Throughout his novel /1984/, Orwell maintains that in order to protect yourself from the
authoritarian, you must never abandon the truth.
The authoritarian wants absolute power over you, and one of the things they need to achieve
this is for you to abandon the truth.
How does holding on to the truth protect you from the authoritarian?
That’s what I’m interested in exploring, and as always, I’m gonna explore this idea
through a dialogue.
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The following is a conversation between a monk (M) and a student (S).
M: If you wanna protect yourself from the authoritarian, never abandon the truth.
S: Well, before I can even decide whether to abandon it or not, I need to know something:
what is truth?
M: Truth is the only way to get what you want.
S: What do you mean?
Can’t I lie to you in order to get what I want from you?
M: You can, but you’re not understanding what I mean by the truth.
We’re using the word differently.
Let me explain.
Let’s say I wanna walk to a particular point across the room.
There are several ways I can get to that point.
For one, I can walk directly to it.
Or, I can take an indirect path.
I can walk around the room until I eventually arrive at the point.
And the truth contains all of those ways.
/So truth is all of the ways you can reach your goal./
S: Hmm… all of the ways I can reach my goal.
M: Yeah.
So we could say the truth /is/ what works, and in fact, it is the /only/ thing that works!
So if you wanna get something from me and lying helps you get it, then that’s the
truth.
Truth isn’t something you speak.
It isn’t even something you act.
Rather, it’s more like a road between where you are and where you wanna be.
If you travel down that road, then you arrive at the point where you wanna be.
S: So truth is like a road.
Can you give me an example?
M: Sure.
So imagine a cup on a table.
Let’s say you wanna move that cup across the table.
There are two separate moments.
There’s the present: that’s where the cup is now.
And there’s the future: that’s where you want the cup to be.
Now there are several ways you can get that cup from where it is to where you want it
to be.
You can drag the cup across the table, you can lift it up and put it down, you can call
a friend and ask them to move it for you, and so on.
Now here comes the important part.
There are several /roads/ you can take to get the cup to where you want it to be.
But there are other roads, that if you take them, won’t get the cup to where you want
it to be.
For example, you can’t just knock the cup off the table and expect it to be where you
want.
When you take the right roads, which is to walk the truth, you get what you want, but
when you take the wrong roads, which is to walk falsehood, you don’t get what you want.
Do you understand now?
S: I think I do.
So when we began talking, you told me that if I wanted to protect myself from the authoritarian,
I should never abandon the truth.
What does it mean to abandon the truth?
M: If you reject evidence that contradicts your current beliefs, that means you have
abandoned the truth.
S: Why does the authoritarian want me to abandon truth?
M: So they can take advantage of you.
S: How will they take advantage of me?
M: By making you dependent on them.
Once you’re dependent on them, they can make you do and believe whatever they want.
S: But how will they make me dependent on them?
M: If you abandon the truth, you will have no choice.
S: How does abandoning truth make me dependent on them?
M: Because once you abandon truth, you reject any evidence that contradicts your current
beliefs.
And once you start rejecting evidence that contradicts your beliefs, you stop being able
to learn.
And once you stop learning, you start losing the ability to take care of yourself.
And once you start losing the ability to take care of yourself, you look to others to take
care of you.
And when others are in a position of care over you, they have immense power over you.
And it’s the authoritarians dream for you to be in their care, because once they have
you, they have every intention of abusing their power.
They’ll make you do and believe whatever they want.
S: Well, what if I hold on to the truth?
What happens then?
How will that protect me?
M: When you hold on to the truth, you acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your current
beliefs.
You use that contradiction to learn and expand your mind.
And as your knowledge grows, you get better and better at taking care of yourself.
And as you get better at taking care of yourself, you become more independent.
And when you become independent, no one can have absolute power over you.
Independence is the greatest threat to the authoritarian, because it undermines the source
of their power: dependence.
S: So dependence is the source of the authoritarian’s power?
M: Yeah.
Think about a baby.
A baby is completely dependent on its parents, and practically speaking, the parents have
absolute power over that baby.
But as the baby grows up, it becomes educated.
And as it becomes more and more educated, it learns to take care of itself.
It becomes more independent.
And this independence decreases the power that the parents have over it.
S: But education isn’t enough to be independent, right?
What if I lose my ability to move?
Then I’ll be dependent on others to take care of me.
M: That’s true.
Education isn’t the only cause of independence, but it is, perhaps, the one you have the most
control over.
Independence is a very easy thing to lose.
You may even spend your whole life educating yourself on how to do a certain job, and all
of a sudden, that job may no longer be useful to society.
And so you lose that job, and not just that, but your education may becomes useless.
And so you instantly go from independent back to dependent.
Independence is a very rare, fragile, and treasured thing, and it’s not a bad thing
to be dependent.
You might even say that we’re all dependent on each other to some degree.
We can’t even breathe without the trees.
But you should always keep this in mind: the more dependent you are on others, the more
power they’ll have over you.
And the authoritarian thrives among the most dependent people.
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In his novel /1984/, George Orwell consistently wrote about the importance of never abandoning
the truth, and I explored this idea more deeply through a dialogue.
When you abandon the truth, you stop being able to learn.
And when you stop being able to learn, you become less able to take care of yourself.
And when you become less able to take care of yourself, you become more dependent on
others.
And the authoritarian uses this dependence to gain absolute power over you.
But by holding on to the truth, educating yourself, and becoming independent, you become
a threat to the authoritarian.
You undermine the source of their power, which is dependence, and you become capable of liberating
yourself, and others, from their control as well.
But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion and understanding of Orwell’s words,
not advice.
Feel free to use this information however you like, and if you have a different take
on his words, I’d love to hear your perspective in
the comments.