Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [308]

The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you – something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 308

Note

The full stakes of the panoptic epistemology laid out: the telescreen-frontispiece gaze ‘penetrates inside your skull.’ The Party’s solipsism—past and external world exist only in mind, mind is controllable—is pushed to the point where even gravity is doubtful. The final dangling ‘what then?’ refuses to offer an answer.