WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. And my kid won't listen, but I want him happy. I lined the Orwell slogans up next to my own, and the structure matches. Nobody is making me do this, and I'm running doublethink in my own living room every day.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
And my kid won't listen, but I want him happy.
The first three are the Party slogans from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Drilled into the population by a totalitarian state.
The last one is just what I think, every day, in my house. Nobody is making me do this. I'm running it voluntarily.
Doublethink: holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and believing both of them.
What Orwell wrote about as a dystopian thought-control technique is being re-enacted in my living room, every evening.
And the person doing it (= me) genuinely believes each one, in the moment, fully.
Last week I wrote a column. "I was grabbing his failures before he could feel them." Don't snatch the failure away, let the kid live it, I wrote.
The week after, another one. "Just listen, kid. It's easier." The wise learn from history, so please just take the parent's hand-me-down version and skip the 30 attempts, I wrote.
Both of those, written by the same guy.
When I wrote each one, I meant it. Re-reading them now, I still mean both.
But laid side by side, they contradict each other. Plainly.
I started a list. It got long.
All of those, I mean both sides. Really mean "think for yourself." Really also mean "for the love of god, just listen to me."
Orwell would say: I'm holding both without bothering to build the bridge between them.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, doublethink is a tool of oppression. Drill in something like "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY" so people can't think straight anymore.
Household doublethink feels a little different, I think.
"I want him to be free, but also safe" is contradictory, sure, but both halves come from love. You can't just pick one and drop the other, right?
From the kid's side though, he gets both faces of the parent at once. Which has to be confusing as hell, honestly.
Writing two columns, I caught myself: I'd been self-fulfilling Orwell's prophecy.
People usually quote 1984 in a political context. But what if parenting is the same shape, on a smaller stage? The ruling class (= parent) pushing contradictory slogans on the ruled (= kid) every single day?
And, like I said: I really do believe both sides at the same time.
Under the banner of "for the kid's own good" and "because I love him," is it okay to run doublethink parenting?
The fact that I genuinely believe both sides is the part that scares me.
Maybe I should reread Nineteen Eighty-Four.
My house isn't Room 101. Probably.