Random Thoughts

[Mike]

Kind of off the subject of lying but also still on the subject...

I find it funny how people are actually so gullible, even to themselves. You can tell a lie so often that it often becomes the truth. Sometimes lying that much that you can actually picture the event you're lying about even though it never happened. You can break even the strongest of minds with a simple lie without them or you even realising it.

This is called doublethink by George Orwell in 1984.

[Glarundis]

when it's actually just Pez

but...but...i thought pez had healing powers?
it has, right?
it's...it's a joke!hhahaha!i know, it's a joke!


@ percy

you have my icq so we can talk through icq for a while about those things you said. i myself am religious, and while i think some of the things you say make some sense, i don't agree with some of the others. but let's not turn this into another religious topic because it has happened quite a lot and then it's like 10 pages of stuff.
on a quick note, i just wanna say that we could, in a way, attribute what we are living here with hell. but we could also do it with heaven. yes, there have been wars since forever, but there have also been communities. there are even archeological findings that allow to say that in ancient times people would share the few resources they had rather than fight. in a general way, this looks more like hell than heaven, but that's because we don't see things with the perspective of a better future. also, if we don't work towards it, we can't expect it to happen without us working for it.

so, moving on.

mike, that thing about doublethink, is that just what the word means, or is there something else to it?

[Mike]

mike, that thing about doublethink, is that just what the word means, or is there something else to it?

1984 is a very important book and I would urge anyone to read it, but I can summarize from wikipedia.

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

[Glarundis]

i know that 1984 is a very important book, but i never read it. it's supposed to be very mind progressing and about a futuristic society right?

i understand the concept a bit better, but maybe that's just the real problem with lying?lie so much, the line between reality/truth and illusion/lie can become thin and you'll be stuck between two worlds.

of course, we can't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, we can come up with stuff like "but what's reality anyways?". this kind of stuff probably happens more to people that have used hallucinogenic drugs, because it really fucks up with what's real and what's not heh. apparently there was this guy who used salvia divinorum and then commited suicide and on the suicide note there was something like "existence is irrelevant" or someting like this.

but this seems a very hard thing to accomplish. one thing is to believe in something, then change and believe in something else. but at the same time, while being very aware that both are true in your conscience, seems hard to achieve, a kind of a paradox in your mind. but those do exist

yay for mindfuck!

i think that another problem that may come out of this is stuff like bipolar disorder, split personality disorder and stuff. yes, these things have stuff involved like genetics and your brain and stuff, but who knows if "doublethinking" to a huge extent can lead to this?

[Mike]

One of the chapters involve a speech during Hate Week in Oceania, one of the three empires in Orwell's future. The speaker rants about the war with Eurasia, but mid-speech recieves word that Eastasia has betrayed Oceania and they are now allied with Eurasia. He turns to the crowd as says "We're at war with Eastasia . We've always been at war with Eastasia."

Orwell describes how the mental adjustment takes about a second, then reality adjusts to the lie and everything goes on as if they had always been at war with Eastasia. That's one example of doublethink. If it would turn out there would be war with Eurasia again, they would always have been at war with Eurasia.

[Glarundis]

i see, but to me, that's lying for political interests

[Mike]

i see, but to me, that's lying for political interests :P

Read the book, or at least the wikipedia article. I obviously can't make you get it.

[Glarundis]

yeah i did get it, i was just making a joke.
to me, it seems that that mental adjustment it says in the example can't be that fast. unless you have a very special brain and no standards, or a high will to adapt. but that doesn't sound natural

[Mike]

yeah i did get it, i was just making a joke.
to me, it seems that that mental adjustment it says in the example can't be that fast. unless you have a very special brain and no standards, or a high will to adapt. but that doesn't sound natural

The book is, to a high degree, based on the old Soviet Union and life in its satellite republics, but taken to the ultimate consequence of thought conditioning and propaganda - we can see almost every aspect of Orwell´s vision in society today, but in 1984 it is taken to the extreme. We see a lot of manipulation and lies these days, but in most cases those who execute this do not believe in their own propaganda. Some do, and those tend to be the most persuasive and consistent.

[Tyrion]

The book is, to a high degree, based on the old Soviet Union and life in its satellite republics, but taken to the ultimate consequence of thought conditioning and propaganda - we can see almost every aspect of Orwell´s vision in society today, but in 1984 it is taken to the extreme. We see a lot of manipulation and lies these days, but in most cases those who execute this do not believe in their own propaganda. Some do, and those tend to be the most persuasive and consistent.

Sounds like it would sum up the prison state of North Korea very well.