Talk:Doublethink

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I rewrote the line that claimed the book was "modeled after Stalinist Russia". I think most people would agree that nature of the society in the book is far more complex and interesting than would be suggested by a simple allegory. Orwell has a simple allegory for communist Russia after-all... called Animal Farm

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I made up a few words on 1984 beacause my english teacher told me to. So if you guys need help...there is also one thing called: cheating. + I also made up a couple neologisms (they are not to be PUBLISHED yet, that is), based on George Orwell's Newspeak and Doublethink: These are 10 words that i made up for Newspeak:

1. Orthopediatrist (a doctor who hypnotizes the children)
2. Crimejust(crime and justice)
3. Provapo ( vaporizing the proles)
4. Telechat (chatting with the telescreen)
5. Odigov ( odious[hatred] for the government)
6. Rumblewinpar (Winston rumbles[fights]to beat the Party)
7. Pivextin (your privacy is extinct)
8. Hypnochild (a child that is hypnotized by the orthopediatrist)

I just added a bunch of stuff here. It's from an essay I wrote in high school. I hereby do whatever legal stuff is necessary for Wikipedia to use it as public domain material and so on.Dave 02:01, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

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I also made up a couple neologisms (they are not to be PUBLISHED yet, that is), based on George Orwell's Newspeak and Doublethink:

Newthink (inverse of Oldthink) Newold (new before old) Oldnew (old after new) Freeslave (freedom with slavery) Slavefree (slavery with freedom) Whiteblack (inverse of Blackwhite) Thinkfeel (thininkg before feeling) Feelthink (feeling before thinking) Warpeace (War for peace) Peacewar (Peace for war) Newview (New perspective) Oldview (Old perspective) Polithink (political thinking) Polispeak (political language) Prologism (after Neologism - or the reaction to Neologism) Poliact (political action) doubleact (acting two ways, and attempting to find the BEST WAY, by either denial or intellectualism) doublewill (the dividing of the will into two parts, one is FOR, the other AGAINST) doubledialect (the reversion and inversion of DIALECT) double-ego (double identities, connotating more is possible, although not IMPLIED directly) Commu-capitalism (communists atttempting capitalism) Capita-communism (capitalists revoking against communism, by appearing to be their ally) Crimelaw (the justification of the state to commmit new laws into action, by appearing that the crime has been committed by somebody else. i.e. invasion of another country) Lawcrime (the total inverse of crimelaw) Luv8 (love-hate, meaning love before hate) 8Luv (hate-love, meaning hate before love) Birdeath (birth to death) deabirth (death to birth) Freecrime (criminals that are free from the capture of the STATE) Crimefree (freedom from a life of criminal activities AGAINST the state) Slavecrime (slavery to criminals) Crimeslave (criminals who become slaves) Thoughtspeak (thinking with no words to speak, "politically incorrect," language of any sort, therefore, no thoughts to express sucha desire to rebel against the state).

It would be fun if this could become public domain. I hold the copyrights and copylefts on any of the words that I created above (which is called, intellectual property, if you will). --Lord X 23:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

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Contents 1 Sources 2 Request a bit more expansion, and elaboration please 3 Is the spoiler warning necessary? 4 Anon addition 5 LIST OF CONTRADICTIONS PROPOSAL 6 Vegetarian example

[edit] Sources

This article does not cite a single source, and it's very badly written. I'll get around to fixing it eventually, but until then it deserves templates that indicate both of those problems. Tenebrous 22:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I would particularly like to find the source about the dialectic being a form of doublethink. It sounds like a one sentence paraphrase of Karl Popper's criticism of the dialectic from the other Wikipedia article. However, The Open Society and Its Enemies was written at least 4 years prior to Nineteen Eighty-Four, it isn't possible that Popper himself used this word. I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's an interesting viewpoint. I just wish that we had an actual source from an actual place. Cyclopean typewriter 11:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I've just added the reference. It's from the book One-Dimensional Man. And, for interest's sake, doublethink is a form of dialectic, not the other way around. Skittleys 03:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I've found the doublethink/dialectic citation, but I Googled the quotes and found no real references. Hopefully someone else knows! Skittleys 03:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request a bit more expansion, and elaboration please

Please get some insightful people, researchers, and smart pals to fix up this article, and expand on the ideals of doublethink. A little elaboration would work on the quotation from the book, as well as O'Brien's speech to Winston Smith concerning the uses of doublethink, and the functionality of the Party - Inner, and Outer, as well as Big Brother. Yours, sincerely User: Xinyu

[edit] Is the spoiler warning necessary?

The article contains 1984 quotes, but it hardly spoils the story, and the warning might deter people from reading this article for no real reason. I'ma go ahead and remove it, someone correct me if this is wrong. --Szabo 01:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anon addition

An anon added the following text (with my edits to make it properly punctuated and a bit clearer):

A form of doublethink could be said to occur in Frank Herbert's novel Dune and in Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore. In Dune, the prophet Paul-Muad'Dib comments that "kindness and cruelty are the same thing," a statement often interpreted to mean that what is kind to one person is cruel to another. Similarly, Ged the Archmage Sparrowhawk says to Prince Lebannen in The Farthest Shore, "Life and Death are the same thing... neither separated nor mixed." Readers of both books have thought of these statements as intending to suggest that death, kindness, cruelty, and life are essentially the movement of energy from an area of higher concentration to one of lower concentration. Some such thinkers have added that what is an area of high concentration for one form of energy is an area of low concentration for another, illustrating the subjective nature of reality.

I'm not sure that this is really doublethink in any sense other than perhaps an extremly superficial sense of combining opposites (the explanation given in the second half of the paragraph, especially, doesn't seem to be describing anything resembling doublethink). I was tempted to just revert the addition, but I thought it'd be worth checking in with other editors before wholesale deleting it. Does anyone have any objections to removing this paragraph? I'll give it a while and just delete it unless someone says they want it kept and can explain how this is relevant to the article.

Hbackman 23:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LIST OF CONTRADICTIONS PROPOSAL

Hey people - what do you think that we should really show some dialect, that is doublethink, and contradictions in this article, my leading the readers to read, if they want - a list of contradictions. I think it would add some spice to this article? Tell me what you think - because I have the list on my Wikipedia user page...--Lord X 21:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

I looked at the list on your user page and my thoughts are a) it's way too long, and b) I don't understand how a list of contradictions allows the reader any further insight into doublethink -- we should be adding explanation, not a bajillion examples that don't illuminate anything. Anyone can think up a list of opposites like the one on your user page -- why is that useful to the article?

Also, I don't understand what you mean by "dialect." Doublethink isn't a dialect. Doublespeak (forgive me if I'm not using the correct term; it's been a while since I've read Nineteen Eighty-Four) or Newspeak, which is associated with doublethink, could perhaps be called a dialect, but the examples on your user page aren't Newspeak -- they're just pairs of opposites (I'm not even really sure that some of them are "contradictions," really...).

So I think no, it would not be an improvement to the article to add that list to it. Sorry.

Hbackman 04:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, though, although the list is both long, tedious, and so called not applicable to this article, it really depends on how you define each term respectively. Personally, only personally, though, dialect is a form of doublethink...meaning that doublethink is the thinking of contradictions...right? Dialect is the ability to think beyond your own point of view, isn't it? And, as of doublespeak, doublethink and doublespeak are essentially the same thing...I mean, one is the contradiction of thought, while another is the messing up of langauage. I mean - just look at all the synonyms we have in the English language, or all the means that one could desribe an idea that is considered, "politically incorrect." In order for the world to mess up with its own thoughts, speech must also be screwed around with. Now, what I just said may sound random, but I really, REALLY thoughgt about it. Doublethink, by the way - is the thinking of opposites - the linking and disconneciton between two opposing ideas (that is why it is called, "doublethink." See, for so long as the ideas are in constant opposition, doublethink would always remain, "doublethink." Even in the novel of 1984, Orwell said that Doublethink is the linking of opposites...(see Newspeak dictionary, the Ebook version of it)....yours, Xinyu Hu

--18:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

ps. May be we should just sit around and wait a bit more for other users to reply, and think of their opinion, have a vote, and then, if the majority likes this idea, they can have it on...

I was taking dialect to mean a regional variety of a language. That was probably the source of my failure to understand you. ;)

I agree with xyzzy re: the original research aspect.

I quite like what you say about the necessity of messing with speech in order to mess with thought. That's one of the points that Orwell makes, isn't it? -- that the point of Newspeak is to constrain thought? (Obviously not all of Newspeak is doublespeak, but I think that much of it is.) If this isn't already in the article I think it should go in there somewhere.

Hbackman 06:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Your list is original research. It is therefore not suitable for inclusion in an article. —xyzzy_n 22:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is original research...clearly everything on that list does exist in real life...doesn't it? --Lord X 20:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

So which source has published your list? —xyzzy_n 21:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Whatever, I'll just be the researcher for now of everything and anything I am interested in, best way I could contribute anything for now. To you the truth, yeah, it was, "Original Research," but it makes no difference to the fact that 99% of the words, names, etc does EXIST in the English language (if they were Alien, they wouldn't even need to be written in the first place.) Therefore, Rejection of Contradiction List: Accepted....--Lord X 01:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

Truth and existence are not standards for inclusion. Verifiability is. —xyzzy_n 01:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

You win. --Lord X 02:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)User:Xinyu

Truth and existence are not standards for inclusion. Verifiability is. —xyzzy_n 01:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC) Isn't that actually Doublethink? :D

[edit] Vegetarian example

In the real-world examples of doublespeak section, there is the following passage:

Another example is the ethical question of whether to eat meat or be a vegetarian. Some may choose to eat meat and be content with the knowledge that a cow must be killed to supply the meat, but others may not be able to accept responsibility for a cows death, even if they are not directly responsible for the animal's slaughter. Blocking out the fact that their demand for meat will result in the slaughter of additional animals over time is believed by some to be another example of real-world doublethink.

Could someone please explain this one, because I seem to be missing it entirely. Are the "others who may not be able to accept responsibility for a cow's death" vegetarians or are they meat-eaters who simply ignore their guilt? Also, wouldn't this count as POV since (from what I can interpret) it seems to be biased in favor of a vegetarian point of view?

I've removed it. it definately seems biased in favor of vegetarians. If someone disagrees add it back, and do explain how it's not POV.--Acebrock 21:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)