Doublethink (1): Vanishing imagination in the age of infinite images (#461)

How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you?

Assimilate. Ubiquitous. Everywhere all the time.

That little string of thoughts could almost be a lost footnote from George Orwell’s 1984.

George Orwell coined the word doublethink to describe a terrifying mental gymnastic:

The ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time

and to accept both as true.

It wasn’t a bug in his dystopian society; it was a feature. If the Party said 2 + 2 = 5, then 2 + 2 = 5 – and, somewhere deep down, you still knew it was 4. You simply learned to live with the contradiction.

Today, we don’t live in Orwell’s Oceania, but doublethink is alive and well.

It’s just wearing different clothes.

In Orwell’s world, doublethink was enforced from the outside: propaganda, slogans, and relentless surveillance.

But his deeper point was psychological.

Doublethink happens when:

• We know something is false but repeat it anyway.

• We hold two opposing ideas and refuse to reconcile them.

• We accept contradictions because challenging them is uncomfortable, costly, or lonely.

It’s not simply hypocrisy (saying one thing, doing another). Hypocrisy notices the gap and tries to hide it.

Doublethink is more insidious: it tries to make the gap disappear inside your own head.

Ubiquitous. Everywhere all the time.

That’s our media environment now. Not just news, but images: reels, feeds, story after story.

We scroll through war and breakfast photos, political scandals and cat videos, climate disaster maps and vacation selfies, all on the same glowing rectangle.

It’s never been easier to have the images provided for us:

• Can’t picture a place? Search it.

• Don’t know what to think? Wait 30 seconds – an influencer will tell you.

• Confused by a complex issue? A meme will compress it into something shareable, funny, and deeply incomplete.

Which brings us back to our question:

How are we to imagine anything

if the images are always provided for us?

One answer is: you don’t. You outsource imagination. You let someone else pre-visualize the world, and you just agree, or disagree, inside their frame.

Over time, that makes doublethink easier:

• I believe I’m an independent thinker… and I mostly repeat whatever my side of an argument posts online.

• I care about truth… and I will share things I haven’t fact checked if they fit my narrative.

• I’m against manipulation… and I let algorithms decide what I see all day.

  
  

Those are all small acts of doublethink. We hardly notice them because they’re considered normal.

You don’t need a dictator to practice doublethink.

In fact, we often do it to avoid discomfort:

• On technology

• I know my phone is designed to be addictive… and yet I tell myself I’m in complete control.

• On privacy

• I care deeply about privacy… and yet I click Accept All Cookies without reading anything.

• On information

• I want nuance… yet I only consume short, emotional, oversimplified content because I’m tired.

And at a larger scale:

• We must protect the planet… but any serious change to my lifestyle feels unrealistic.

• We must have respectful, civil discourse… as long as the other side goes first.

The point is not to scold ourselves. It’s to notice how easily we live with contradictions, especially when a constant stream of images, slogans, and takes makes that easier than slowing down to think.

If doublethink thrives on pre-packaged reality,

then imagination is one of its natural enemies.

When you imagine, you:

• Step outside the images you’re given.

• Reconstruct events from different angles.

• Try on other people’s perspectives.

• Ask: What if the story I’m seeing is incomplete?

Imagination doesn’t mean fantasy or denial. It means the ability to hold a mental space that’s not already filled by someone else’s pictures.

There are some small, practical ways to resist doublethink and reclaim imagination:

• Pause before you share

• Ask: Do I know this is true? Or do I just like that it exists?

• Seek the longer version

• If you’ve only seen the meme, the screenshot, or the 30-second clip, search for the full context.

• Write your own description

• Before you Google an image of a place, try to describe how you think it might look, then compare. Notice what surprised you.

• Hold one idea at a time

• When you sense a contradiction brewing (I support X, but I also believe Y, which undermines X), don’t rush past it. Sit with it. That discomfort is often where real thinking begins.

• Talk to someone who disagrees – and listen

• Not to change your mind necessarily, but to see how differently the same world can be framed.

Assimilation vs. Awareness

Assimilate is a powerful word. It can mean:

• To absorb and make something part of you.

• But also, to disappear into a larger mass, to lose your distinct shape.

With information, both are happening at once. We assimilate endless streams of data, but in the process, we risk being assimilated by them – our thoughts, language, even our emotional reactions start to follow familiar, pre-loaded scripts.

Doublethink loves that. If your reactions are automatic, you’re less likely to notice contradictions. You can simultaneously believe that:

• Your group is always the victim,

• And also, always the hero,

• And never really responsible for anything that goes wrong.

  
  

It’s emotionally comfortable.

It’s intellectually dangerous.

Life’s Funny, Isn’t It?

This line matters, because there’s a gentle humility in it. Doublethink is rigid and joyless; it cannot tolerate humor or paradox. But real life is full of paradox:

• People can be kind and selfish at the same time.

• Corporations can do good and harm in the same breath.

• We can be brave and afraid, wise and foolish, generous and petty.

  
  

Not all contradiction is doublethink.

Some of it is simply the messiness of being human.

The difference?

• Doublethink tries to pretend contradictions aren’t there – or insists they’re perfectly fine because the Party, the tribe, the algorithm, or my side says so.

  
  

• Honest living says: Yes, this is contradictory. Let’s look at it. Let’s own it. Let’s see what needs to change.

Humor, curiosity, and a bit of self-mockery are surprisingly strong defenses against doublethink. It’s hard to unquestioningly worship a slogan if you can also laugh at it.

Rick’s Commentary

We don’t get to opt out of the modern world.

The images will keep coming. The feeds will keep scrolling.

The temptation to let others simplify reality for us isn’t going anywhere.

But we do get to choose how we meet it.

• We can notice when we’re starting to believe two incompatible things because it’s easier that way.

• We can resist the urge to outsource our imagination completely.

• We can create small spaces in our lives – in reading, conversation, creativity – where the images are not always provided for us, and we have to build the inner picture ourselves.

  
  

Maybe that’s the quiet, everyday rebellion Orwell hoped for?

Not heroic martyrdom, but ordinary people refusing to flatten their minds into slogans.

In a world where everywhere all the time is the default, choosing to think – slowly, honestly, and imaginatively – is one of the least flashy and most radical things we can do.

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