slogans of the party (part I): IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

I hate the way people throw around the phrase "Big Brother is Watching You" like it's the only thing to come out of George Orwell's 1984.  While certainly significant, it's a bit like relying on the Cliff's Notes version of what's important.  Although I might repeat the phase myself in front of the security camera in the elevator, I understand that Orwell intended to warn people through his dystopic novel that Big Brother does a little bit more than voyeurism.  I intend to write a multiple-part series on themes from the novel.

There are three slogans of the totalitarian party outlined  in the book.  

WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

I'll start with the last one.

Big Brother and his party did more than watch.  They controlled people.  Manipulated every aspect of their waking life, and monitored their dreaming ones. The very thought of revolt or dissent was a crime punishable by death.  Although we're not quite to that point in the United States, it is increasingly difficult for citizens to contemplate civil disobedience.

The appendix of 1984 is a document outlining the principles of Newspeak.  Essentially, the goal of Newspeak is to eliminate all 'unnecessary' words from the English language, redacting volume by volume until the dictionary is whittled down to a a volume with barely 100 pages.  The ability to categorize things as "bad" will be eliminated by replacing it with "ungood".  The people wouldn't even be able to talk about something in a pejorative manner (and by the way, the word 'pejorative' would be gone, too).  

To borrow an idea from psychology, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the ability of our mind to think about things is dictated by our knowledge of the language we use to conceptualize our thinking.  All abstract ideas rest in our mind due to the ability to use language to define them.  So the ideas of justice, freedom, and liberty, are dependent on our ability to explain them through language.  They are intangibles that require a more in-depth vocabulary in order to understand, communicate, and advance our ideas. 

In Newspeak, these complex words are stripped from language, so the very idea of a revolution, or injustice, or oppression are struck from the collective dialoge.  People wouldn't be able to even think about being revolutionaries. 

Luckily for the powers that be, they don't have to spend hours of labor and generations of patience to force language out of style.  There are other methods of controlling people that render them equally incapable of thinking about a revolution.  

Filling people's days with slavery to a corporate state, to consumerism, and a meaningless media machine that does little more than act as a megaphone for the oppressors.  That is how they have stripped people's abilities to think about true democracy.  To revolt against the slavery.  To rise above the squalor of everyday drivel to engage in the things that truly count.

When they try to flood the world with truncated words and meaningless garbage, fill your mind with your own lexicon.  Don't let them dictate your thoughts.

LANGUAGE IS STRENGTH.