Name: Orwell - Take Responsibility for Your Mind or Else
Uploaded: 2021-12-18T17:40:52.000Z
Duration: 8 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In /1984/, George Orwell wrote, “the two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole

surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent

In the novel, the authoritarian party is interested in having absolute power over the thoughts

That's what I'm interested in exploring, and as always, I'm gonna explore this idea

The following is a conversation between a monk (M) and a student (S).

M: The authoritarian wants an unrestricted path to his goal, and the best way he can

achieve that is by having absolute power over your thoughts.

Isn't it more valuable to have force on your side?

If you have force on your side, you can overcome any obstacle, right?

You can use that force to destroy anything or anyone that goes against you.

M: You make a really good point, but I want you to think about something.

Think about the tallest, biggest, strongest, and smartest person you know.

But how many people can they overcome with that force?

No matter what the number is, the strongest person you know has a limited amount of force.

They can't overcome the force of multiple people working together against them.

And even if they could destroy everyone, that wouldn't be the ideal thing to do.

S: Why would destroying everyone that goes against them not be ideal?

M: You see, the authoritarian has a grand vision for the future, and it takes labour

And so he would rather control you than destroy you.

He would rather get you on his side and multiply his own force.

He would rather steal your time, energy, and labour and use it for his own benefit.

And when you freely surrender your labour to him, we call that obedience.

But if you refuse to be obedient, then he will get rid of you, and he will use all of

That's what we call extermination or submission.

And that's why the authoritarian wants absolute power over your thoughts.

With power over your thoughts, he can make you obedient to himself and multiply his own

force, and by multiplying his own force, he can overcome, submit, or exterminate all forces

S: Hmm… but how does the authoritarian accomplish that?

How do they actually get absolute power over your thoughts?

M: The authoritarian primarily uses two tools: indoctrination and violence.

When someone contradicts her, she uses violence to exterminate that person or get them to

But a person who submits to violence is obedient to her out of fear, and this isn't ideal

Because once the fearful party has enough force to overcome her, whether they get it

on their own or by working with others, they will likely revolt.

So more useful than violence is indoctrination.

A person who's indoctrinated is manipulated into believing that obeying the authoritarian

And because they believe it's the best choice, they have no desire to revolt against her.

See, the person who submits to violence is still internally revolting, but the one who's

The Indoctrinated freely surrender their time, energy, force, and labour to the authoritarian,

S: Violence is easy enough for me to understand, but how does indoctrination work?

How can someone be manipulated into obeying the authoritarian?

The authoritarian sets themselves up as an intermediate between you and reality.

They set themselves up as a source of truth in your life.

Once they set themselves up as a source of truth in your life, they isolate you from

They try to be the single source of truth in your life.

They try to step in between you and all your other relationships.

They want to be the only strong and direct relationship in your life, and by becoming

that, they become /the only/ source of truth in your life.

And now comes the final step: propaganda.

Once the authoritarian has set themselves up as the single source of truth in your life,

they can use propaganda to make you believe whatever they want.

They now have complete and absolute control over your thoughts.

S: Hmm… intermediation, isolation, and propaganda: those are the three steps of indoctrination.

Well, how do I protect myself against these?

M: To protect yourself from indoctrination, you must cut if off at the first step: intermediation.

This means you never let anyone serve as your source of truth, not even me.

Don't be mistaken: anyone and everyone can offer you knowledge, but not a single person

When you act on your own knowledge and it works, that's an experience of truth.

And to take full responsibility for your own mind, your own knowledge, to act on it, refine

it, and correct it, that's what it means to be unmediated.

To be unmediated means to trust only that which you have verified with your own experience.

And when you become unmediated, you become truly revolutionary, unable to be indoctrinated

thought,” and I explored this idea more deeply through a dialogue.

The authoritarian wants an unrestricted path to their goal, and they achieve that through

Violence is not as effective as indoctrination, because it always leaves the chance of a revolt

But indoctrination is a type of manipulation that leads people to obey the authoritarian

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Orwell - Take Responsibility for Your Mind or Else

perspective

experience

effective

force