-Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradic… Read Full Bio ↴dou-ble-think (n.):
-Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination:
-"Doublethink... is a vast system of mental cheating" (George Orwell).
Frustrated with society, religion, and the human condition, doublethink takes the opposites: loud and quiet, fast and slow, positive and negative, and brings them all together into their music and their lives. The bands aggression evolves with each harsh New England winter.. and overflows with an intense and uncompromising sound.
Nothing At All
doublethink Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I'm burning as i fall.
A whisper and a faded grin,
Wakes me up there's nothing left.
I'm drowning in the sea,
I'm drowning can't you see.?
Stripped of all my shame.
You will get the same.
A picture-perfect sight to see,
A picture-perfect life to leave.
I'm stumbling down the path.
I turn to see you laugh.
You're laughing, but i'm nothing.
Save me, i am nothing.
The lyrics to Doublethink's "Nothing At All" express the feeling of despair and hopelessness. The singer sees nothing but darkness and feels like they are falling. They hear a faint whisper and see a faded grin, but ultimately, there's nothing left. The repetition of the phrase "I'm drowning" conveys a sense of suffocation and an inability to escape their overwhelming problems. The singer feels stripped of their values and dignity and is resigned to the fact that others will receive the same treatment. They picture a picture-perfect life, but it is ultimately unreachable.
The lyric, "I'm stumbling down the path, I turn to see you laugh," suggests that the singer's struggles are only fueling the cruel laughter of others. They cry out for salvation, saying, "Save me, I am nothing," which brings to the forefront the sense of worthlessness that permeates the lyrics. The song captures the feeling of having lost all hope and being unable to find meaning in life.
Line by Line Meaning
I see nothing at all,
I am blinded by the overwhelming sense of emptiness and nothingness around me.
I'm burning as i fall.
I am consumed by the intense pain of my own downfall and failure.
A whisper and a faded grin,
A barely audible voice and a faint smile are the only things remaining around me.
Wakes me up there's nothing left.
This small glimmer of human connection is enough to remind me that there is nothing else left for me.
I'm drowning in the sea,
I am being swallowed by an ocean of despair and hopelessness.
I'm drowning can't you see.?
Do you not see how I am being consumed and suffocated by my own feelings of worthlessness?
I'm drowning, i'm nothing.
I am drowning not only in water, but in the feelings of emptiness and insignificance that consume me.
Stripped of all my shame.
I have been completely stripped of any sense of guilt or regret.
You will get the same.
This emptiness will also take hold of you, just as it has taken hold of me.
A picture-perfect sight to see,
I may appear to be a perfect and flawless image, but beneath the surface, I am crumbling away.
A picture-perfect life to leave.
Even though it may seem like I have the perfect life, I am ready to leave it all behind.
I'm stumbling down the path.
I am unsure of my direction and have lost my way.
I turn to see you laugh.
As I stumble, you find amusement in my misery.
You're laughing, but i'm nothing.
As you laugh, I am reminded of my own insignificance and worthlessness.
Save me, i am nothing.
My desperation has reached a point where I am begging for someone, anyone, to save me from the nothingness that surrounds me.
Contributed by David Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Yuki von Shirou
As a fan of 1984 and someone who has written a 10 page essay on it ("Ohh! 10 pAgEs, hOw iMpResSIve! Ah!):
Do I think that all of these examples are necessarily bad things? No. actually, some of them are pretty helpful.
Do I believe that this should continue? Not really with a few exceptions.
The Aunt Jemima name change was fine. I don't think it did any harm.
The girl getting angry at her parents for the BLM thing, I do believe she over-exaggerated, but she had the right to be a bit cross. (Keyword: a bit.)
Do I believe that those re-done book covers are harmless? Yes, as long as that's the ONLY thing you change. It's like the musical Hamilton. None of those people were actually people of colour, but no harm is done by using talented actors of colour to portray them, as long as you can separate fact from fiction.
The NFL team name change was fine. It did no harm.
The woman getting angry at the burning beds was going a bit far, I will say that.
Cancel culture is a bit dumb, I will say that.
Morally speaking, Hitler was far more evil than Trump, as a person who will never support either one of them, I will say that.
I know too little about the "1619" book (?), so I have no opinion on that.
Learning from our mistakes is fine. It's healthy. I will say it's better for humanity. We don't want to repeat the same mistakes again. If we can correct our wrongs and also teach lessons from our wrongs then we can move forward as a race and as a society.
Sincerely,
Yuki von Shirou
(Edit: I understand that this "article" may not make much grammatical sense, I apologise for that, but ironically I won't be changing it for I am lazy. 😅)
Eric Taylor
@Homo Sapiens Logicus I have a fan theory about 1984 that makes a lot more sense to me than what we learn in the narrative of the book.
In the book we learn, through "Goldstein" that the world is divided into three powers, Oceania, East Asia, and Eurasia. One of the other powers is always allied with Oceania and the other is at war with Oceania.
They ally and the enemy to Oceania changes from time to time but neither of the other powers ally with each other against Oceania, as you might expect if both of the other powers were independent governments.
Because they are not. The war is real in the sense that armies are fighting each other but it is fiction that it is a war being fought by opposing governments where each side is trying to win.
It is states explicitly that the war is not a fight over territory. No one side can beat the other even if two of the powers are allied against the other. Instead the war is there to absorb the lives and equipment produced by the people.
All three governments are nearly identical because the governments of East Asia and Eurasia are puppets of Oceania.
If Winston is right and it is around 1984 (35 years in Orwell's future from when he wrote the book) then the Revaluation played out this way developing from the social-political environment in the late 1940's. But it could have played out in the same way from a social-political environment like what existed in real life in the late 40's.
By the end of World War II the main political power of the world over the last 200 years was no more. It had been replaced by the United States who now had a superweapon no one could come close to matching.
Though the US had promised to share this superweapon with Great Britain in exchange for vital research given to the US when it seemed Britain would fall to the Nazis, the US broke this promise.
In our timeline the US never really took advantage of this power imbalance, but in Orwell's timeline they did.
In the late 40's or early 50's (Between 1948 and 1952) the US went through a revaluation that saw the fall of Demonocracy). Using their new bomb the US began a campaign of world domination (England fell in the mid 1950's in Winston's childhood) and before Winston reached adulthood the US had successfully taken over the entire world, becoming Oceania and installing puppet governments in what would become East Asia and Eurasia so that Oceania could have both an enemy to fight and an ally to fight with.
Julia is born at some point after this and grows up entirely in the world we see in 1984.
There is no real "Goldstein" he is an invention of "Big Brother" (who also doesn't exist).
The government has finally invented a system that can not be overthrown.
Perhaps in the future, many generations hence the government will become complacent and an overthrow may become possible.
There is hope that humans may one day again be free, but that day is not near. Until then, for the next several hundred years at least men will live as Winston has lived. Most of them being mindless automatons with a few every generation noticing their own dissatisfaction, they will be encouraged by inner party officials posing as fellow conspirators. Only to be arrested and tortured by those same inner part officials, just to show there is, in fact, no hope for revaluation.
But there is hope, even if that hope lay 1000 years in the future. The government will grow complacent, sooner or later.
Bleak, ain't it. Orwell didn't write about rainbows and unicorns. Such things didn't exist in the late 1940's.
But when you look at the chain of historical events that took place in Europe in the 20's and 30's that lead to the rise of Fascism, it's hard not to see what is happening today in the United States and not see a pattern repeating itself.
I wonder if, in 50 years our grandchildren might not look back at the Jan 6th, 2020 attack on the capital in the same way we look back on the Beer Hall Putsch.
Do you think they will ask, "Why didn't they see the pattern? Why didn't they stop it when they could?"
My fear is, they may not even learn of it, because the government then will have full control of history.
Tomsen Taylor
For the record: Orwell was a socialist.
The author that conservatives and right-libertarians love to champion as a great prophet of the "degradation of individual thought" was a full-blown democratic socialist who supported the Independent Labour Party. Orwell was a journalist during the 1936 Spanish Civil War reporting on the side of the Republicans (the Spanish left-wing anarchists and communists that fought against the facist military of Francisco Franco and his supporters), and he took a particular appreciation toward the anarcho-syndicalist system supported by labour unions and left-wing radicals, which is detailed in his book "Homage to Catalonia." After seeing suppression of the anarchists by both facists and pro-Stalin communists, he returned to London a staunch anti-Soviet socialist, advocating for a more egalitarian economic system rooted in his appreciation and caring towards nature and the natural world. (see also: Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit)
When Orwell spoke of the suppression of free ideas, he was not speaking of an accurate education of American history or book covers depicting characters with darker skin than people would assume; he was speaking of a genuine suppression and obstruction of political thought and human feelings enacted by the state or by capital/corporations. The broad political movement of "social justice" is not a suppression of thought or opinion orchestrated by the state, it is simply a general cultural and ideological shift, as every generation has their shifts that the previous generation sees as foolish and ignorant. Previous generations would be (and are) disgusted by the idea of gay marriage being legalized in America, or frustrated by the assertive and "anti-family" nature of some women in business and politics, and some would frightened by the prospect of black people free from the bondage of slavery. Every age has its own social reckonings, and in nearly all cases, the inherently conservative nature of the elder clashes with the progressive outlook of the young. To call this shift in cultural ideals suppression or totalitarianism is entirely ignorant and antithetical to the message Orwell professed in his work, which is that things are meant to be understood and not blindly rejected.
This being the case, liberal hypocrisy deserves scrutiny and criticism, particularly in its ability to divert attention from genuine matters to shallow gestures of patronization. The Democratic Party's capability to make shallow gestures of patronization instead of genuine political change towards the goals they profess is basically an axiom of the party. But to call that synonymous with the actions of a totalitarian regime is a product of both blowing the effect of social justice out of proportion and confusing Orwell's intelectualism for a rigid protection of the status quo, which as a socialist he hardly believed in, at least in terms of economics.
tl;dr : Orwell was an anti-Soviet democratic socialist with sympathy torward anarchist thought, and conflating his critiques of the Soviet Union and the state with the social justice movement is ignorant and antithetical to the point he was trying to make.
tl;dr² : Orwell was a commie and he is not on your side.
Julia C
Imagine writing a book to warn people about possible erosion of truth and freedom, only to have it turned into a how-to guide.
whitetroutchannel
well georgie boy new since his family had links to slavery so it would figure he writes about freedom
greenaum
Orwell wrote it, with the Soviet Union foremost in his mind, though he was informed about world politics, and certainly there's nothing wrong with the Russians that makes them innately any more totalitarian than any other group of people. McCarthyism in the USA followed soon after and that was equally terrifying in it's war against truth. He wrote it about the day he lived in, and recent history, with predictions where it might all end up going if it followed it's natural course.
He set it in the country he knew, so he could get the little domestic details right, an Englishman writing about Russia wouldn't have been able to write an everyman as convincing, or as relatable to an English-speaking audience. If it was set in Russia it's Anglophone readers would have seen it as a criticism of Russians, rather than all humanity, and our modern societies, they wouldn't have related to it as a warning meant for them.
For what it's worth, there are rumours that the Soviet political elite had a few translated copies produced, and kept for themselves (it was of course banned in the USSR). The rumours continue that Soviet leadership actually picked up a few tips from there, and actually did use it as a source of new ideas.
Adam Smith
@whitetroutchannel what are you saying?
JimFC Gregg
@greenaum "McCarthyism in the USA followed soon after and that was equally terrifying in it's war against truth."
Around 1950, the USA Communist Party started a campaign against "white chauvinism" within the Party. People were thrown out for trivial offenses, like serving watermelon for dessert when black people happened to be invited. (Which, BTW, actually did happen to Detroit firefighter Robert Pattinson in October 2017. He was fired for behavior deemed offensive and racially insensitive after bringing a watermelon to work on his first day on the job.)
The left is now applying that standard only to everyone on their right.
deepfriedsammich
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
-- George Orwell
Lotus Lancaster
“Gender is a fact.” -Dave Chapelle
Mosstone
People used to post memes about people that state the obvious
Vincent Perrelli
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
Scimitar Gaming
people believe in lies more easily than in truth. These are the times of deception