the Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and
to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For
the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility
with the Power to learn from past mistakes.
It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink
are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of
mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what
is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it
is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion;
the more intelligent, the less sane. One clear illustration of this is the
fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social
scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the
subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is
simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like
a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to
them. They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they
will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the
same manner as the old ones. The slightly more favoured workers whom we
call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of t