The Wisdom Letter #095
5 quotes from George Orwell (1903–1950)
✹ For today's Wisdom Letter, we have carefully curated five bite-sized quotes from the British novelist and poet, George Orwell (1903–1950).
Quote № 01:
“In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.”
— George Orwell
Quote № 02:
“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”
— George Orwell
Quote № 03:
“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”
— George Orwell
Quote № 04:
“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
— George Orwell
Quote № 05:
“No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.”
— George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia”
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✺ Today’s Questions
Three philosophical questions to foster your curiosity:
Question № 01:
In what ways might conservatism contribute to social stability and cohesion, and in what ways might it hinder social justice and equality?
Question № 02:
Are there aspects of human nature that make some people more susceptible to accepting or even desiring authoritarian rule?
Question № 03:
Is there a moral or ethical dimension to luck—do people "deserve" their luck, good or bad?
✽ Thank you for reading today’s Wisdom Letter.
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Thank you! You have activated the thinking mode. 🤔
This is a wonderful selection of quotes. Thank you!
They resonate for me, as I have been reflecting on the dominance of prevailing conventional wisdom. It seems that evolution has equipped human brains with the capacity to identify sources of authority, in the sphere of belief systems no less than in that of social power. Consequently, most people develop representations of epistemic authority, or reliable guides to what one should believe, early in childhood and continue to rely on those models throughout their lives. Very few people can even identify, much less question, their fundamental assumptions.
It seems that the normal way people distinguish between fact and falsehood is by deferring to the epistemic authorities to which they have delegated authorship of their primary beliefs. In other words, it's virtually impossible for most people to think for themselves.
Typically, a cardinal rule established by those who think within genuinely original frames of reference is that people should think for themselves. Naturally, this precept becomes assimilated along with the epistemic authority granted to the originators of influential doctrines, so the followers become convinced that, having successfully internalized the ideas of their intellectual leaders, they too have become original thinkers.
Awash in self-appointed experts, intelligent people have generally come to confuse the ability to select from among a multitude of opinions with the ability to critically analyze arguments and build a framework of first principles by which to distinguish between sense and nonsense.
An emperor with no clothes, masquerading as appareled by reason, thus rules the realm of foundational beliefs entrenched within most modern and enlightened minds. Enthroned at the root of each mind's hierarchy of accepted precepts sits a naked emperor shrouded in the garb of credulity, which always stylishly imitates the haut couture designs fashioned by prevailing purveyors of epistemic authority.