Adolf Hitler at a 1939 Nazi political rally
What a “post-truth” world is — a place where shared, objective standards for truth have disappeared.
Is it the same as a post-modern world which refuses to privilege any truth claim supposedly because there is no way or no acceptable standard to test competing truth claims?
Close but not the same!
At least, the post-modern analyst admits that not one truth claim, except that back by power, is “true”. And the true-blue po-mo will even accept that whatever claim he himself makes is not superior in any way. It is a reading just like anybody else.
When Trump, Duterte, and other political leaders lie and pass their lies as truths and their political bases accept these same ‘truths’, this phenom simply affirms the common-sense that “victors write history”. Or Michel Foucault’s observation of a strong ‘power-knowledge’ nexus. It also recalls Goebbels’ claim that if one repeats a lie a gazillion times, it will be accepted as truth.
Furthermore, powerful men go on spouting lies because they are not punished for doing so. Their credibility does not decrease and they are egged on by their political bases.
In contrast, when an ordinary person lies and he is found out, he suffers social disapproval and could even be fined or sent to jail.
In truth, human societies can live with and in fact need beliefs that are less-than-truths. Foundational myths are necessary to form human communities and societies. Benedict Anderson earlier asserted that nations are ‘imagined communities’. The Weberian state is another myth that current states aspire for. Economists use the fiction of ‘perfect competition’ to assess real-world economies, mimicking physicists of the 18th century who started heuristically with friction-less motion in the study of dynamics.
Doubt may be painful and for this reason, people are willing to accept as truth the claims made by authorities. For instance, if a child refuses to believe his mother’s warning that we cannot fly unaided, that child will die if he tries to test his ability to fly unaided by jumping out a window from the family condo unit located at the 69th floor of a 100-storey building.
The inability to live with and tolerate doubt and uncertainty is the principal reason why lies asserted as truths, specially by the powerful, get accepted by many.
The powerful liar is now a source of comfort and assurance.
Examples:
The Third Reich will last a thousand years!
This nation can be great again!
I hate drugs!
The truth may be the truth but usually, it is painful.
Given that truth, it may be legitimate to ask the question: why seek truth if it causes pain, discomfort, and inconvenience?
Living with and accepting truth’s pain seems to be the challenge that we face in these trying times!
©Amado M. Mendoza, Jr. 19 August 2019
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