give them a comprehensive list of all the ways a lower middle class person today is objectively better off than an upper middle class person was when they were growing up, and explain to them that they are in fact better off than their parents were, they simply won’t care. They will be far more interested in their relative well being compared to their present peers, not their absolute well being compared to their past parents.
Andronicus
Feb 2 2021 at 10:02am
Three questions on power-hunger:
1. How could democracy and term limits replace monarchy if “no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it?” Whether by the ballot or the slow decay of time, democractically elected politicans will eventually have to give up power.
2. What percentage of U.S. politicans do you believe are primarily motivated by power?
3. What fraction of those politicians would prefer a constant, moderate source of power to a few years in the spotlight? Say, President for 4 years vs. Supreme Court justice for 40.
Jason Ford
Feb 2 2021 at 12:43pm
This is on-topic, but I’ll need a sentence or two to get there.
In “Myth of the Rational Voter”, you identify four consistent biases of voters. Two are anti-market and anti-foreign. These biases could be driven by some extent by hunger for power. After all, the ability to limit deals other people can make and limit immigration can be seen as a wish to control others.
If someone proposes a course of action that imposes a cost on others without a clear goal, I wonder if we should just assume as a default that the person wants power. For example, if an organization proposes anti racism training where there’s no data whatsoever that the training will improve race relations, can we just assume that those who want the training just want to have power over others?
That assumption may not always be correct, but I think it’s an excellent default. What do you think?
Henri Hein
Feb 3 2021 at 12:04am
One thing that I always wondered about 1984 is whether the war was real or fabricated, Wag the Dog style. I am not the only one. The quoted sentence above points toward fabrication. If Oceania were really fighting a war, they would have used conscription, and most recruits would have been proles. If Oceania routinely and forcefully shipped significant number of ‘the proles’ off to actual fighting, they would be constantly conscious of the war.
Aisla Sinclair
Feb 3 2021 at 5:59am
After the Trump steal of November 3rd last year, I too took it upon myself to reread 1984.
Of course, here in the UK we had seen the concerted efforts of The Party( well actually, the Blob) to overturn the Brexit Referendum result of 2016.
And, following Trump’s unexpected and unwanted win in the US election soon after; clearly the Fix was in. Just needed subterfuge and deceit to mask it( as it were).
So thank you for the study of the book, so others like me can ” check our thinking” by choice( as opposed to being forced to) by Schwab, Blair, Soros and Cuomo’s.
Funny isn’t it? When Trump got on, all the Pussyhatters binge bought Attwooods ” Handmaid’s Tale”…apparently!
But now that 1984 is being read and ordered , clubs setting up like mine?….not a peep about any mass movement that reads the REAL book that reflects urgent dangers in real time .
You’d have thought that there’s some attempt to dissemble in one cause, and to snuff out in regard of the other….but hey, what would I know?
Comments are closed.