Social pathologies, or the social pathologist undoubtedly. Orwell developed his Newspeak dictionary in order to explain the cognitive phenomenon he observed about him with regard to those committed to the left. Thats not to say that the cognitive phenomenon cannot be on the right, since many mass movement type ideologies are logically contradictory and to sustain themselves their adherents must engage themselves in mental gyrations to upkeep their belief. Orwell needed the Newspeak as part of the apparatus of totalitarian control, something forced on to an unwitting and unwilling public. It never occurred to Orwell that the masses would never care as long as their animal desires were being provided for. The party, much like the Juvenal before them, recognized that the public would not much care about the higher concepts such as truth or freedom as ling as their bread and circuses, in the form of the cynical statement Prolefeed were supplied. In fact, trying to pry them away from such materialities or ‘truth’ would likely cause them the to support the existing regime. This means that a capitalist totalitarianism, with its superior ability to provide for material goods would be harder to dislodge than a socialist one.
Take for example the notion of Doublethink, the idea of keeping two mutually opposing ideas in one’s head without noticing the difference. Orwell saw this mode as an aberration with regard to normal thought but never realized the fact that this was in the common man a mode of cognition. Or the concept of Bellyfeel, which Orwell states,
Consider, for example, a typical sentence from a Times leading article as “Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc”. the shortest rendering one could make of this in Oldspeak would be: “Those whose ideas formed before the revolution cannot have a full understanding of the principle of English socialism.” But, this is not an adequate translation…only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word bellyful, which implied a blind, enthusiastic and casual acceptance difficult to imagine today.
“Gut-Instinct”, more than reason, is mass man’s mechanism of political orientation. This is why Fascism and Socialism is better understood as appeals to the gut-brain rather than logically and empirically justified modes of political thought. Totalitarian regimes cannot solely rely on oppression for their survival, they also need to rely on some of cooperation amongst the population, and they bring this about by exploiting the cognitive miserliness of the average man. Orwell, just like many other left-wing intellectuals never really appreciated the mindset of just outside the proletariat that he was. His fundamental misunderstanding of Newspeak lay in the assumption of rationalist fallacy, which assumes that the average man is rational when it counts, but the problem lies in the fact that for the average man cognitive miserliness is the norm. the problem is that a lot of mainstream conservative thought is based on this premise, which in turn undermines its own survival and helps feed the leftist beast. Any conservatives that believes in the right of the conservative miser to choose is a dead man walking. This criticism of the prole-mind is not based on any snobbery, rather it is of functional basis. Competency, not class should be the eligibility for decision-making, and thus no wonder left needs the stupid to survive.
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