I think that “doublethink” even exists INSIDE OF NATURAL INSTINCT!
(ex: rabbit eats her babies & loves them too.)
I think that “doublethink” is a form of existential defect which wasn’t fully “naturally selected” out of anything.
it is commonly called political correctness
-Imp
Making what is incorrect, appear to be correct.
Brushing their teeth for a bright white smile as the bullshit flies out of their mouths. 
There is no doubt in my mind that the ‘thought police’ would not have any problem with your statement of bunny rabbits. …eats her babies and loves them too. It appears to be doublethink but more closely examinied, I am not convinced that it is. We dont know that bunnies actually ‘love’ there children( whatever love may mean precicesly) there are more things going on aswell that we dont quite know either. Its this moment of lack of knowledge that allows us (important because I have no Idea what bunnies actually think… But I know that your statement allows me to temporarly believe that it is…) to start to move into doublethink. That may allow for us to hold too contradictory things in mind simultaneously. Further create as you two have said policy on it aswell political correctness…
Doublethink is real, I would say even dangerous. I do not see any reason to believe its instinct.
FFWD Magazine David Bright.
Doublethink and doublespeak is alive and well. Take today’s ‘terror plot raid’ in Birmingham:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6315989.stm
This morning, John Reid (the Home Secretary, the minister with primary responsibility for domestic security) was talking of a serious plot to kidnap a soldier returning from service in Iraq. This afternoon he asked the press to show ‘restraint and responsibility’ in their reporting.
Now, none of the nine people have even been charged with a crime as yet, let alone been to court and had their guilt proven, yet the Home Secretary was talking as though it was all confirmed. Given that over 1200 people have been arrested under suspicion of terrorism since 2001 but only 30 have been convicted, it is extremely presumptuous for the Home Secretary to act as though these 9 people are guilty. It is pure doublespeak for him to be telling the press to show restraint and responsibility when he’s feeding them information that encourages them to do the exact opposite.
1984 is a fictional book. thanks
It’s a realist dystopian satire. Calling it ‘fiction’ is
a) overly simple
b) ignorant
c) a useless attempt at discrediting it
JFK is a fictional movie. So is Back to the Future. Can you see how one is somewhat more important to contemporary political discussion than the other?
Damn those Libyan Terrorists!!! 
I come back to my thread after so many months, and am surprised. Some good replies. Wait, it’s SIATD, no surprise.
Wonderful.
No.
You’d be the first to read this thread that didn’t…
Well, the present political climate (and the subsequent discussion) revolves around what is popularly called ‘the politics of fear’, more colloquially known as ‘the war on terror’. The same was true at the time that JFK was shot, the only difference being ‘islamism’ substituted for ‘communism’ and ‘arabs’ for ‘russians’. Back to the Future is a cinematic version of Deleuzian philosophy, and had little or nothing to do with the ‘war on terror’. I doubt that Zemeckis had read Deleuze, but that’s not in the slightest bit important.
Hello All,
I am new to the board and was delighted to see you were talking about one of my favorite subjects- Doublethink.
IMHO doublethink is a self-defence mechanism for the rational mind. I see it everyday at work. I work for an automotive supplier and witness doublethink daily.
I would have to say that it is an aquired skill, as Orwell seemed to suggest, as opposed to instinct though. Also, as rabbits don’t seem to be very rational, I wouldn’t think they need such a defence mechanism.
Thanks for allowing me to participate!
N
And so everything in it must be false?
1984 has chocolate, gin and sex in it. Are you saying they don’t exist because they’re mentioned in a piece of fiction?
Let’s talk about the main differences between hypocracy and doublethink.
What are your thoughts there, N?
Obviously on the state/1984 style double think imposed on society from above I’m with SAID - Has anyone even been tried for that horrific “liquid explosive threat” last year - no - well besides us the travelling public of course!!
A more interesting question is that of self deception (or “bad faith” as he terms it) and its the most un-trendy JP Satrre who has the best line in my opinion.
Sartre’s view* is close to that expressed by nosophist above (welcome bud!) in that active self deception is sometimes an absolute need for getting by in life.
We must know we know things at one level that we claim not to know at another. Or, at any rate, its useful to be able to tell some little lies to yourself.
“with self-deception, deceiver and deceived are one. As deceiver, I’m must know the truth that is hidden from me as deceived.” (from Being and Nothingness)
Sartre refuses to lean on the “crutch” of the sub consciousness.
That knowledge would be “hidden” away and denied to us in some way. (Other potential “crutches” and “partitions” of information from self are explored very well at the stanford reference below)
But he defines it as “meta-stable” eg the minute you see yourself as a human “acting as a waiter” the moment you say oh look at me “pretending to be a waiter” - you know you are a “you” a real rounded human catching yourself “pretending” -Sartre’s cogito
I doubt there fore I am!
some very good stuff on the Stanford worth a read I’d say:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-deception/
kp
- well in Being and Nothingness but not, unfortunately, sustained in Existentialism is a Humanism where “bad faith” is judged and found wanting or wrong in some way - to me this ethical judgement on bad faith as being actually “bad” was quite a retreat for JPS.
K, I’ve been considering your post for a while now…
Swimming through a blinding sea of infinite options, the conscious mind consists of the most indoctrinated and habitual portions of this flowing force which is infinite. But only tiny percentages of this infinity can be digested and reduced down to simple lower concepts within a single persective.
On the other hand,
the Ghurnin believe that all forms of thought are internally created out of the elemental bits which the conscious muslces & tubes have access too, via the inner gates to various dimensions and sources of raw elemental energy/force. Each elemental bit is actually a corpse, a fragment of a previous form. The mind feeds, and then gives birth to thought. The thought, in turn, becomes a servant of the mind, much like a diety constructing a mass of servitors.
They did not believe in a “sub-conscious”, par se, so much as they believed in a swell of un-addressed resource, and deep autocratic parts.
So such a personality is not an issue of double-think, but instead, it is an issue of: “I can only think about and master a very small portion of what I have inside of me and around me.”
Remember how a baby, at first, cannot walk.
Well, many parts of mental potential are still left un-developed, un-addressed, lame and nearly motionless.
Dan, how insightful, it seems almost certain that double thought is necessary process of the mind as an process by which the mind will sort and prioritise thoughts/facts into a position where a decision can be made, if certainly all the posibilities were considered, infinate as they are we would not be able to move forward at all. I can accept a many number of things to be true a such but to varying degrees and at each time one idea will be considered more true than another. This is how propoganda can work so well limit the facts to a population and then you can come out with any number of “realities” that you wish. Also i have wondered wether the sub-concious mind is undeveloped pre-thoughts/ideas that have yet to come to the for-front, and can intuition be catorgorised as such, is it in fact one and the same?
Yeah all I can add is to applaud from the sidelines - great post Dan~ and Lynda Ann’s “line†would be mine also and I think it may have been what Sartre was hinting at/coming to.
Self-deception/bad faith is not a moral or ethical judgement call it’s a human necessity.
I don’t know if anyone has caught the latest self consciously “philosophical” and “psychological” film Grony’s Science of sleep
Any way very enjoyable if a bit intense at times.
(frederica.com/writings/the-s … sleep.html)
There’s one great bit where our hero projects up a 2 very polite people walking towards each other in the street. Both at the same time try to anticipate each other movements (I’m sure this is robbed from some where else too!) and politely make way.
Problem is (its happened to most of us!) that both move the same way then quickly switch to try and compensate and back and forth. In this way a pair of ideal mathematically polite robots would lock into a loop
(Note too this is actually a very finite system doesn’t need the infinities Dan~ was speaking off)
However there is some uniquely human short circuit (Zizek term but I like it!) - maybe to do with self deception or some similar loop of the mind - that means in the real situation one of us stops briefly or switches so we can pass politely looking at our feet and thinking of the other’s ass (possibly!)
I’d not go so far as to call it “self-deception”, no matter how untrue I am or always will be… Instead, I call it “self-control”…
What I constantly see around me, what I hear, it brainwashes me. And then, I think: “I am a human. I am male. I am 22 years old.” etc. And to me, these are “truth”, via belief… but at the same time, each of these concepts is a stereotypical construct… That’s all… A tiny box and a label, which allows the mind to prioritize things and assign things more quickly.
A brain is far more efficient than a computer AI, because the brain cuts so many corners. The brain constantly makes large generalizations, imperfect assumptions, and fantasizes between its own gaps.
Most of my “knowledge”, and even my “instinct” is a generalization. It’s a ruff guess. And it does not matter how “true” it is. Instead, how it effects me – is what matters most. Literalness can wait, all I need is enough clues to tell me how to control, or atleast predict a “thing”/“object”. Once I’ve systemized it, I can preemptively avoid it. Imagine long ago, what humans had systemized, when living with the more dangerous old beasts. All the other animals were predictable. Survival was a game of chess. Humans had foresight. Predicting more than one of the next moves, whilst the animals remained almost purely reactive, and “machine-like”.