Doublethink is a concept of George Orwell's novel 1984.

[tony134340]

I think you're being selective in the way you'd like to view lying and deceiving. Perhaps I'm not explaining myself well enough, but I can assure you that I am seeing the whole truth, and it is beneficial to everyone.

But I get the feeling that you are dead set and planted firm on this ambiguous middle ground and have already made up your mind. Maybe things aren't always black and white, but that doesn't mean that everything is a million shades of gray. I can tell you with certainty that lies and deceit (and just plain old ignorance) are the problems with American society, and the world. I don't need empirical evidence, I can see it and hear it all on my own. And so can you. I'm not being facetious or outrageous when I tell you that you can trace most problems back to lies, whether it be lies to yourself (denial) or to a friend, or to a whole group of people.

See, you see deceit as a 'problem'. When I just view it as an everyday occurrence. The truth can bring problems also. If you saw all truths, you would be overwhelmed. There's starving kids out there, people that for some reason, lack the facilities to look out for themselves. But you don't care, right? I'm not saying I care either. It's just that we see the truths which are beneficial and relevant for us. You do the same when you only speak of or care for only the things or people relevant to you. And that is what a lie is, and it is also truth, as in, you are living as what is true for your own benefit. We all live it. You want to distinguish deceit and truth when I'm trying to show you how we're all a part of both of them no matter how hard we try to escape them. There is no right view, is what I'm saying. No view more valid than any other.

There is always hypocrisy, always two sides which make up a whole. And those two sides collide; they can be as ambiguous or as distinguished as you like. You can find where the muddle and you can set some arbitrary border or definition but as I like to say, the universe is a gray, gooey place. It is not as binary as you may think. There is always an inter-connection between what seems two separate entities.

 

[Brilliant!]

See, you see deceit as a 'problem'. When I just view it as an everyday occurrence. The truth can bring problems also. If you saw all truths, you would be overwhelmed. There's starving kids out there, people that for some reason, lack the facilities to look out for themselves.

You aren't making sense. You said the truth brings problems, and then give such examples as starving children and the mentally ill as though the truth was the reason for those problems. That's called a circular reference, and it does not compute.

But you don't care, right? I'm not saying I care either. It's just that we see the truths which are beneficial and relevant for us. You do the same when you only speak of or care for only the things or people relevant to you. And that is what a lie is, and it is also truth, as in, you are living as what is true for your own benefit. We all live it.

This sounds a bit like projection. It would be best for you to understand that you are speaking from your own experiences. You're trying to deduce what I see from what I've said, but you're doing it with so little information that your attempt is almost comical. I don't simply "see" those truths that are convenient for me. I don't ignore the starving peoples of X or the impoverished peoples of Y because it fits my view of reality. Instead, I am very interested in these things and attempt to understand why things are the way they are. If a people is impoverished and suffering starvation because they've been exploited, I care deeply. It's a great injustice. But, if a people is suffering that fate by their own hand, or because they happen to call swamplands "home", I couldn't care less. I've considered, categorized, and moved on.

You want to distinguish deceit and truth when I'm trying to show you how we're all a part of both of them no matter how hard we try to escape them. There is no right view, is what I'm saying. No view more valid than any other.

What your showing me is that you're stuck in some morale limbo. The truth is exactly what is. The truth is reality. A lot of the time, we don't have all of the information to understand a situation completely, but that doesn't mean there isn't a specific truth to it. In these situations, we can't be too hasty to think that we know everything about them, having viewed only one angle of something complex. If you fail at this, then you have become deceitful, corrupt. You've concluded that you understand a complex situation in its entirety, and will pass the message on, corrupting just more minds than your own. This is the basis of unintentional deceit, a completely negative part of life, which is wholly unnecessary but still inevitable.

 

[tony134340]

You aren't making sense. You said the truth brings problems, and then give such examples as starving children and the mentally ill as though the truth was the reason for those problems. That's called a circular reference, and it does not compute.

I didn't say the truth brings problems, I meant the problems are the truth. They are inherent in the construct of the universe.

This sounds a bit like projection. It would be best for you to understand that you are speaking from your own experiences. You're trying to deduce what I see from what I've said, but you're doing it with so little information that your attempt is almost comical. I don't simply "see" those truths that are convenient for me. I don't ignore the starving peoples of X or the impoverished peoples of Y because it fits my view of reality. Instead, I am very interested in these things and attempt to understand why things are the way they are. If a people is impoverished and suffering starvation because they've been exploited, I care deeply. It's a great injustice. But, if a people is suffering that fate by their own hand, or because they happen to call swamplands "home", I couldn't care less. I've considered, categorized, and moved on.

Starving kids are a reality, a truth. But if you had kids, you would care for them more, make them a priority. And don't tell me it would be your duty. You don't *have* to do anything you don't want to, but instinct, at least for a lot of us, tells us to care for us and our own more. Our reality, or truth, is put on priority. We deceive ourselves by only prioritizing that one side just as we could argue someone may prioritize not hurting their wife's feelings if she were standardly overweight and asked about it. If you'd stop picking apart everything I say and viewing it more abstractly instead of word for word, there's going to be some things you'll miss.

What your showing me is that you're stuck in some morale limbo. The truth is exactly what is. The truth is reality. A lot of the time, we don't have all of the information to understand a situation completely, but that doesn't mean there isn't a specific truth to it. In these situations, we can't be too hasty to think that we know everything about them, having viewed only one angle of something complex. If you fail at this, then you have become deceitful, corrupt. You've concluded that you understand a complex situation in its entirety, and will pass the message on, corrupting just more minds than your own. This is the basis of unintentional deceit, a completely negative part of life, which is wholly unnecessary but still inevitable.

I'm not even going to get into this. I'm not even saying you're wrong, I'm just condoning a view point to endorse understanding. We can argue forever even to the definition of truth and be stuck in this same argument over little details. If all you want to know is to know you're right, of course, you are. But if right = logical, then everyone's view is right. It all comes from a logical root if the system it is based upon is logical. I can't think of any mathematical reason why not. I'm not trying to distinguish anything, I'm just trying to bring together because so many people in this world try to tear apart and dinstinguish because they fear the other side. When you learn and are willing to learn, you don't fear the other side and you see it just as valid as the other. You're trying to distinguish truth and deceit. You think truth is the ultimate objective when truth is not truth without deceit. Academics are not that without something for which to learn, which hides from you. Some people want to put their own local truths on a platter and prioritize it, that's all fine and natural. It's pretty much needed to survive. But don't think there's any other ways to see reality other than your own local view.

 

[Loren Booda]

Could doublethink be described as a psychological complementarity?

In his book "At Home in the Universe," John Archibald Wheeler paraphrased Bohr's definition of complementarity (page 18):

"The use of certain concepts in the description of nature automatically excludes the use of other concepts, which however, in another connection are equally necessary for the description of this phenomenon."