Thought Control

"Thought Control

The third possibility is that human thought will be deliberately and forcibly controlled and limited. This also has already happened a number of times in history; it is happening now. The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same, and they always work on the same principle. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.

Critics discussing the imposition of belief usually write as though every normal man hated it, the currents of thought throughout history set against it, and only a minority of brutal and Machiavellian masters attempted to enforce it. This is wishful imagination rather than cool analysis. How ever absurd a system of belief may look from outside, or in the perspective of history, it can often be made acceptable to the average man by several powerful factors of attraction. The most obvious of these attractions is the delightful sense of belonging to a group--a group which shares all its beliefs, which is superior to other groups, and which often calls itself "the Elect," "the One Party," "God's People," or even gods incarnate. An equally important attraction is the charisma of a leader, the inspiring and controlling influence of a personality which combines kindness and power, persuasion and authority: the Apostle, the Leader, the Mahatma. And, thirdly, such systems rest on a revelation, a series of statements or assumptions that cannot be questioned. For example, the Communists believe that historical change in the future is immutably destined to proceed along a pattern invented by Hegel and adapted by Marx. The Mormons believe that Joseph Smith of Palmyra, New York, was visited by an angel who showed him a set of golden tablets explaining that the inhabitants of America before Columbus were descended from the Jews, and that he read the tablets through a pair of golden spectacles which turned their "reformed Hebrew" writing into English. These beliefs are not to be treated as probable or improbable, possibly verifiable or possibly false: they are to be accepted as true, exactly as it is true that 2 X 2 = 4. The average man finds it a comfort to start from such a firm basis. And the fourth and final attraction about these systems is their claim to be complete. The single revelation contains everything. The answer to all life's problems is here, incapsulated in this Doctrine, this System--and in no other. Ever since we became human we have been puzzled. Therefore it is a profound happiness to find some teaching which seems to satisfy all our wonder and to answer all the questions we can ask about human existence.

Throughout the world, most people accept one of these closed systems of belief. And when a critic questions it, they hate him: not only because he is a choplogic, but because he is rejecting their revelation, and profaning the charisma of their leader, and attacking the group to which they belong. Usually they do not argue with him. That they leave to the trained expositors. Instead, like the Asiatic Greeks during St. Paul's mission to Ephesus, they assemble together and all with one voice for the space of about two hours cry out "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" or else, like the Jews when Paul spoke of preaching to the Gentiles, "Away with such a fellow from the Earth!"

It is easy, therefore, in fact it is often an expression of the will of the majority, to silence all questioning of established systems of belief and to regard critics as heretics, heretics as damned criminals. Throughout much civilized history most people have lived within such systems, approving the condemnation of heretics. Accordingly, it is perfectly possible that, within the next century or so, all human thought will be fitted into one or more new systems, with all the usual accompaniments of quasi-divine authority, group solidarity, and emotional satisfaction. Our present age of adventure, disorder, and revolution may well be followed by an era of rigid orthodoxy. Already we can see thoughtful men in several countries choosing orthodoxy either because they are frightened or because they wish to avoid what they believe is its only alternative, anarchy. The Captive Mind, a recent book by a Polish poet who was "brainwashed" by the orthodoxy [Communism] presently established in his own country, vividly describes the cynicism, despair, and schizophrenic madness that the process created in the inmates of that new prison. But, after a few increasingly docile generations had passed through orthodox schools and colleges, had read and written nothing but orthodox books, had been warned against the disgusting horrors of heterodoxy, and had grown used to the comfortable routine of acceptance, then, for a time at least, even the most intelligent might possibly settle down, like well-conditioned animals in a laboratory, to accept the invisible barriers that represent the glass walls and electric currents from which they once recoiled, to retreat from freedom of thought as from an intolerable, inconceivable exertion, and to enjoy the tame familiar process of solving the problems of their own brave new world, smaller but safer, meaner but tidier, than the vast incomprehensible universe."

Gilbert Highet, Man's Unconquerable Mind, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954, pg 57-60