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A eassy about conformity
Conformity in socialization process
A eassy about conformity
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In the novel 1984, George Orwell describes a dystopian society called Oceania. It is one of the three super states in the world and is controlled by an imaginary leader, Big Brother. This society is lead by a totalitarian Party that controls the society by enforcing their slogan onto their people: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength. These slogans are encrypted into everyone’s brain as a way to manipulate them and make them believe they live in a fair, just society. In 1984’s Oceania, the slogan “ignorance is strength” plays a massive role in the Party’s manipulation of the society. In Oceania, there are three social classes: the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the proles. There is a strong difference in knowledge between …show more content…
They have no idea people are getting tortured to death, or that the Party is turning families against each other, or that the upper classes are watched at all times. If they did know all this, then maybe they would revolt. But because the Party is strong and knows exactly how to control the proles, this lower class will always be clueless and will never think of overthrowing the Party. The Party gives them what they want to satisfy their needs and desires. The proles are happy with their ignorance. All this shows that due to the proles’ ignorance, the Party gets to keep its strength and continue its …show more content…
The Party is controlling and manipulating the language to try to make it completely pure ¬– clear of any rebellious or disobedient words. This way, all the citizens will be ignorant because they will have no words to express themselves. They will not be capable of conceptualizing anything that could question the Party’s totalitarian power. The Party will therefore be able to keep absolute strength and power. In order to keep this power and help it keep growing, the Party has organized the Junior Spies League in which they train kids to become spies for the government. The Party’s goal with this organization is to turn in anyone who seems suspicious. Winston’s neighbors, the Parsons, have two kids who are part of the Spies and they are very loyal to it. Winston went to their apartment one day and the kids started attacking him and yelling “‘You’re a traitor!’” (Orwell
“"Propaganda is as powerful as heroin, it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think” by Gil Courtemanche connects to the sad fact of using propaganda as a deadly weapon to feed people with false information and stop them from thinking. George Orwell’s novel, 1984, describes a totalitarian dystopian society where the Party is constantly brainwashing its citizens with information that is beneficial to its own rights. On the opposite side, people are working for the party just like dominated slaves for their masters without knowing what’s going on. But, in order for the party to achieve this goal, they have to use different techniques of propaganda in Oceania to create fear for people so that they can obey the rules. The use of propaganda in the society of 1984 takes away freedom from individuals because of the absence of privacy, thinking and making decisions.
The Party employs slogans to convince the ignorant that what they want is what they already have. “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, “ (Orwell 4). There is no desire for freedom, because they are told it is slavery. If freed, they would be unhappy and would not live the way in which they do. In doing so, society is to believe that war establishes peace and serenity. Just changing a few small items in history can alter human belief. By constantly feeding the people fraudulent information and hiding the truth, the Party can get the people to believe almost anything; eventually leading to complete dominance over the mind.
What is doublethink? Orwell describes doublethink as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.'; In 1984, doublethink is the normal way of thought, and as a result everyone understands it and practices it. Doublethink is different from changing ones mind, lying, and self-deception in many ways. Doublethink involves believing in the two contradictory ideas at the same time. This is different from lying because lying is saying something that is wrong and knowing that it is wrong but still saying it anyway. For example lets say you broke a vase. When your mother asks you who broke the vase and you say the dog did it that would be lying. The reason it is not doublethink is that you do not believe in two different beliefs at one time. You don’t believe you broke the vase and the dog broke the vase, you absolutely know you broke the vase and are trying to put the blame on the dog as to avoid trouble. Changing ones mind is also different from doublethink. Changing ones mind is accepting or believing one thing, then deciding to accept or believe something else different then what you thought before. An example of changing ones mind would believe the earth is flat and then after seeing sufficient evidence that it is not flat but actually round. Due to the new evidence you would change your mind and now believe the earth is round as you previously thought it was flat.
When there is no way to share information, and one is surrounded by ignoramuses, it is impossible to be anything other than ignorant. Because of this, the people simply feigning ignorance We learn from Winston that “Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food... Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved (64).” Winston’s strong language shows us how profuse the Party’s All day and all night, the Party pounds ostensible facts into the people’s minds, burying the truth of the past, until their ears are so bruised they’re numb, and the people become walking zombies. They live in the bubble of Oceania, where their only source of news and information comes from the Party. The
Ignorance is used to control someone with ease and no opposing forces. Ignorance is strength, not to the people but to the government because the government has mindless slaves to do anything they need. The government feeds off the noncreative and simplistic behavior of the people in the oligarchical nation of Oceania. Instead of relating the quote to weakness It is just relating to the government gaining strength from the ignorance of its people. Weakness and ignorance are not synonymous, Weakness is not ignorance but ignorance is weakness in yourself. “People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, and your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.” (Orwell 39) Big Brother uses this uncertain memory to be able to take people away and no one will say anything because they won’t know if they were there in the first
Imagine having someone telling you something and insisting it was right but you know in the back of your head it’s wrong. 1984 is a book written by the author, George Orwell, in the year 1949. 1984 is about a man named Winston Smith who lives in a small town named Oceania where there are no laws but telescreens that watch all activity. Winston was a guy that rebelled against the party and didn’t believe in what they did. He worked in the Ministry of Truth where they came up with BlackWhite, and erased what they wanted to be gone. He met a young lady named Julia and they used sex to rebel against the Party. It was great for them for awhile until they were caught and took in for reeducation. BlackWhite is a form of Doublethink. Doublethink is
The entirety of the Party itself is based on manipulation as stated by the Party slogan,“WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” (Orwell, 7). The Party promotes the phrase war is peace because of the fact that when a country is at war its people only have one main concern, the enemy. When society lives in fear of war, the people do not think about how the government is treating them, but are more concerned with defeating the enemy and helping their country prevail. As a result, the Party benefits from the fear of war by creating the illusion that they are doing everything in their power to ensure victory. An example of this being when the Party sends out fake statistics of productivity or when news is spread about recent victories against the enemy. In addition, the phrase freedom is slavery is also greatly advocated by the party. The Party portrays Big Brother as all-knowing, and tricks society into thinking that Big Brother knows best for the people. The Party makes people think that by mindlessly following Big Brother, all decisions and responsibilities will be left to him making their lives easier, hence true freedom is becoming a slave to the Party and following all orders. Similarly, ignorance is strength is how the Party keeps society under control and not rebelling. The Party manipulates people by keeping them stupid so they do not
Everyday, we see propaganda more than we realize. Advertisements at bus stops or on billboards, flyers up on telephone poles, or even the news are all examples of propaganda in our daily lives. One of the most common methods of propaganda is the use of slogans, a memorable motto or phrase that leaves little room for detail, and tries to unite others in a common purpose. Another method is appeal to fear, where the audience is warned that disaster will result if they don’t follow a particular course of action. These are used in the book 1984 by George Orwell, a novel set in a dystopian city Oceania, where the government uses propaganda to control the thoughts, words, and actions of the citizens, and even the past. The piece
In the world of 1984 readers are shown a possible future where government has complete and unchallenged control of the people. The Party exert complete domination over every aspect of the citizen’s lives.There is not a single thing that is not under the Party. Feelings, history, language, statistics, and even human nature are all monitored and limited by Party. The citizens of Oceania don’t even have the decision to fight, they must either obey or die. The intentions of the Oceania government weren’t for the people, but instead for the government. They looked out for what was best for the government, not what was best for the people. Propaganda constantly state how rich and prosperous Oceania is all the time even though the true conditions show buildings are not cared for and resources are sparse.
The novel 1984 by George Orwell can be viewed as prophetic or, at the very least, a logical extension of some governments’ control in Orwell’s time. The story is about a middle class man, Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of a ruling Party in London, Oceania. Everywhere, even in individual homes, the Party watches its people through telescreens; a television with a camera inside. Everywhere he looks he sees the face of Big Brother, the Party’s omniscient leader. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the history and language. The Party is introducing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which prevents rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking unorthodox thoughts is a treachery to the government. Such “thoughtcrime” is the worst of all transgressions (sparknote.com).
In the year 1949, George Orwell wrote his dystopian novel 1984. He wrote this book in order to warn the general public that they needed to be critical of their governments. In this story, the government uses three slogans: freedom is slavery, war is peace, and ignorance is strength. Orwell chose these three phrases to show how the government wanted to repress their people. These slogans expose Oceania’s authoritarian government.
Neil Young once affirmed, “Having no knowledge is sometimes exactly what is needed to find a solution, so I qualified” (Young). Neil Young proclaims that being ignorant proves to be useful. The concept of ignorance resides when the fictional Big Brother existing in George Orwell’s novel “1984” frequently exclaims, “Ignorance is strength” (Orwell 26) in his controlled world. The slogan is the most central and crucial paradox due to the citizens of Oceana’s willingness to surrender their fear to live a comfortable, safe, and blissful life among the corruption of their dystopian society.
The Party has a complete grip over all of its members’ lives. The members pretty much do not have any control over what they do, what they say, or who they can love. In fact, they are not even allowed to love. This extreme grip allows the Party to control each and every one of its members’
“Ignorance is strength” is true considering the fact that the party is outnumbered by the rest of the population, especially the proles. The proles have the least amount of knowledge as to what is actually going on in their world, which is why the Party easily gets away with all of their manipulative tactics. Since the proles are disregarded from society, but more notably, are unbothered by the Party, they have no desire to rebel against the strict hierarchical structure imposed by Big Brother. The Party makes their own reality by holding the power to alter the past in whatever way they please and the people do not have the mindset to object. “But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party." This explains why manipulation is crucial for the Party to stay in absolute power. They want the masses to believe what they are told in spite of what they might think otherwise. Doublethink is the most effective way the party manipulates their people to avoid free thinking. Doublehink is a practice that keeps individuals free of their own thoughts. This is how the Party gets away with all the lying they do in the Ministry of Truth. Through the propagandas and the Ministry of Truth, the Party also define what is true and what is false. O’Brien once said to Winston, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
In George Orwell’s 1984, the strategies used by Oceania’s Political Party to achieve total control over the population are similar to the ones employed by Joseph Stalin during his reign. Indeed, the tactics used by Oceania’s Party truly depict the brutal totalitarian society of Stalin’s Russia. In making a connection between Stalin’s Russia and Big Brothers’ Oceania, each Political Party implements a psychological and physical manipulation of society by controlling the information and the language with the help of technology. Many features of Orwell's imaginary super-state Oceania are ironic translations from Stalin’s Russia. In Oceania, the Party mainly uses technology as the chief ingredient to implement psychological manipulation over society by controlling the information they receive.