War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery.

So I was walking back to my dorm with my roommate Derek the other day, and the conversation somehow shifted to the mantra from George Orwell's absolutely brilliant novel 1984. I've actually thought a lot about this mantra from the book, and I decided to post it on my blog because that's what blogs are for. It is as follows:

"War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery."

Ignoring the fact that these may be out of order and I'm too lazy to check whether or not they are, these are some seemingly paradoxical statements. The words appear to be complete opposites, but the statements actually make quite a lot of sense and reveal some powerful messages once you delve into them.

First of all, we have "War is peace". 1984 is about a dystopic society, which literally controls each and every aspect of its citizens lives. This means that their control is so powerful that it transcends the physical level and delves into the mental level. The citizens of 1984 actually have their thoughts fed to them by the government, and this strangehold is so dominant that it even bends their basic interpretations of reality. For example, the citizens of 1984 actually believe that 2 + 2 = 5. One of the ways that the government preserves this status quo of a docile, brain-dead populace is by claiming that they are always as war (well, it never says in the book that they aren't actually at war, but it's pretty obvious IMO). Why? Because war is peace.

Now this doesn't really apply to a country at war fighting on its own turf, but what this statement is trying to get across is that when a country is at war, the situation at home becomes a lot calmer. Let's examine this by relating it to a real-life scenario. After 9/11 and Bush's declaration of the war in Afghanistan, his approval ratings were through the roof. They were consistently hovering at around 90%, which is simply absurd for any president. American flags were worth 10, 20 times their original value, and everyone, no matter what political party or ideology they were affiliated with, came together as a single blood-thirsty, I mean justice-seeking, force. Yes, we were chanting "Kill the terrorists" (among other less politically correct things), but it's important to notice that essentially all strife within our own country was eliminated. So what's another word for this? Peace.

For any country with any sort of nationalism (pretty much every country on Earth), war has a very powerful effect. It stops internal strife cold, establishes a calm, tranquil status quo, and perpetuates it. War is serious business, so when your country goes to war, everyone's embedded nationalism erupts and a single mindset is established: "The country is having a hard time. As a citizen, I must do what I can to support my country." This includes eliminating dissenters. This effect is especially powerful in a country as militarily inclined as the United States, which is why opposition against Bush's 2 wars never concretely surfaced for several years. War establishes a tremendously dominant "Us vs. Them" mentality, pitting the entire country as the "Us", making any opposition too afraid to voice their disagreement in fear of being decimated by the mob that is their countrymen and their government.

So now we've established how war is peace. Now how is ignorance strength? A couple months ago, I was having a conversation with another gamer, and he was talking to me about a topic he did for a commentary of his. The topic was confidence and its role in strengthening your actions. Having the ability to do something isn't enough; you have to believe that you can do it. Someone who is perfectly capable of accomplishing a certain task is still capable of messing up and failing that task, and this chance of failure is heavily dependent on that person's confidence, or more fittingly, lack thereof. In other words, confidence is strength.

"Ignorance is strength" is easier to handle than the rest of these supposed paradoxes, because strength and ignorance are not polar opposites. Ignorance is the stubborn refusal to acquire knowledge, particularly on matters one has strong convictions on. Ignorance is an intellectual pitfall. Strength on the other hand, is a very, very broad term. It's mainly thought of in the physical sense, but it can also be thought of in mental terms. However, viewing strength from a mental standpoint turns it more into an issue of confidence rather than an issue of ability. The smartest person in the world could be very weak mentally (low self-esteem), while the dumbest person in the world can be very strong mentally by being an individual who is very sure of himself and his actions. In summary, ignorance is more of an issue concerning intellectual ability while strength is more of an issue concerning physical strength (not relevant for the purposes of this post) and self-esteem/confidence.

An ignorant person is someone who refuses to learn, particularly when it comes to stuff concerning them. This almost always involves introspection: Ignorant people often refuse to look within themselves and learn who they really are, discovering their weaknesses along with their strengths. As a result, ignorant people are often times very sure of themselves, despite being incapable on almost every level. The person who 100% believed that his sword could match a tank and consequently died a quite hilarious, pitiful, and sort of valiant death was indeed strong; he was just an idiot as well. Just because a person is strong doesn't mean that he is capable. Again, intellect and confidence are two different things, despite them both being connected to the mental aspect of our being. In the end, ignorance is often a facade meant to cover up some sort of deep, internal flaw, but it does provide some form of confidence, some sort of sureness behind one's actions. Hence, ignorance is strength.

And now we have the last one, "Freedom is slavery". This one is the one I have the most trouble with, because it actually doesn't make much sense to me. This is what I've done with it. Viewing this from a logical standpoint, this statement is stating that A = B, with A being freedom and B being slavery. So, I could make sense of this by trying to equate B with A, which ends up with me turning the statement around and trying to make sense of "Slavery is freedom". So let's try to prove that "Slavery is freedom" isn't simply a paradox.

How I see it is this: When you're a slave in the traditional sense, you are merely controlled on a physical level. The slaves of Southern American plantations were controlled by being forced to till the fields and perform other physical actions. Unlike 1984, their minds were not controlled. Yeah, they weren't allowed to learn how to read and write or get proper schooling, but they were free to think whatever they want as long as they continued doing the menial labor their masters required of them. Unlike non-slaves who have to devote time and brainpower to figure out what they're going to do on a physical level (am I going to run to school or bike there?), their physical actions are completely controlled for them, turning their physical bodies into drones rather than complex machines that have to be constantly maintained by the control center that is the brain. Yes, these slaves didn't have access to any sort of intellectually stimulating material, which meant that their mental ability almost certainly simply atrophied into nothing, but hey, the potential was there. However, my defense of this statement sort of falters when you're looking at a 1984 level of control, because that renders your mind completely useless.

My friend suggested that freedom makes you a "slave to your choices", which doesn't really make any sense to me because the ability to make your own choices is pretty much the definition of not being a slave/controlled entity, so... yeah, I don't know. I mean, when you make choices, do you think, "Man, I'm being controlled by my choices"? No, your choices are controlled by you. And if your choices really suck, the aftermath sort of "controls" you, but that's on your own head and you chose to go onto this path.

So there you have it. A tiny sliver of 1984 explained. Feel free to copy-paste this into your high school essays as I'm sure that this won't turn up in any TurnItIn database.