Each of us may have different ideas, understandings and attitudes when we encounter the same question or in same situation, and the peculiarity of our mind triggers the discordance of beliefs between ourselves and others and creates innumerable truths. What’s more, truths can be easily manipulated. In the book 1984 and Brave New World, people lived in a society where everyone avoids accepting the reality and makes up the “truths” due to the intention of government.
1984, regarded as the definitive dystopian novel, set in a world beyond our imagining. A world where totalitarianism really is total and all power is split into only three countries--Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania and 1984 is set in Oceania.People in Oceania called the government The Party, with which each person are subjected to 24 hour surveillance and the very thoughts are controlled to ensure the complete compliance. The leader of such system is the omnipresent and omnipotent Big Brother. In the book, psychological manipulation, information regulation, media and language control are all used to control the people of Oceania. The government uses psychological manipulation, which is brainwashing, to make the citizens think and believe what he or she is being told is the truth, without questioning and judging. For instance, during Two Minute Hate, emotions would cause the members of the outer party to scream at the screen at their “enemy” Goldstein, who went against Big Brother, their master. Although most of people did not even actually know Goldstein in person , they still followed the order of Big Brother since their minds were manipulated to accept the lies and believed that Big Brother only disseminated the truths.
The novel Brave New World shows that in order for a utopian society to achieve a state of stability, a loss of individuality, and the undoing of Mother Nature must occur. The government tried to successfully engineered these conditions produces a world where people are finally living "happily ever after," but at a great cost. The leader understood that the main element of what makes a person human and unique are the emotions in their minds, which they can control to some degree, because emotions are such a personal, intimate feeling of such overwhelming individual influence it is to no amazement that the government in Brave New World discourages these intense human characteristics. Emotions are thus controlled in Brave New World and every happiness, every deep feeling, every passion, is gone, which resulted in that people lost their ability to distinguish their true emotions from the manipulated indifference.
In conclusion, there was no certain answer for the question like what is truth because there was no one universal truth in this world.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school…it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. – Henry David Thoreau
I very like your ideas. And I also think that truth is very hard to define, and is also hard to measure, because there is no scales for it at all. Fact is not the truth, as you mentioned in this article. People believe in the fact, their surrounding, and their government. They believe that the information that the government provides is true, like the people in the book 1984. Their social thinking and the perception of truth are controlled by the government. In this case, truth is hard to discovered. However, the things that happen around them are also the truths, which are paradox. Maybe think is why truth is mysterious.
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ReplyDeleteI really like you connections to two novels, 1984 and The Brave New World, which both explicitly demonstrate you main idea, that there is no universal truth at all. Everything can be perceived, be manipulated or even be fabricated to be a truth depending on various situations in our contemporary lives. Sometimes I'm just wondering is the loss of individuality a necessary factors for a utopian society?
ReplyDeleteI think there is no Utopian society in our world but if people really wants to creat one, the loss of individuality have to be the great factor because I think Upotian society requires citizens there to have complete consensus about what they r doing and thinking.
DeleteI like your main idea that there is no universal truth, as there will always be nuances between individual beliefs, no matter how similar they are. And I really agree that when truth is so censored to an extent that even emotion is control, there exists no deep feelings. I believe that emotions are the truths and there exists no way to force ourselves to feel something involuntarily.
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