Hi Lisa,Thank you for your illuminating pool of insights on the “dominator system” and “dominator paradigm.” I reflected on your comments all week-especially while walking to work over Vancouver’s Cambie Street Bridge.
Fear and punishment seem to be the dominant emotions fostered by dominator systems.
Orwell’s Oceania-a caricature of the ultimate exploitative and oppressive system-exemplifies the extreme end of organizational pathology. I thought it might be instructive to construct a profile of Oceania-its mission, vision, values and structure. As the example of the Chloe Factories (1999) shows, many organizations may not be too far from Oceania.
Organization of Oceania
Thesis: Organizations exhibit a propensity to malignant narcissism and radical mental manipulation.
Key Concepts:
§ Ingsoc-the prevailing philosophy.
§ Newspeak-the official written language of the Party
§ Doublethink-the officially induced trance state
§ Crimestop-party-protective stupidity
§ Goodthinkful-thinking in Party-approved ways
§ Blackwhite-unconditional obedience and unstinting abhorrence of enemies
The Psychological Profile of the Party
Organizational Vision
“A boot stamping upon a human face forever!”
Organizational Mission
1) “To conquer the whole surface of the earth”
2) “To extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”
Organizational Objectives
• Preserve hierarchical structure
• Preserve oligarchic privilege and power
• Protect the image of Big Brother as omnipotent and infallible
Organizational Climate
§ Dominated by fear and fanatical hatred of the “enemy”
Organizational [Psychopathic] Personality
§ Engrossed in its own image and impression management
§ Obsessed with the veneration and infallibility of Big Brother
§ Consumed with control
§ Contemptuous of the physiological, emotional, and spiritual needs of the people
§ Cruel
Organizational Program:
§ Eradicate all human qualities such as love, friendship, joy of living, laughter, curiosity, courage, and integrity
§ Execraete declared “enemies”
§ Torture and eliminate “dissidents”
§ Train children to place loyalty to the Party above human relationships
Organizational Philosophy (Ingsoc):
§ Ingsoc has as its aim the preservation of power at all costs and even wages war simply to preserve its hierarchical structure-to the extent of bombing its own citizens.
§ All intelligent citizens are conditioned through fear to accept its worldview.
Organizational Technologies
§ Telescreen: utilized to monitor, control and discipline citizens; Members live from birth to death under the watchful eye of the Thought Police.
Organizational Culture
§ Crimestop [inability and unwillingness to think uncomplimentary things about the Party]. Crimestop is “protective stupidity,” in that it shields the Party from scrutiny. It is stopping a thought before it gets started, that is, at the threshold of consciousness.
Manifestations of Crimestop:
• the power of not grasping analogies
• failing to perceive logical errors
• misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc
• being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction
§ Goodthinkful– habitually thinking and acting in Party-approved ways
§ Newspeak– is the official written language of Oceania. Though no one speaks Newspeak in 1984, it is steadily becoming the lingua franca of the New Order. Newspeak is not a medium of communication, per se, but, rather, a vocabulary intended to narrow the range of consciousness and to make thoughtcrime [any thought diverging from the official philosophy] impossible. Its purpose is not to facilitate communication but to enforce submission, as is the case with jargon in present organizations.
Newspeak is the language of the lie. Newspeak is carefully crafted to focus the range of thought, to enforce a uniformity of opinion, and to render ‘unorthodoxy’ thought impossible. It is at once the manifestation and cause of evil (Peck, 1983, p.242).
All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, and mental attitudes of Oceania are designed to sustain the mystique of the Party. Newspeak is the language of manipulation and deceit. Its purpose is to subvert intellectual engagement and to perpetuate the Party’s myth of omniscience.
§ Blackwhite– has two contradictory meanings. On the one hand it means that if the Party says black is white, then it is white. When applied to opponents, it means utter inability to believe any utterance. In either case, blackwhite is the ultimate test of loyalty to the Party. One must not simply know that black is white, when the Party declares it to be so, but, rather, one must thoroughly believe that black is white. This kind of mental elasticity is made possible through doublethink.
§ Doublethink– is the ability to hold two contradictory opinions simultaneously. It is consciously induced unconsciousness (orthodoxy). Put another way, it is the ability “to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies.”
Anatomy of Doublethink:
• to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them
• to forget any fact that has become inconvenient
• to deny the existence of objective reality while taking to account the reality which one denies
Organizational Structure
• Ministry of Truth (promulgates propaganda)
• Ministry of Peace (perpetuates war)
• Ministry of Love (promotes torture)
• Ministry of Plenty (perpetuates starvation)
An excerpt from Organizational Behaviour In A Global Context, p.411:
The Choe Factories-Power Relations in the Workplace
“In the spring of 1999, the Choe factories, located in New York City, shut down operations due to wage claims from workers. The Choe factories operated as a contractor producing garments under an exclusive agreement for Donna Karan International. the workforce was comprised of 70 Chinese and Latina women. Workers were unionized under the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).
Research carried out by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) found the organization, DKI, and the union representing the workers in violation of numerous international human rights. p.411
Over 12 years the workers were subjected to restrictions on movement and bathroom use, monitoring with surveillance cameras, unpaid overtime, and abusive supervision.
Constant surveillance meant that, if workers were to raise their head from their work, supervisors would immediately reprimand them by speakerphone, “No talking, work.” No one was permitted phone calls, even in emergencies, and phone activity was monitored by management. Lilia was not permitted to go to the bathroom (which was often padlocked) unless she had finished her piecework. Even drinking water was unavailable when the fountains on-site did not work.”
Bye for now,
Carman
Leave a Reply