r/conspiracy: Interesting piece George Orwell wrote about Flat Earth.

Interesting piece George Orwell wrote about Flat Earth.

1 2018-08-11 by joe_jaywalker

Notice how he acknowledges that his argument rests mainly on authority. Notice how he ridicules not flat earthers, but globe believers who cannot support their position. All in all he treats the topic with respect and careful consideration, not dismissiveness and derision.

172 comments

1 joe_jaywalker 2018-08-11

There is also a bit of a "flat earth clue" in 1984:

"But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny- helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited."

"Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How-could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness."

"But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals-mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of."

"Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing."

"But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach forever."

"What are the stars?" said O'Brien indifferently. "They are bits of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the center of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it."

1 TheUnmashedPotato 2018-08-11

You do realize O'Brien is literally working for the state, and is in the process of brainwashing the protagonist in that scene. It's literally the state saying they can manipulate you into believing anything they want. All up to that point, O'Brien has been lying to and manipulating Winston; he has been earning his trust just so he can capture him and program him to be a better servant of the state. O'Brien's other lines include him taunting Winston about how he's so much smarter in philosophy and how Winston shouldn't bother trying to think for himself.

You're taking the words of the villain of 1984 at face value; a villain that is about as close to a perfect representation of the oppressive state trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the common man as you can get.

1 joe_jaywalker 2018-08-11

Uh, yes, I do realize that. The point of this passage is obvious to all. The state can manipulate you into believing anything they want, yes. This includes the heliocentric solar system with spinny ball planets, obviously.

1 falsescorpion 2018-08-11

WTF? In the chapter you're referring to, Winston Smith is being tortured and brainwashed. O'Brien is manipulating Smith's mind, so that he will believe impossible things (as Party doctrine requires). At one point, the following occurs:

O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.

'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'

'Yes.'

And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed.

Your reading of this chapter appears to be that since the Party can make Smith believe nonsensical things, then the opposite of whatever the party says must be just as ludicrous.

That, to be blunt about it, is a fucking silly conclusion.

Unless you're going to say that by convincing Smith that O'Brien has five fingers and a thumb, O'Brien was actually revealing to Smith that we do in fact have five fingers and a thumb and there's a conspiracy to cover it up!