Doublethink
Recently, after foolishly forgetting my copy of “What If?” by Randall Munroe (xkcd) at home one day, I looked through my English teacher’s library and spotted a particular book: “In Order to Live” by Yeonmi Park. I’ve heard of it before, and based on the first four chapters, it seems like an interesting book so far, but one particular word caught my attention: “doublethink”.
The term “doublethink” was coined by George Orwell in his 1949 novel, “1984”. It describes a phenomenon where people can believe two contradictory statements at the same time and believe that they’re both true. In “1984”, one prime example is The Party’s slogan, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Bravery”. It’s used as a tool to brainwash the Outer Party (the members who perform administrative duties for The Party) to prevent rebellion, and it highlights the beliefs of not only the Outer Party but also the proles (proletarians, or the working class), that they’re in a constant state of war but they’re also at peace, and that if they gained freedom, they would become slaves.
Contemporary
The applications of doublethink aren’t limited to Orwell’s novel, or even political indoctrination. We can see several examples within our daily lives, and I’ve found that it’s a surprisingly effective tool.
Our lives are so short, yet we live like we have plenty of time. So much time is wasted, thrown down the drain, on doomscrolling or on other fruitless activities, yet when we actually step back and think, we realize how short life is, and how time is too precious to be wasted. Another thing—many students spend plenty of time in their high school years worrying about getting into a top university. They sacrifice their time, their sleep, and other aspects of life to add onto their honors list and their extracurricular activities. Yet, many of those students are well aware that prestige is a pointless metric to decide where you go for your undergraduate degree. Or consider the duality between what’s displayed on social media and what’s real; many people are aware that social media only highlights the peaks of others’ lives, yet continue to compare their lives with what they see on social media.
Oftentimes, this doublethinking only causes unnecessary stress and anxiety, but while it’s hard to break any mentality, maybe it’s just helpful being aware of this phenomenon. It’s certainly intriguing, and while we don’t live under a totalitarian government, we can see similarities between the dystopia pictured in 1984, and our current world.
Life Update!
Another example of doublethink is my attitude on sleep. I know of its importance and its health benefits, yet I rarely ever get enough of it. I can’t recall the last night I got eight hours, which, looking back, is unfortunate. According to my watch, I’ve averaged seven hours of sleep per night for the past three years which isn’t horrible, but it isn’t amazing either. Some nights I get only four hours, and I don’t know how I’m able to still function. I recognize that I’m probably not operating on full capacity, but my sleep schedule is a serious problem that I should probably get fixed before college.
I’ve tried to wake up earlier, 6:30 am despite school starting at 9:05 am, and I thought that would be a good way to sleep earlier, but waking up earlier doesn’t really work when you continue to go to sleep around or past midnight. I currently don’t know what works, and at this point, staying up late has become a habit. How unfortunate.
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