Doublepensée (in original version DoubleThink ) is a term of Novlangue invented by Georges Orwell in his against-utopian novel 1984 , indicating a capacity to accept two opposite points of view simultaneously and thus to put out of night light all Critical spirit.

Origin

Orwell presents Doublepensée in its novel as follows: Winston dropped its arms and slowly fills with air its lungs. Its spirit escaped towards the labyrinth from the double-thought. To know and not to know. In full conscience and with an absolute bona fide, to emit carefully arranged lies. Simultaneously to retain two opinions which are cancelled whereas they are known contradictory and to accept both. To employ logic against logic. To repudiate morals whereas one claims oneself of it. To believe at the same time as the democracy is impossible and than the Party is guard of the democracy. To forget all that it is necessary to forget, then to recall it to its memory when one needs some, to still forget it more quickly. Especially, to apply the same process to the process itself. There was ultimate subtlety. To persuade the unconscious one consciously, then to become then unconscious act of hypnosis which one has just perpetrated. The comprehension even of the word “doubles thought” implied the use of the double pensée.

As Orwell explains it in its book, the Party was unable to preserve an absolute hand put on the capacity without degrading the population and subjecting it to a permanent Propagande. However, the fact that these brutalities and this handling were known, even within the Party, could have led to the collapse of the state on itself. For this reason the government imagined by Orwell used a system complexes " control réalité". Though 1984 is rather known for its descriptions of thorough monitoring of the daily newspaper, the control of reality meant that the population was to be also controlled and handled through the language of the every day and the common thought. The Novlangue was thus indicated like method to control the thought via the language, Doublepensée being a method to control the spirit directly.

The novlangue itself incarnates Doublepensée because it contains many words which create the associations supposed between different significances. It is particularly true when they are words of fundamental importance like “good/badly”, “correct/false”, “truth/lie”, or “justice/injustice”.

Doublepensée is a form of blindness acquired and voluntary with respect to the contradictions contained in a system of thought. In the case of Winston Smith, the main character of the novel of Orwell, the problem was that it was unable to work with the Ministry for the Truth (Miniver) where it was supposed to erase the disturbing facts of the public records, for then adhering to the new truths which he itself had written.

Moreover, car-handling of which consists Doublepensée makes it possible the Party to promote enormous objectives beside realistic waitings: " If one must control, if one must continue to control, one must be able to destroy any direction of reality. Because the secrecy of the government is to combine the belief in its own infallibility, with the capacity to learn from the errors of the passé". Consequently, each member of the Party transforms himself into credulous pawn without however never missing probable information. The Party at the same time fanatic and is well informed, preventing it thus not only " fossiliser" but also of " ramollir" , and consequently to crumble. The sentence " To kill the messager" (" Killing the messenger") who disturbed the command of the soldiers Nazis (and later of the Iraqi ) would not present himself in such a system. Doublepensée functions like a key tool for the self-discipline in the Party, in complement of the discipline imposed by the state via propaganda and of the police state. These tools gathered make it possible to hide the malignant intentions of the government to the people like with the government itself, but without causing the confusion and the misinformation which characterize the more primitive totalitarian modes.

Doublepensée was essential to give to the Party the possibility of knowing its true objectives without derogating from it. The Dictature S the preceding ones made the error to combine to them egalitarian Propagande with their goal. 1984 tends to show that the dictatorships of the next generation will not behave also any more naively.

Beyond the years which followed the publication of 1984 , the term of Doublepensée became synonymous with the relief brought by the cognitive Dissonance which develops when one is unaware of simply contradictions between different visions of the world. Certain psychotherapeutic schools as the cognitive therapy encourage for example the individuals to deteriorate their own thoughts with an aim of treating certain psychological diseases.

Doublepensée in the literature in general

One can say that a form of Doublepensée is present in Dune of Frank Herbert and in the Ultimate Shore of the series Terremer of Ursula Guin. In Dune , the prophet Paul-Muad' Dib says that " softness is identical to the cruauté" , an assertion which is often interpreted as meaning that what is soft for one can be cruel for the other (a kind of Relativisme). In the same way in the Ultimate Shore , Ged the Large Sparrowhawk Magus called to Prince Lebannen that " the Life and Death are the same thing… neither separated, nor mêlés." The readers of these two books think that these assertions are emitted with the intention to suggest that death, softness, cruelty and the life are primarily a movement of energy coming from a surface of greater concentration towards another of lower concentration. They add that the concentration of a surface can seem larger for a form of energy and lower for another, thus illustrating the subjective nature of reality.

References

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