Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [224]

‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’ — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 224

Note

The deliberate paradox — literature ‘actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be’ — compresses the Party’s anti-memory project into one clause. The final definition ‘Orthodoxy is unconsciousness’ redefines a virtue as the absence of mind, stated flatly without irony.