Sanity is not Statistical: 1984 and the Stoic Minority Of One.

Freedom is the freedom to say Russia Invaded Ukraine. If that is granted, all else follows.

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. … He fell asleep murmuring 'Sanity is not statistical,' with the feeling that this remark contained in it a profound wisdom."

Winston, part 2, 1984 George Orwell

I was listening to the audiobook of 1984 ahead of visiting "The Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth" when the above passage jumped out at me. It is the embodiment of Winston's original sin - the THOUGHTCRIME that damned him as soon as it occurred to him - that there is an objective reality beyond the control of the Party. A past that cannot be altered. A fact that remains true no matter how many deny it, or how loudly they do so.

It struck me strongly because, for the first time, I made the connection to this Stoic-attributed maxim -

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

Marcus Aurelius

NB: - I'll happily make use of this quote as I find it useful, but - and thanks are due to the Stoics of Reddit, when checking the attribution, it appears to come from being used by Tolstoy, who was using a Russian 'Meditations' that had been translated from the French, and the actual Greek to English translation means something more along the lines of "It is no ordinary matter that is at stake, said he, but it is a question of either madness or sanity." Hey-ho. I still think it's a sound maxim and aligns with Stoicism - which, by design, is not dogmatic.

Wintson knows and accepts what he cannot change. It is essentially inevitable that he and Julia will end up in the clutches of the THOUGHT POLICE - that they are as good as dead, and death is inevitable. The phrase "We are the dead" explores this throughout the book. Winston first uses it to express to Julia that they are bound to get caught and die -

"…from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. 'We are the dead,' he said."

It's used in "The Book" of the Brotherhood to pacify potential rebellion with the understanding that they are the dead; they can see no progress in rebellion during their lifetime.

Now Compare ‘we are the dead’ with:

"Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly." -

Marcus Aurelius.

Having accepted the inevitability of their torture and death, Winston and Julia still hold out that there is an internal reserve of humanity, of love, that no amount of torture can reach -

'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.' 'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you--that would be the real betrayal.' She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said finally. 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything--ANYTHING--but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.' 'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you."

This attitude, again, strikes me as Stoic. Epictetus discourses that his body you can put in prison, you can put his legs in chains, you can even cut his head off - but he retains control over his mind.

"Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower. 'I will throw you into prison.' My poor body, you mean. 'I will cut your head off.' When then have I told you that my head alone cannot be cut off?"

Epictetus, Discourses

Mass Delusion

The mechanic of the stability of Oligarchic Collectivism - the Totalitarian INGSOC system Winston lives under, is Collective Solipsism. They believe we live only in a world of perception, not a world of reality. The totalitarian control of INGSOC aims to assert control not just over every physical aspect of lives but over reality itself - to make 2+2=5 and to rewrite the past.

When Winston faces corrective brainwashing in part 3, he tries to cling to the fact that the 2+2=4 - even if everyone else insists, believes it is 5. Even if every history book has been rewritten, every scrap of evidence destroyed that ever said 2+2=4 - still, he believes, there is an objective truth that 2+2=4. That the past cannot be altered. It happened. Even if the Party can rewrite every record, it cannot change people's memories. They cannot change what happened.

But O'Brien explains to him that the past does not exist.

That the Party controls not only the records, but the Party - through the subjugation of the individual, by training people in Orthodox thought- to be GOODTHINKFUL can make people believe and genuinely remember the past in the 'correct' party way - even with contradictions.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

This is not just the rewriting of records, they mean by it literally the changing of reality. If all the records say Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, and all but of a few of the citizens remember and believe that Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, then from the party point of view the past has actually been changed - Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Thus is subjective sanity made Statistical. If everyone perceives the past to have occurred in such a way, and the records agree with them, then your dissent, your belief in an immutable past, is insane. Orthodoxy is Sanity. The only way to be sane is to join the ranks of the insane.

"You would not make the act of submission, which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one." -

O'Brien to Winston in Room 101, 1984

And, under torture and manipulation, Winston comes to accept this.

"He could not fight against the Party any longer. Besides, the Party was in the right. It must be so; how could the immortal, collective brain be mistaken? By what external standard could you check its judgements? Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought…"

Winston, Part 3, 1984

The Present President is seeking to control the past.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

1984, Part 1, Chapter 7

Quinta Jurecic examines in the Atlantic article “January 6 still happened” how the Trump administration seeks to rewrite the history of the January 6th Insurrection - not just dropping cases, but wiping websites.

Unlike in 1984, when the Party had complete control over the records, we see heroes in the judicial branch putting things on the public record beyond executive control and citizen archivers looking to download, keep, and preserve the evidence.

Quis Custodiet Archivistae?

However - that doesn't mean we are out of the woods. We still must fight to stop the oligarchy from controlling the narrative. Who serves up your search results - Google? who have shown themselves willing to comply with the Trump/Musk administration: changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Dropping DEI?

For the moment, a search of convictions from January 6th, for me outside the US anyway, still brings up information. But who knows what Google will show Americans in swing states? What will they show voters in 2028 who were too young to remember it first-hand? The top result is Wikipedia, a site President Musk lashed out at for contradicting him. It's no secret that under the platform decay of Enshittification, Google's search results are getting worse. And how many sites where data is archived will be run on Amazon Web Services?

The rewriting of history has become both easier and more difficult.

"History may be written bu the victors. But in the long term - perhaps the very long term - it is also written by the people who kept the documents."

Quinta Jurecic

When Winston gets a Newspeak order regarding a news story, he is told it is -

"DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD REFS UNPERSONS REWRITE FULLWISE"

“It is Very very bad, it refers to a person who has been purged, and who not only no longer exists, but never existed, please rewrite it completely"

He needs to get the physical copy of the paper from the records and rewrite it, put any scraps of paper in the MEMORYHOLE that will burn it, and new printed archives will be created.

Our digital reality, of course, opens up all sorts of additional powers. AI can rewrite, cross reference and fake millions of records at once, search engines already show different search results - in terms of the Party this would mean different realities - to other people at various times depending on thousands of demographic markers. Like in 1984, the past can be constantly rewritten - but there is not even a single coherent pseudo-record. It can be shaped to give different people the most convenient version of history depending on the desired behaviour. It was bad enough when it was just being done for profit, but as we enter an era of surveillance Oligarchy, it is being done to seize and retain power.

Be the Guardian of Truth

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…"

IF Rudyard Kipling

Save and share the facts, reject the 'alternative facts.'

Russia Invaded Ukraine.

Trump's 2016 inauguration crowd was small.

Russia Invaded Ukraine.

January 6th was an insurrection.

Russia Invaded Ukraine.

The 2020 US election was not stolen.

Russia Invaded Ukraine.

Trump is not a clever businessman.

Russia Invaded Ukraine.

Two plus two equals four.

Refuse to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

Freedom is the freedom to say Russia Invaded Ukraine.

If that is granted, all else follows.

Rod McMillan - More Wretch Than Sage