In response to Zhi Yun's postings: The Manipulation of Truth
The reason why i'm posting here in response to Zhi Yun is because (and I HAVE duly lodged my complaint on her site) her blog system does not register comments beyond 1000 words!
The Manipulation of Truth
Raphael (our fellow Meridian, not the famed narrator) mentioned that truth is socially determined. Zhi Yun also said that if all the mathematicians got together can declared that 2+2=5, then we'd all have to accept it. I think we need to have a little perspective here.
In the real world, mathematicians cannot simply declare that 2+2=5. We'd fire them all and commit them to asylums. They have to PROVE to us that 2+2=5. Nevermind if many of us actually fail C Maths and can't prove anything by manipulating numbers and symbols; someone else can. It is the mathematicians' responsibility to make it understandable to the public.
What is fictive and scary about 1984 is that the Party has such absolute control over every aspect of the people's lives that even mathematicians are out of a job. One is powerless to counter the obvious lie that 2+2=5 because no one will be able or willing to testify against it. Such a situation will, touchwood, never happen in the "real world".
There is a difference between what is true and what we believe in.
What we believe in may not necessarily be true, and we may not necessarily believe what is true (this is called delusional or being very, very misguided). Ideally, of course, we should believe in what is true.
Human society has all the power to make people believe in almost anything it wants : 2+2=4, 2+2=5, 2+2=elephant, etc. But this does not make 2+2=4 any less true. THIS is what Winston is insisting on. The Party cannot touch the realm of objective truths. One thing to note: we humans express this mathematical law of addition, exemplified by "2+2=4", in terms of numbers. An alien civilisation may express this same objective relation as "~$c_@". In this sense, the signs do not matter, but the relation that is expressed does. THAT cannot be denied and effaced. That is objectivity.
Now, Winston is right and wrong about matters. He is right that the objectivity of 2+2=4 cannot be effaced. When the world of 1984 is dead and gone, and the proverbial alien race swops down from the skies, this knowledge would still hold true, no matter what the Party wilfully says. BUT, until that day comes, and when the Party holds such absolute sway in society, there may be no point for Winston to know that 2+2 truly = 4, because the Party simply would not allow it. In other words, the Party has the political power, if it so chooses, to make the entire population of Oceania to adopt a mass delusion - to believe that 2+2=5. This is what is really tragic and scary about 1984, that such a bleak scenario might come about. It is sad because the entire society may be forced to live in a mass, perpetual delusion (sigh... yes, think MATRIX). But delusion implies that the truth, as Mulder says, is OUT THERE. There IS hope. What Winston wants to hold on to is this basis for HOPE, that he knows something objectively true that the Party can never touch or sully, like his love for Julia. Alas, what he didn't count on was the fact that the Party didn't need to change objective truth... it only needed to break Winston's personal resolve and spirit.
The hope for us readers is that this only shows that the Party is one particular party which chooses to be delusional. It can one day die out. And truth is ultimately untouched. And as a critic pointed out (I wonder how many of you noticed this), the Appendix at the end of the book writes about Newspeak in the PAST TENSE, implying that the world of 1984 was already a historical fact; Big Brother's fearful rule did not last. So, there is hope after all, veiled and very understated.
LT
posted by Unknown @ 12/06/2004 01:27:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Not off-topic at all, Raphael.
What a "Xtian" (?) *believes* is true, you may not *believe* to be true.
It is precisely because we can believe in things which might or might not be true, that delusions and misperceptions are possible, that mass hysteria is possible, that things like genocide are possible. We know that the Jews were nothing like what the Nazis made them out to be but many Nazis did and carried out the extermination orders, so how do you account for that?
The concept of truth is what makes human able to imagine transcendence, i.e. going beyond myriad incidences of particulars. Objectivity makes it possible for us to generalise and make accurate predictions. We need a sense of objectivity in order to invent laws and theories to account for the way the world works, without which we can't function as a technologised society! It is probably a concept, but it is a fundamental concept (Immanuel Kant), one which human thinking cannot do without.
Coming back to 1984: notice that in THE BOOK, Goldstein says that (I don't have 1984 with me at hand, so i could be misquoting; correct me if I'm wrong) there is one small, select group of people in Oceania who are allow to use maths and science - those developing weapons. BB wouldn't go tell them 2+2=5! And because these scientists are able to hold on to such truths, BB watches them with suspicion. So BB is deliberately doing this (telling you 2+2=5) to break the other citizens' resolve and world-view. It's political bullying of the highest order.
Regarding Descartes:
He said "I think therefore I am" precisely to preempt and reject any empiricist claims. "I think, first, before i receive any other bodily sensations". To him, the human is a rational creature first and foremost, since the empirical sensations are fallible - we suffer from parallax error, double vision, mishearing, phatom limb effects, etc. Only the mind is pure. According to Descartes, we can, with some mental training, be able to discern and filter out false empirical signals from true logical deductions.
I don't want to be embroiled in a complex discussion about epistemology (the study of how we know things; suffice it to know that Descartes' "I think therefore I am" focused Western philosophy onto the notion of SELF, of the interior, thinking self, AND on the notion of DOUBT, that we can only be certain of things if we first doubut its existence and verity and thereafter going about to critically ascertain its certitude through logical reasoning. It is for this that Descartes has been called the father of modern Western philosophy.
Hope this helps.
LT
Just as i don't like TSE but admire certain qualities about his works, similarly, i belong to a very different school of thought from Descartes. So, i'm not a "Descartesian" or anything like that, in case you're wondering.
LT
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