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In George Orwell's best-selling novel "1984" Orwell describes a world in which the government controls the minds of the people with the use of two things called newspeak and double-think. Double-think works like this: the government defines reality, if the government says you are at war with Eurasia, you have always been at war with Eurasia, then obviously you have always been at war with Eurasia. This can be changed to any country's name at any later time and the statement will still be true. When your memories and logic set in to correct this obvious error your mind superimposes the governments words over your own thoughts. So its like "truthiness" only worse. Now, the reason you would do this to yourself is that cultures define insanity. If everyone but you is on LSD, and this is the way the society operates you are the one who is by definition insane. Sadly, that part is not fiction. Since double-think was the standard of logic in this society anyone who did not use double-think was insane. Since no one wanted to be insane they forced themselves to double-think. Newspeak was the government approved language and was used for all formal business, news, and paper-work. More on newspeak in my next article.
Let's take a look at how the government in the USA tells us how to handle money. We currently follow keynesian theory in our economic practices which states that money spent on government programs is not money lost to the people, but is rather a benefit to the people. The reasoning behind this is that the value from the lost money comes back to the people through the government. One part of this theory states that you must be spending in order to supply jobs, and enrich the economy. Have you heard this before? This is what the government says we should do to prosper. Now lets all apply a little bit of reason.
First off, modern government is made up of a series of politicians. When was the last time money in the average politicians pocket meant a benifit that sincerely helped you? For keynesian theory to be so, the majority of politicians must be trustworthy... otherwise this series of politicians which we call government should be considered a liability. In order to accept keynesian theory as true, we must accept that politicians only have our needs at heart, and no corrupt desires. The fact that this theory, is the most widely college-taught and accepted theory in american economics indicates that because the professor, the anchor or the politician says it is true, than it is true regardless of reason. That my friend is double-think in action in our modern world, and I'm just getting started.
Now lets address how the other part of this theory has been applied. Please take a moment, and look around your apartment, how many things do you own, that you do not actually use? Do these things provide any of your basic needs? (i.e. shelter, water, food, communication, preparedness) Don't feel too bad, I own a unicycle with a flat tire that I have never used. How does this help us? Why do we do this? In my article Reason to Desire I discuss how modern marketing works. The primary idea is that our sub-concious is targeted, and we are trained through the media and peer pressure to listen and yield to the irrational within us over the rationality of our own mind. Ironically this mass conformity was supposed to according to Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's niece, strengthen the mind so that it would be more likely to act with responsibility. Everytime we fall for these tactics we are double-thinking in an even more elaborate way than Orwell described. Rather than having to make any effort to override our minds rationality our sub-concious desires are falsely addressed in such a manner that it is only human to ignore any reason that might prevent us from obtaining our empty material prize.
The next thing we must look at is has all of this consumerism really brought prosperity? Our country is up to our eyeballs in debt. Most of us owe money on things we supposedly own. Heres a hint, if you owe money on it, do you really own it? So obviously this trend is not benefiting the people, it is not making our way of life better... instead we are spending money we don't have for things we don't need to impress people that often we don't like. Will somebody explain this to me? So if this does not benefit us, who does this benefit? Obviously the CEO's, and the government. Interestingly enough these are the people that most promote the idea of people spending like madmen to supposedly make the economy healthy. Shouldn't we only measure the health of an economy by the quality of life of its citizens? Yes, we have a lot more than most countries, but we also owe a lot more than most countries. Now both corporations and government have their place. Government is supposed to defend life, liberty, and property. The ability to start a corporation is supposed to enable us to start a business with minimal risk so that we may not only provide for our family better, but increase prosperity in this country.
Now that I've touched a little bit on double-think within our society, I hope you can start to look and notice its huge roll in our everyday lives. I hope you will learn to over-ride this dangerous way of acting in your own life. For those of you who are already aware of these things, and are doing something about it, keep it up, I hope this has been an encouragement for you. I hope this article can be a useful resource. Thankyou for reading. If you enjoyed this or benefited from it you can click here to go to part II, Modern Newspeak.
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Great sounds like you can do a better job at government than the present moron is doing. Give us more. The Gov't as far as I can see will screw us all and never really give a serious care to those of us who really do need help. Like I tell my students they collect taxes all your life and when you leave this universe hell they still tax the hell out of you. My solution will be to have my body creamated and the ashes sent to the IRS and let them handle my affairs.
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Posted by norm4u2
on 2008-07-20 04:40:18
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Great sounds like you can do a better job at government than the present moron is doing. Give us more. The Gov't as far as I can see will screw us all and never really give a serious care to those of us who really do need help. Like I tell my students they collect taxes all your life and when you leave this universe hell they still tax the hell out of you. My solution will be to have my body creamated and the ashes sent to the IRS and let them handle my affairs.
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Posted by norm4u2
on 2008-07-20 04:40:20
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| Views: 177
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