“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it,” wrote Jonathan Swift in 1710.
The post-truth era is here. Our political and social discourse is rife with emotional appeals, loud polarizing views and ‘alternative’ facts. The dividing line between facts and opinions is muddled now. Truth is not the god anymore; all hail our new overlords – perceptions built over narratives.
Since pre-historic times humans have relied upon a common understanding of facts to survive. For example, in the wild the first step to co-ordinate and safegaurd from a danger like nearby wild animals was the collective understanding that the wild animal was dangerous. In the midst of such discussion imagine a pre-historic human shouting that I don’t believe wild animals are bad, this is fake news!
The example is arguably hyperbolic but the same is happening today. Case in point – climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers or flat-earthers.
Doubting, questioning and analysing established norms is an essential human tendency without doubt. If not for the audacity of Copernicus to question established beliefs, we may still believe that the earth is the center of Universe.
But things are getting out of hand. We have too many Copernicuses.
Rhetoric, appeal to emotion, ignorance of established facts, we-vs-them, etc. have always the tool of social and political engineering. The only problem is in this point of history it is just too easy to concoct alternative beliefs and portray them as ‘facts’ without backing them with evidence. Like a virtual hit-and-run.
It can be argued that the handy tools of modern mass communication have in-fact democratized political and social dialogue. But negative and polarizing news is much easier to spread and make ‘viral. There has been extensive research to back this proposition in recent times.
Politicians take advantage of this phenomena by spewing hatred and painting their opponents as literal incarnation of evil even when there is no evidence to say so.
Here is a thought soup. With the daily reports of crime, violence and polarization do you believe that an average person was better off in past?
With the never ending information streams around us, full of violence, outrage and polarity. One can’t be blamed if they think the past was much better.
However, we are in one one of the most if not the most peaceful times in history. Life expectancy is much higher than it was a century ago, dreadful diseases are being eradicated, wars are rare and violence is at an all time low.
The world is not becoming worse, it’s the ease and frequency at which negativity reaches us that makes us susceptible to hopelessness. This hopelessness is exploited by mass media.
wayAn example of an established fact I talked about initially is ‘increase in fuel prices is not good for public at large’. Be it any nation, any place this fact remains universal. But once you hammer that the an opposition party is so bad that even exhorbitant fuel prices are good rather than having them in power or when you somehow, through elaborate mental gymnastics, bring national interest at the heart of fuel prices, you can get a minor but substantial populace to defend even that.
As my friend Shubham puts it, in the modern inter-connected world, real power doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. It comes from controlling of narratives through mass and social media.
Without an agreement on some established facts, there can never be a stable public discourse. Without the safegaurd of basic beliefs, every conspiracy theory can be painted as absolute truth.
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