Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
Talk about a chilling experience
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: ""marcwordsmith"" ---by the way, by and large, I don't think JU was lobbed softballs, but I thought his "apology" post contained more sanctimony than remorse, and as I said, I was surprised no one called him on the "degrading to you and me" business. I should have done it myself, since it bugged me at the time.
--- End quote ---
In retrospect, that would have been a good point to bring up and show him the folly of that type of thinking. To tell you the truth, it flew right over my head. There was a lot going on during that conversation.
Stripe:
"The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'. "
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Remember sitting in there - in the front rows, battering your brain trying to come to terms with the vileness of your own self? Trying to adopt the "Seed-think" statements about yourself? How many drugs you used, how much illicit sex you had? How awful you were?
If the Seed could get you to amend your past - to adopt a lie as your past, then accepting their truth about you made being interred there some how, just a bit easier. But only in the short-run. As a way of life, it fails misreably every single time.
Stripe:
"The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and -- though the principle was never clearly stated -- permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts were largely successful.
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Permission to date? Sex Raps where sexual behavior was made nasty, shameful and almost criminal? Contact football games that acted only to excite, control and extinguish sexual energy? How weird is that? Weird, indeed. Real Seedlings really did earn the nickname "Zombie". And that was something held up as normal behavior to be emulated....
How many Seedlings were "lucky" enought to be paired off in Seed-approved relationships and marriages? I'm sure some seed kids might truly might have been in love, but to submit oneself to "official sanctioning" of something so intimate and joyful because we believed that we did not know better - that we could not pick for ourselves, that's really sad.
When I think of things this way, I actually feel sorry for the John Underwood-types around here. They might have beat kids asses and they were vile, cruel persons, but I suspect there's no amount of self-flagellation they won't endure to keep their "dreams" alive. The stress of carrying on that kind of self-delusion must be wicked - mind-splitting, even.
GregFL:
I hit puberty while in the seed. Those sex raps were mind numbing. When I got out I went on a quest to get some sex. (haha). Unfortunately, it took a little while.
Those people who stayed around for years and years during their sexual formative years and never were allowed to even think about sex without internalizing 'problems' and 'bad thoughts' and thinking staff was reading their 'dirty thoughts' ..well I feel for them. I truely do.
NOT12NOW:
I re-read it an was blown away by the similarities. Didn't have to read far before I found something that reminded me of the seed. The telescreen, the contraptions everywhere that watching and spoke to them.
"Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat though the words were still distinguishable....The telescreen, it was called could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely."
"The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained with in the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any give moment. How often, or on what system, the thought police plugged in on any indidual wire was guesswork. It was even conceiveable that they watched everybody all the time.. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overhead , and,...every movement scrutinized."
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