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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
 |
| Crimestop | ||
| The faculty of stopping short, as though by instict, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. |
Crimestop is a necessary mental discipline for good party members in 1984. Good party members have no private emotions; they are in a state of constant enthusiasm about the goals set by the state. Even children can learn to avoid thinking any thoughts deemed dangerous by the state.
| The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity... orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. |
| From 1984,
by George Orwell. Published by Unknown in 1948 Additional resources -
|
Winston Smith later is forced to give himself lessons:
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with
propositions--'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that
ice is heavier than water'--and trained himself in not seeing or not
understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy.
It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation.
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