Sanity is not Statistical
Hello everybody… today we will be talking about a quote in the novel 1984, by a great writer and visionary — George Orwell. For all of you who have not read the book — it is the story of a man who is trying to remain sane by relying on his memory and instincts, and not getting opinionated by the state propaganda around him. The book has wonderful punchlines against the totalitarian establishment, of which he is a part by no choice of his own. In simple words he is in a world where your individual beliefs… feelings and opinions do not matter and they are crushed by the sheer might of the ruling power of the land.
The difficulty of living in such a world is that for obtaining a desired result, the men in power can manipulate a huge number of minds to believe and advocate an opinion. Mostly this is achieved by showing statistical results to prove the point. For example, x% of the population has benefitted from a newly introduced scheme, policy or law, where ‘x’ will always be a big number. These statistics are used to pursue everyone, in following/doing something, just because “everyone else is doing it”.
This is also called the classic “Bandwagon appeal”, which is one of the many ways by which somebody can try to illogically win an argument. When any national debate starts, you must have definitely heard this statement, that “when the country’s intellectuals are saying it, then how can it be wrong…?”
The important thing to understand here is that while a majority of the people might be doing something what is right for them, it does not necessarily mean that if everybody starts doing something then it should be the right thing to do. Again, an example — if everybody is putting aside a certain amount of their income as savings, they are probably doing it because it is the right thing to do for their future, and you can start doing that too if your income allows you to save some of it.
However, just because everybody follows a particular diet / invests in a specific stock / wears certain kind of clothes or lines-up to buy the next big gadget, it does not mean that IT IS the right thing to do, and you have to conform to it.
This is the essence of the quote — “SANITY IS NOT STATISTICAL”
Something which is not sane, which is not right, which your inner core un-chooses to sink in, is probably a reflection of your true spirit. Corroboration to this can also be found in the words — “The one thing that doesn’t abide by the majority rule is a person’s conscience” [Atticus Finch — To Kill a Mocking Bird]
From a historical perspective — Imagine if Galileo would have given up against the major belief of his time that the sun revolves around the earth, we would have never had the supporting evidences to understand the truth that it is the earth that goes around the sun and not vice versa. Too bad that the totalitarianism in those times sentenced him to indefinite prisonment until his death for upholding the sanity of his mind.
We, on the contrary, live in a world of free speech and democracy (at least some of us do… or we are led to believe that we are living in one…
), where you should not hold yourself back in doing what you feel is right. Don’t let anybody or everybody… bully you to succumb to something which you don’t believe in. Stick to your guts… and try to stay sane… because… “Sanity is not statistical”