Orwell - Don’t Let Them Control Your Thoughts

In 1984, George Orwell wrote, “the two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.” In the novel, the authoritarian party is interested in having absolute power over the thoughts of others. Why do they wanna control your thoughts? And how do they do that? That’s what I’m interested in exploring, and as always, I’m gonna explore this idea through a dialogue.

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The following is a conversation between a monk (M) and a student (S).

M: The authoritarian wants an unrestricted path to his goal, and the best way he can achieve that is by having absolute power over your thoughts.

S: Why my thoughts? Isn’t it more valuable to have force on your side? If you have force on your side, you can overcome any obstacle, right? You can use that force to destroy anything or anyone that goes against you.

M: You make a really good point, but I want you to think about something. Think about the tallest, biggest, strongest, and smartest person you know. They have a lot of force, right? But how many people can they overcome with that force? 3? 5? 10? No matter what the number is, the strongest person you know has a limited amount of force. They can’t overcome the force of multiple people working together against them. And even if they could destroy everyone, that wouldn’t be the ideal thing to do.

S: Why would destroying everyone that goes against them not be ideal?

M: You see, the authoritarian has a grand vision for the future, and it takes labour to make a dream a reality. And so he would rather control you than destroy you. He would rather get you on his side and multiply his own force. He would rather steal your time, energy, and labour and use it for his own benefit. And when you freely surrender your labour to him, we call that obedience. But if you refuse to be obedient, then he will get rid of you, and he will use all of the force he has accumulated to do it. That’s what we call extermination or submission. And that’s why the authoritarian wants absolute power over your thoughts. With power over your thoughts, he can make you obedient to himself and multiply his own force, and by multiplying his own force, he can overcome, submit, or exterminate all forces against him.

S: Hmm… but how does the authoritarian accomplish that? How do they make others obey? How do they actually get absolute power over your thoughts?

M: The authoritarian primarily uses two tools: indoctrination and violence. When someone contradicts her, she uses violence to exterminate that person or get them to submit. But a person who submits to violence is obedient to her out of fear, and this isn’t ideal for the authoritarian. Because once the fearful party has enough force to overcome her, whether they get it on their own or by working with others, they will likely revolt. So more useful than violence is indoctrination. A person who’s indoctrinated is manipulated into believing that obeying the authoritarian is the best choice. And because they believe it’s the best choice, they have no desire to revolt against her. See, the person who submits to violence is still internally revolting, but the one who’s indoctrinated willingly obeys. The Indoctrinated freely surrender their time, energy, force, and labour to the authoritarian, and that’s what she truly wants.

S: Violence is easy enough for me to understand, but how does indoctrination work? How can someone be manipulated into obeying the authoritarian?

M: Indoctrination comes in three steps. The first is intermediation. The authoritarian sets themselves up as an intermediate between you and reality. They set themselves up as a source of truth in your life. The second step is isolation. Once they set themselves up as a source of truth in your life, they isolate you from all other contact with reality. They try to be the single source of truth in your life. They try to step in between you and all your other relationships. They want to be the only strong and direct relationship in your life, and by becoming that, they become the only source of truth in your life. And now comes the final step: propaganda. Once the authoritarian has set themselves up as the single source of truth in your life, they can use propaganda to make you believe whatever they want. They now shape your reality. They now have complete and absolute control over your thoughts.

S: Hmm… intermediation, isolation, and propaganda: those are the three steps of indoctrination. Well, how do I protect myself against these?

M: To protect yourself from indoctrination, you must cut if off at the first step: intermediation. You must become unmediated. This means you never let anyone serve as your source of truth, not even me. Don’t be mistaken: anyone and everyone can offer you knowledge, but not a single person can give you truth. When you act on your own knowledge and it works, that’s an experience of truth. And to take full responsibility for your own mind, your own knowledge, to act on it, refine it, and correct it, that’s what it means to be unmediated. To be unmediated means to trust only that which you have verified with your own experience. And when you become unmediated, you become truly revolutionary, unable to be indoctrinated by the authoritarian.

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In 1984, George Orwell wrote, “the two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought,” and I explored this idea more deeply through a dialogue.

The authoritarian wants an unrestricted path to their goal, and they achieve that through violence and indoctrination. Violence is not as effective as indoctrination, because it always leaves the chance of a revolt happening. But indoctrination is a type of manipulation that leads people to obey the authoritarian by choice. Indoctrination is accomplished in three steps: intermediation, isolation, and propaganda. And the greatest protection against indoctrination is to become unmediated. The unmediated person freely exchanges knowledge with others, but doesn’t set anyone else up as a source of truth in their life. They take full responsibility for their mind and their own knowledge, testing it and correcting it. And they trust only that which they have verified with their own experience.

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion and understanding of Orwell’s words, not advice. Feel free to use this information however you like, and if you have a different take on his words, I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments.