The Rise of DoubleThink
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it…” - George Orwell, 1984
2020 is a term used to describe normal visual acuity, allowing a person to have clarity or sharpness of vision.
Unfortunately, the year 2020 has provided the masses with the murkiest, blurriest vision of the world we’ve seen in the modern world.
Ideology has taken precedence over truth. Evidence be damned, as feelings matter more than facts.
Ideology allows for contradictory ideas to flourish and fester into a big, steaming pile of illogical excrement.
As someone who was raised in a left-wing household, I have become particularly troubled with the rise of extreme doublethink prevalent within the ranks of my liberal comrades.
Doublethink is the window into brainwashing. It exposes a person’s thought process for being guided by forces outside of themselves, as certain blatant contradictions could only be arrived at through persistent nudging on the part of the media, schools, and government officials.
Going through the active process of logical deduction/induction, a person must resolve a contradiction in order to have a viewpoint that is consistent and uses sound reasoning.
In an instant gratification culture built on hot takes, surface-level interaction, and artificially-induced echo chambers, most of society takes the pre-packaged way out.
We find a source of information we find to be “authoritative”, something that feels true and uses our own language to reinforce our preconceived notions.
To be clear, it’s called a "preconceived notion" because you didn’t conceive of it yourself.
This is why a person going through a process of inquiry on a particular issue will find themselves seeming to have the same basic conversation with the vast majority of the world. You’re not really talking with the person’s own mind, you’re talking with the script in their head.
These aren't free thinking individuals, they are NPCs, the non-player characters in videogames who can only operate from their preprogrammed responses.
The Rise of the NPC, DoubleThinking Ideologue
Questioning our beliefs requires us to examine if these ideas contradict with other things we believe to be true. Questioning our beliefs takes time, skill, and the will to push through these preconceived notions in order to arrive at an organic, authentic perspective.
Frankly, it’s an uncomfortable process to go through, especially when tackling our foundational beliefs about the world.
But without this process of self-inquiry, we are at the behest of our world’s dominant narrative, one that constantly contradicts itself. We are mental pawns in someone else’s agenda if we can’t recognize the game being played.
Nowhere has this reality become more blatantly obvious than with the conflicting realities of coronavirus and the BLM movement.
For months, we were told we had to close the economy to slow the spread, to prevent a collapse of the healthcare system, to avoid millions dying of this novel virus.
It was an unprecedented step in policy with regards to a pandemic, but it was done to prevent society suffering mass casualties, so they say. The act of extreme social isolation (distancing), mask-wearing, and essentially destroying certain industries was done because we had never seen something this contagious and deadly.
When people left their homes to protest the lockdowns in public spaces, the media and the media-programmed masses predictably shamed them for potentially spreading the virus.
During this time, an NPC on my Skinner-Box social media feed made a “joke” stating “They’re giving away free coronavirus at the capitol today!”
The lockdown protestors were seen as COVIDiots, bio-terrorists spreading the virus and ruining the progress of the lockdowns. Governors even threatened longer lockdowns as a result of their actions.
And Then, BLM Hit
As soon as protests started for George Floyd, it was a sight to behold. In an instant, people's fears about the virus seemed to vanish as a result of the movement for social justice.
#stayhome became #silenceisviolence. If you weren't leaving your home to congregate by the thousands, you were viewed as morally suspect.
The act of congregating for an approved cause became socially acceptable for many people, because "racism is a dangerous virus, too."
While I agree with the right for BLM protestors to congregate, I also agreed with the rights of lockdown protesters who were understandably upset about an overreaching public policy.
Quite simply, to shame one group of protesters for spreading the virus while cheering on a much larger group of protesters because it aligned with one's ideology is one of the most obvious and absurd contradictions I've witnessed in modern times.
It illustrates the heart of the NPC mind, showing how ideology and preprogrammed narratives shape the majority of people's beliefs, contradiction be damned.
Shaming someone for doing the same thing under the same circumstances because they are protesting something different is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy in the fullest sense of the word.
Predictably, the media came out with "studies" showing how the BLM protests didn't spread the virus, despite this flying in the face of the entire social distancing narrative and the supposed science being beaten over our collective heads.
It belies the point that most people would follow the mainstream media's messaging off a cliff if it promoted the idea. NPC culture allows for the absurdity of doublethink to flourish and become a primary tenant of one's belief system.
And society is an incoherent, illogical mess as a result. If we are to convince others of our perspective, we must do so in consistent, non-contradictory ways.
Otherwise, we are inflicting an Orwellian thought disease on ourselves that leaves us incapable of rationality and clarity of mind.