Restoring Truth

How often have you heard say that we now live in a "post truth" society? I've mentioned this myself on several occasions, but I don't believe I've ever elaborated on what this means for the functioning our societies, and exactly what "truth" we've left behind. So here's an attempt to remedy those omissions.

_{Image by GDJ - source: Openclipart}

In my post Million Maga Math I wrote: "The fact that so many people still fall for for the blatant lies put forward by the Trump administration is astounding on one hand, and a very interesting study-case on the other." This is a study-case involving the kind of truth we've lost, the kind of truth we need for our society and democracy to function. A society and democracy can only function when we agree on certain facts; there has to be a consensus, we must agree on what reality is. "Truth" is that which is in accordance with reality or fact. The best method we have devised to determine what is in accordance with reality is science or the scientific method. But even in science there's this thing called "scientific consensus"; that which (most) scientists agree upon. We share the same world, you and I, a world we've conquered through our unique ability to cooperate in small and large groups. For that cooperation to be successful it's important that we all see the same world, that we all operate on the same set of facts. Society disintegrates when we all have our own set of "alternative facts", which is where we are now, and why the deep political divide in America is such an interesting study-case of the loss of truth in our post-modern world...

To restore the consensus needed for democracy to function isn't simple at all. The strategy of Joe Biden, who wants a "return to normalcy", is bound to fail. "Normalcy" is what created the Trump presidency. Trump isn't the one who caused millions of Americans to believe in his alternative truth, or at least he's not the one who created the circumstances that made this possible. Before the enlightenment there was this strong religious consensus of how the world operates, a consensus that made possible a widely agreed upon normative theory of how things ought to be and how people ought to behave. Of course there was plenty of disagreement, there were even atheists back then, but there was enough consensus to act as a cohesive for societies to not fall apart. After the enlightenment we still had that, but we added science and scientific consensus for us all to agree upon the nature of reality. But all that is gone now, not even the "priests of science" succeed in creating the consensus we so desperately need for our societies and civilization to survive and prosper.

We now live in a world where all individual "truths" are equally valid. It's a version of truth without consensus, which makes it an extremely weak truth. Capitalism is the overarching ideology under which the whole world operates, and with capitalism comes hyper-individualism, as the individual and individual success or failure has become the measure of all things. This extreme faith in individualism is further fueled by the combination of search-algorithms and social media that creates the bubbles in which our individual subjective truths are constantly reinforced. Our present social ideal is that every individual "truth" is treated with respect, that every individual is heard and that every opinion gets an equal platform. This has become so mainstream that on TV climate change deniers discuss with climate change believers, as if there's no such thing as scientific consensus around the subject.

A note of caution: it's not that consensus in and of itself equals truth, it's just that we need consensus to function as a society. If consensus by itself would equal truth, then truth can be made by forcing or organizing a consensus, rather than being discovered through experiment or observation, or existing separately from consensus. That's why this is such a difficult subject and why it's not easy at all to restore truth. Maybe the title of this post shouldn't speak of restoring truth at all, as we live, all of us, not just Trump supporters, under manufactured consent. The widespread belief that capitalism is far from perfect but nonetheless "the best we can do" is wrong, but it's the consensus we live by... This is also why so called conspiracy theorists are right to suspect anything that comes from the defenders of the status quo like the mainstream media and establishment politicians. Breaking with consensus is not always the wrong thing to do, often it's the right thing to do even. But when a particular belief or conviction has been proven wrong, it's no longer useful to hold that belief. Trump and his army of lawyers have been proven wrong over and over again, they themselves admit there's no widespread election fraud when asked under oath; it's time to let go of the belief or hope that Trump will remain the POTUS.

In this world, where every individual is allowed their own truth, which is by definition a weak truth because of a lack of any kind of widespread consensus, minds are ripe to be harvested by any populist demagogue who rhetorically prays on widespread and deeply felt concerns. We live in a world in which feelings don't care about the facts. Any "strong leader" who comes up with a couple of simplistic solutions to complex problems will be able to fill the lack of strong truths with his own strong truth. Trump just had an easier task than the strong leaders of yesteryear exactly because there was no strongly held preexisting truths to overcome. But Trump is not the problem. Simply voting him out and returning to normalcy will not solve the problems faced by democracy. We will, as western societies, have to find a way to return to some semblance of a shared reality, do away with "alternative facts". This will be difficult, to say the least, without changing that world-wide held consensus of capitalism in which literally everything is subservient to the individual profit objective; it's destroying lives, the environment and now truth itself. Polarizing headlines yield clicks and profits, sensational news and mind-numbing entertainment yield profits, fierce debates between climate change deniers and climate change alarmists make for entertaining television and more ad-revenue; "infotainment" actually exists...

We've got a long route ahead of us, if we are to reverse this highly troubling development, that's for sure. And a Biden presidency will most certainly not be helpful; his win was only needed to cast out the fascist demagogue. For the needed change to happen, I don't believe in consensus theory, which is a social theory that holds a particular political or economic system as a fair system, and that social change should take place within the social institutions provided by it. That won't work. No, here I believe in conflict theory, which holds that social change is only achieved through conflict. And, as with any major social change, this will start from the bottom up. It's not pretty, but it's a fact that all major social change is accompanied by violence and death; people most probably will have to die somewhere in our shared future to build a new socioeconomic framework that allows for consensus to exist, one that doesn't just lift the individual on a pedestal, but has equal concern for society as a whole, maybe even humanity as a whole. We've got our work cut out for us... The below linked video is what I saw today that got me thinking about this subject. Simply "deprogramming" Trump supporters is not the way to go in my opinion, that won't work or help. The root of our problems is much more pervasive and will demand much more fundamental change...

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