Vitoria Tullo Blogger #34

Aim: How does the Party maintain control according to The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism?

Do Now: Why did Winston fall asleep thinking "Sanity is not statistical"? Why does this quote mean and what is significance?

During the group discussion interesting points were brought up. Many groups discussed how this quote possibly meant that what the majority believes is not necessarily what's sane. That how sometimes the correct way of thinking is considered insane by the general population. The example that was brought up was Galileo who, among the general religious people was considered insane for believing that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around.

We later took a more in dept look into Oceanian society. The hierarchy, as discussed in the novel, is Big Brother on top, followed by the Inner Party, then the Outer Party, and finally the majority of the population the Proles. Citizens that are born into the Inner or Outer Party will remain there with some change in class due to intelligence. Citizens born into the Proles will remain a Prole for their life. Any Prole that demonstrates an ounce of intelligence is killed immediately. This is to steer away any possibility of rebellion among the loosely regulated proles Though not nearly as violent, this rigid class structure reflects the one in America in a sense. Most often people, whether it be fortunately or unfortunately, remain in the same social class that they were born into.

From there we got to how else the party directly controls its people. Doublethink, crimestop, and blackwhite were all methods used by the party to control the masses.

Doublethink involves making one accept two contradicting statements as true to create confusion. The most famous examples of this is paradoxes. The God Paradox and the Grandfather Paradox are two examples of this. Next is crimestop were is stopping a thought right in its tracks repetitively until it becomes instinct. Its psychological conditioning, akin to methods used to train animals. Blackwhite is simply accepting whatever information is told to you, without question. It's these methods that brainwashed the people into compliance in the novel.