Psychological Manipulation
The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the minds capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizens room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavioreverywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, that the authorities are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members. The Party then channels peoples pent-up frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Partys political enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.
SparkNotes: 1984: Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Seems appropriate? We act like we are so rudderless in dealing with this today, we need only to look to the past. R.I.P. George Orwell
Doublethink
The idea of doublethink emerges as an important consequence of the Partys massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation. Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in ones mind at the same time. As the Partys mind-control techniques break down an individuals capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told. At the Hate Week rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. In the same way, people are able to accept the Party ministries names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Partys operations of torture and punishment.
The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the minds capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizens room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavioreverywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, that the authorities are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members. The Party then channels peoples pent-up frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Partys political enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.
SparkNotes: 1984: Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Seems appropriate? We act like we are so rudderless in dealing with this today, we need only to look to the past. R.I.P. George Orwell
Doublethink
The idea of doublethink emerges as an important consequence of the Partys massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation. Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in ones mind at the same time. As the Partys mind-control techniques break down an individuals capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told. At the Hate Week rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. In the same way, people are able to accept the Party ministries names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Partys operations of torture and punishment.
