Foreword "A Sort of Schizophrenic Manner of Thinking"

[Dave Monroe]

"'For somewhat complex reasons,' he wrote in March of
1948, early in the revision of the first draft of
1984, 'nearly the whole of the English Left has been
driven to accept the Russian regime as 'Socialist,'
while silently recognizing that its spirit and
practice are quite alien to anything that is meant by
'Socialism' in this country.  Hence there has arise a
sort of schizophrenic manner of thinking, in which
words like 'democracy' can bear two irreconcilable
meanings, and such things as concentration camps and
mass deportations can be right and wrong
simultaneously.'
   "We recognize this 'sort of schizophrenic manner of
thinking' as a source for one of the great
achievements of this novel, one which has entered th
everyday language of political discourse--the
identification and analysis of doublethink.  As
described in Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and
Practice of oligarchical Collectivism, a dangerously
subversive text outlawed in Oceania and known only as
the book, doublethink is a form of mental discipline
whose goal, desirable and necessary to all party
members, is to be able to believe two contradictory
truths at the same time.  This is nothing new, of
course.  We all do it.  In social psychology it has
long been known as 'cognitive dissonance.'  Others
like to call it 'compartmentalization.'  Some,
famously F. Scott Fizgerald, have considered it
evidence of genius.  For Walt Whitman ('Do I
contradict myself?  Very well, I contradict myself')
it was being large and containing multitudes, for Yogi
Berra it was coming to a fork in the toad an taking
it, for Schrödinger's cat, it was the quantum paradox
of being alive and dead at the same time.
   "The idea seems to have presented Orwell with his
own dilemma, a kind of meta-doublethink--repelling him
with its limitless potential for harm, while at the
same time fascinating him with its promise of a way to
tarnscend opposites--as if soem aberrant form of Zen
Buddhism, whose fundamental koans are the three Party
slogans, 'War is Peace,' 'Freedom is Slavery' and
'Ignorance is strength,' were being applied to evil
purposes." ("Foreword," pp. xi-xii)


cognitive dissonace

http://tip.psychology.org/festinge.html

http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/stephens/cdback.html

http://www.afirstlook.com/archive/cogdiss.cfm

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/dissonance.htm

http://www.colorado.edu/communication/meta-discourses/Theory/dissonance/


F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up" (1936)

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability
to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time, and still retain the ability to function."


Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1900)

http://www.bartleby.com/142/14.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/whitman/song.htm

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/19whitman-songself.html

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2288.html


Yogi Berra

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it !"

http://www.hyperionbooks.com/books/2001spring/takeit.htm


Schrödinger's Cat

http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1933/schrodinger-bio.html

http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Physics/Original/p00262d.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html


koans

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=60225&sort=date




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