Monday, May 16, 2011

Orthodoxy is

From Fozie

A quote from George Orwell's 1984 with direct reference to the ban on Mishpacha magazine and other similar bans...

[Syme said] "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.... Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control."....


Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again.... There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of disreputability clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians.... Syme's fate was not difficult to foresee... Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

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