True Enough 1.)

True Enough discusses the importance of experience, and how no one can ever remove him/herself from any situation. Two people may be able to watch the same football game, but the account of the event afterwards will never be exactly the same. People are shaped by everything around them. Every image, dialogue, emotion, etc. is catalogued for future reference. Nothing can be felt or seen objectively.  The past never leaves us. The idea of not having an identical reality is frightening, I think, when first confronted with it. I admit that having first read about the jumbling mess of realities was disconcerting. But my reality is never exactly the same anyone else’s. Every experience in someone’s life changes him or her; they cannot erase any experience in order to inhibit subjectivity in the future. I think True Enough is a little heavy, and I am rather sick of reading about the Swift Boat Veterans, but I think the premise is a valid one. Every truth is true, probably, but not every truth belongs to everyone else. We can watch the same football game and none of us will come away having seen the same game. Our truths are true enough for us.

Humanity’s Thought Death: A Meditation on George Orwell’s 1984

It is by holding onto the individual thought, the idea that my single mind makes a difference, which makes me human. Because my mind is my reality, my reality is real. I have a past that exists because I remember it. I remember that I am alive and thus legitimize my reality. However, without words needed to express the idea that I have my own reality and my own thoughts, I cannot share my personal reality. I cannot affirm that it exits.

In George Orwell’s 1984, O’Brien and the Party wield the power of language. If no one has a way to express his or her individual thoughts, the thoughts cannot exist. The existence of the thoughts themselves, which could be arrived at in ways besides words, would not matter, because nothing could happen because of them. The power exists in the individual, because the individual is capable of turning thoughts into actions. However, those thoughts need a method to be understood. Looks and glances do not suffice as knowledge.  The Party’s control of language is one of an “almost foolproof instrument” (319).  Words are needed for action- to order, to command, to understand. Without words, without the proper words to execute the proper actions, nothing can happen. The Party can control the actions of the masses by limiting the ways in which they can communicate within their own ranks. People cannot revolutionize or rebel if they cannot share their ideas. If they cannot share their thoughts, they can never become actions.

O’Brien explains that the Party controls matter by controlling the mind. “Reality is inside the skull,” he tells Winston (274). The mind controls reality. Reality is arrived at only because of thought. When the mind is not given the proper tools, it does not grow. It cannot support ideas other than those of the Party. The Party controls the mind by controlling the language. Ingsoc butchers not only words, but also the thoughts that accompany those words. Simplification of language is also the simplification of thought through the limits placed upon word interpretations. Winston reasons that in order to keep a secret, you must “hide it from yourself” (291). Ingsoc enables you to hide secrets from yourself, in that they can remain in your “inner heart”. However, those thoughts are also trapped there. They can never be expressed, and thus they can never be acted upon. They may as well not exist, since one would not know how to explain the stirrings in his or her own skull. The limits of language in Winston’s society, and in the future, also limit thought. Thought requires a construct. Thought needs a manner in which to be understood. The limited thought results in limited action, and the Party remains in control. They cannot be challenged because there are not any words for what they are doing wrong, or how they have altered anything like memory or thought. The flaws in the society they have built cannot be pointed out, because the appropriate language does not exist.

In the beginning of the novel, Winston thinks pro-Brotherhood thoughts. He is in favor of an anti-Party establishment. Winston can remember remembering things. He has the mental capacity for such memory because he has the vocabulary in which to explain himself. His reality is inside his skull, but he can formulate opinions and deduce things from his environment and what he sees because he can think in words. The thoughts he has will continue to exist after his death, but it will become more difficult for those words to become actions. The words will not exist any longer. There will probably not be another room above a shop to escape telescreens. There will be no rebellious Julia, because even though she is fonder of rebellious actions than rebellious thoughts or words, she will not be able to act out any of her rebellious thoughts. She would not be able to explain them, even to herself, and therefore could not turn rebellious thoughts into rebellious actions.  The inner heart will be safe, for a while, until the mind convinces the heart that what words it does have access to are all that matters. The mind knows nothing else, and thus convinces the inner heart. The Party’s influence will be seen in thought, not only in mindless action and following.

Winston originally agrees with the sentiment that remembering is real, that memory legitimizes reality. He remembers his mother and sister. But later they become classified as “false memories, products of self-deception” (288). O’Brien violates him by damaging the sanctuary of his mind. For a while, he still hopes that his heart will stay uncorrupted. “In the old days,” he said,” he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity. Now he had retreated a step further: in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate” (290).  The Party’s use of doublethink convinces Winston that things have never happened. What is has always been. The past was exactly like the present. He cannot go unnoticed any longer in the eyes of the Party. The appearance of conformity is not enough. He must think as the Party. The Party is so all-encompassing, that the Party will eventually be all that exists. Since it is all that can be remembered, it must be all that exists. The only words that exist are products of the Party. The language is a product of the Party. Therefore, thoughts become products of the Party, as well.

The Party’s influence on humanity will eventually be that the individual reality no longer matters. Instead, the collective thought will control the manner in which the individual is able to think. The Party sets the terms, and the personal reality changes with the limits placed upon it via language control. Ingsoc kills the human drive by eliminating the need to remember. The Party alters the past and controls everything in the past through changing it. Memory does not exist any longer, except through the Party. What is has always been. The Party controls language, and thus the reality present in individual thought. 

Financial Goals: Graduation

College admissions offices make it a point to harp on the increasing numbers of applicants. Enrollment may be steadily rising, but the percentage of graduates has not.

It is the issue of graduation that stands in the way of the financial education, because so many college students do not graduate. Kids work more hours, attend school part-time, and sometimes- eventually not at all because their lives become consumed with, well, life. Relationships and jobs and children and mortgages move to the forefront, and college graduation becomes less important.  This lack of graduates leaves the world with fewer trained workers for more high-skill jobs, and dwindling incomes.

Allegedly, the best way to prepare the US against another 2008 financial crisis is through education. I mean the kind that involves money management, although simply graduating college ensures a sort of “experience and learning ability” that allows students to manage their money.

Institutions were mostly to blame for the recent “financial mayhem” but it was the adults who bought unaffordable mortgages and dug themselves further into debt.  At the moment, countries everywhere are trying to figure out how to educate school age children about money so that in their adult lives, they will have been given the tools to manage their money, and will avoid another financial crisis.

http://moneyland.time.com/2011/09/28/simply-finishing-college-offers-the-best-chance-to-gain-financial-education/?iid=pf-main-lede

Cash or Charge. Actually, that iPhone will do.

We keep hoards of information on our electronic devices. Bank statements. Work samples. Financial spreadsheets. Access to our credit card and email information. Even our culture is present on our smartphone, tablet, e-reader, and/or laptop. We store our libraries, movies, home videos, pictures and documents. Never mind just our contact lists, we have the majority of our lives on the “cloud”.

McAfee recently estimated the cost of our digital lives to be about $55,000. That value is only going to increase. It has become almost frighteningly easy to upload personal data onto digital devices. Not only are they used like desktops, but today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computer that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. They are also less often equipped with security and are highly vulnerable to malware and identity theft since they are used in more places on more networks. And people care very much for the newest Apps, which can offer easy access for hackers.

I know I’m focused on economics, but I think a large part of business is now deeply rooted in technology and in the ways it affects our markets. Attaching a number to our digital lives is like attaching a number to the lives we lead on the Internet and whether or not there are laws that govern the access of our private lives.  Going back to our previous discussion, Google could control the world.  Yahoo can actually delete people’s emails.

McAfee conducted the survey- and they’re offering a protection plan for just the sort of vulnerability they’re describing.  McAfee All Access ($99.99) is designed specifically against malware and viruses for all your Internet-connected devices.  It appears that our $55,000 is online someplace, and it now requires its own insurance.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/28/your-digital-life-its-worth-nearly-55-000-and-its-at-risk/ 

True Enough

Especially considering our Google/1984 discussion, I am particularly interested in the paradox of technology and globalization. The world has been rendered so small, but at the same time- there no longer seems to be one, single reality. We live in a society that allows us to pick and choose our news, unlike Winston’s 1984, and we are governed by different passions to pass along news to others, or what information we want to digest ourselves. We have the capability to choose what reality we want to subject ourselves to.

I am particularly intrigued by True Enough’s concept of American niches, and why we look for what we look for, especially online, and whether or not we find anything. There’s a huge amount of reality readily available on the Internet, but there is no way to be aware of all of it, or even recognize all of it (or any of it) as truth.