Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Captain Jack channels Londo

achievement of the Party to have produced a system of thought in which both
conditions  can exist  simultaneously. And upon no other intellectual basis
could  the dominion of  the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and
to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For
the  secret of  rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility
with the Power to learn from past mistakes.
     It  need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink
are  those  who invented doublethink  and know that it  is a vast system of
mental  cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what
is  happening are  also those who are  furthest from seeing the world as it
is.  In  general, the greater  the understanding, the greater the delusion;
the  more intelligent, the less sane. One clear illustration of this is the
fact  that  war hysteria increases in  intensity as one rises in the social
scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the
subject  peoples  of the disputed  territories. To  these people the war is
simply

the pools under the willow trees.
     The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With
what  seemed a  single movement  she tore  off her  clothes and  flung them
disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire
in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant
was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside.
With  its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a
whole  system of  thought, as  though  Big Brother  and the  Party and  the
Thought  Police  could all be  swept into  nothingness by a single splendid
movement  of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips.
     The  telescreen  was  giving  forth  an  ear-splitting  whistle  which
continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen,
getting-up time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed --
naked, for a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons
annually, and a suit of pyjamas was 600 -- and seized a dingy singlet and a
pair  of  shorts that were  lying across a  chair. The Physical Jerks would
begin  in  three minutes.  The next moment  he was doubled  up by a violent
coughing  fit  which nearly  always attacked  him soon  after waking up. It
emptied his lungs so 

groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over
again.  Of the  three  groups,  only the  Low  are  never even  temporarily
successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that
throughout  history  there has  been no  progress of  a material kind. Even
today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better
off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening
of  manners, no  reform or  revolution has  ever brought  human equality  a
millimetre  nearer.  From the point of  view of the Low, no historic change
has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
     By  the late  nineteenth century  the recurrence  of this  pattern had
become  obvious to  many observers. There then rose schools of thinkers who
interpreted  history  as  a  cyclical  process and  claimed  to  show  that
inequality was the unalterable law of human life. This doctrine, of course,
had  always  had its adherents, but  in the manner  in which it was now put
forward  there  was a  significant  change.  In the  past  the  need for  a
hierarchical  form of  society had  been the  doctrine specifically  of the
High.  It  had been preached  by kings and  aristocrats and by the priests,
lawyers,  and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally
been  softened by promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the
grave.  The Middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made
use  of  such terms as freedom,  justice, and fraternity. Now, however, the
concept  of  human brotherhood began to  be assailed by people who were not
yet  in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the
past the Middle had made revolut