What does "doublethink" mean in the book "1984"?

Answer 1

doublethink - Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An excellent example of doublethink in modern society is the war on drugs. If you ask people their opinion on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, most people would agree that it was a complete failure. People agree that it only caused more crime, it made gangsters rich, it corrupted politicians, and most importantly ... it didn't keep people from drinking.

Yet, we have almost the exact same situation today with war on drugs, yet most people think that our modern prohibition is a good idea ... and more than that, they believe that anybody that thinks that the war on drugs isn't a good idea must be completely out of their minds. In order for a person to be effective at doublethink, they must master the art of crimestop.

This word has made its way into the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

dou•ble•think ('d&-b&l-"thi[ng]k), noun, Date: 1949 : a simultaneous belief in two contradictory ideas.


Here is how Winston Smith described doublethink in the novel:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'

Answer 2

Doublethink 1984

Answer 3

What always seems to be overlooked in interpretations is Orwell's allusion to St. Augustin's definition of a lie as "duplex cogitatio" (literally translated: "doublethink")

Answer 4

RE:
What does "doublethink" mean in the book "1984"?

Answer 5

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